Jen, a K-12 teacher, shares low-cost ways to build autism acceptance across a whole school. She uses an Autism Acceptance Unit with lesson plans, a Kahoot quiz, recorded read-alouds of picture books like "Since We're Friends," and the free autismhelper.com blog to reach teachers and students.
Chapters
It's April and I am so excited it's April because it is Autism Acceptance Month. I am Jen and I am a K-12 self-contained teacher, and at my school we do a phenomenal job of accepting students no matter the month. But I do have some very special things planned and I cannot wait to share those with you. When you teach in an autism classroom, every day is Autism Acceptance Day, and I feel like that not just for my classroom but for my whole my school does a really great job of autism acceptance. Honestly, they do a great job of just neurodiversity acceptance. Doesn't matter if you have autism, Down syndrome, or something that you can't see. My school does a fantastic job. But in April, because it is Autism Acceptance Month, I've got a couple fun things up my sleeve, so I want to share those with you right now. So really after COVID, it became really hard to push into classrooms. I used to take a classroom or two or three every week and push in and just read a story or talk about autism, talk about some of the facts. I really scaled it. We're a K-12 building, um, and so, you know, what I would talk to kindergartners about was a little different than what I would talk to second graders about, but really just how to be a friend, to someone with autism. Well, as COVID came, things kind of shifted, and honestly, our classrooms grew, and it wasn't easy to push into those classrooms anymore. So I had to think outside of the box about how I could reach more students with less time. So here's what I came up with. The first thing I did was snag this Autism Acceptance Unit, and I will show you why. It's got so many resources at your fingertips, and honestly, it's just got great lessons, great discussion prompts, and great resources to be able to share with your entire school. Our school has a morning assembly every morning, and so these are the things that we're going to talk about. If you don't have a spot to where you could get in front and talk to your whole school, an idea is to be able to send this page and possibly the facts about autism page to the teachers that you work with or the teachers in your school to be able to share with their students. Outside of making a bunch of copies, I wanted something that was fun and engaging in a format that our gen ed teachers and our students already knew. So I had the idea to make a Kahoot. Kahoot is a tool that our gen ed teachers use all the time, and I just made it true/false. It was really, really simple. Is it true? Is it false? Um, and I made the questions just really, really simple, and so that way it was engaging, and hopefully everybody involved gets to learn something. So, true or false, people with autism can grow up and have a job. Obviously, that is true, and so you can see it tells you whether or not you got the answer right, and it could be a really fun thing that gen ed teachers could do whole group, or they could do it in a small group. Students could have their own device, just depending on how the classroom's set up, but this is just one way that you can create a great opportunity for students to learn about autism, and you don't have to be present. Another idea that doesn't require me to be present: I used to love to read stories about how to be a friend to someone with autism to gen ed students, but now I can just record myself reading a book. It doesn't have to be super crazy. I don't have to publish it on the internet. I could just record the video, send the video in an email to all of my co-workers, and they would have a resource at their fingertips to to be able to share with their students. And I absolutely love that because kids gravitate to stories. It gives real-world examples, and there are a million stories you could choose from. And if you're struggling to find a book, we have book recommendations right in our unit. Another option for stories or read-alouds is to use an online platform to share stories like Epic. I love Epic. They've got so many autism resources. One of my favorites for really young kids, probably through the primary, second grade, is "Since We're Friends," an autism picture book. It gives real-life scenarios about a child who's struggling, who has autism, and their gen ed friend who helps them, and it is so applicable for our students. It's one of my favorites. So I share this with all of our gen ed teachers so they can either assign it to their students or they can share it. They could read it aloud, But if you were looking for a read aloud that you wanted to record yourself, this would be a great option. Here's what it looks like on Epic. Epic is probably one of my favorite resources as a teacher because it's just so easy to find what your students need and assign it to them and give them options for reading and being independent and practicing those skills. So I love that I get to incorporate Autism Acceptance right into that. We have so many more resources listed on our blog. Just go to autismhelper.com, click on the blog, and search autism acceptance. There are so many blog posts with so many resources at your fingertips, and so many of them are free. This is such an important month and such an important topic that there are really great options out there, and it doesn't have to be expensive for you as a teacher. Remember, what we're doing here is creating a culture of inclusion, and that takes change. So I'm gonna challenge you to do one thing that you've never done before to help create that culture this month. And I wanna know what you do. So definitely drop in the comments and let me know how you are celebrating Autism Acceptance Month. One thing you'll see from me is a bunch of Autism Acceptance shirts. My staff and I cannot wait to wear them. We have special ones planned all month long, but this one is Love Needs No Words: Finding Cooper's Voice. Gosh, I love Kate Swenson. She's so great. Such a role model and such a great author. If you have not yet, definitely read her book, Forever Boy. So be sure to share with me whatever it is you're doing from special shirts to a staff book club, maybe on Forever Boy, or whatever it might be that you are doing to celebrate diversity and autism acceptance in your schools, definitely let me know. I love learning from you guys.
