By EMMA KISSANE – Managing Editor
Autism Spectrum Disorder, typically diagnosed in children by age three, varies in severity and therefore influences treatment and class placement for Clarke County School District students.
Approximately one percent of all children in the U.S. are currently diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder each year, according to the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network.
At Clarke Central High School, 1.13% of students are diagnosed with ASD, according to CCHS Curriculum Assistance Program for Students department head Martha Yuran.
“We have students who are diagnosed with autism in all of our special education programs; we have students with autism in our low-incidence (and high-incidence) disabilities programs. We have students fully-included, all day long (in regular education courses), and somebody just checks in with them, maybe once a month,” Yuran said. “(Students with ASD) are really fully-included throughout our entire building.”
The placement of students with ASD both depends on the education they have already received, as well as the severity of their disability, as determined by a doctor.
Although the term “autism” was coined in 1910 to describe the symptoms of schizophrenia, the definition has evolved to include a large spectrum of symptoms, according to British child psychologist Dr. Adam Phillips in his London Review of Books article “Shaky Ground,” published 23 February. Phillips sees the broadened diagnosis as providing “good descriptions…of the combination of forms of behavior that make up the diagnosis of autism.”
Associate Professor in the University of Georgia’s department of educational psychology and instructional technology Dr. Jonathan Campbell assesses children with disabilities in order to make an initial diagnosis which, for students with ASD, typically occurs during the first years of life.
“The most effective applied behavior analysis intervention (for young children) is something called ‘discrete trial training,’ where a child with autism is taught social, language, and communication skills in highly controlled (one-on-one) teaching environments,” Campbell said.
“(ASD is defined as) a cluster of three different things: difficulties with socializing, difficulties with communication and either repetitive behaviors or highly-restrictive interests. For an autism (diagnosis)…these difficulties need to be present before the child is three years of age,” Campbell said.
Extensive medical research has allowed doctors and educators to classify a student as “on the spectrum” if he or she exhibits a number of generalized ASD symptoms.
In younger children, Campbell may look for a lack of response to their name, delays in language skills and highly repetitive behaviors, such as spinning objects, to signify ASD. In older children who may have a milder, previously-overlooked form of ASD, Campbell looks for problems with relationships and highly-specific interests in objects or routines. In both cases, social skills and communication are typical signifiers of ASD.
Through collaboration between a student’s health provider, teachers and family, an individual pathway of home care and treatment is selected.
“The most effective applied behavior analysis intervention (for young children) is something called ‘discrete trial training,’ where a child with autism is taught social, language, and communication skills in highly controlled (one-on-one) teaching environments,” Campbell said.
Although intervention strategies may help people with autism cope with their disability, there is no medically-sanctioned “cure” for ASD, according to Phillips.
“None of the treatments for autism work…in the sense of transforming the autistic child into a ‘normal’ child, or of taking the autism out of the child, or in most of the other senses we have of what a cure might be like or what a treatment should do,” Phillips said.
Once students with ASD enter grade school, diagnosis may further determine their enrollment in certain classes, both in and outside of special education.The Clarke County School District, which provides services for students with disabilities in each of its 22 elementary, middle and high schools, tracks the progress of students with special needs in the same way all students are measured, according to Georgia Performance Standards.
“(CCSD) does everything within the realm of education to meet the needs of our students based on GPS, so those students are taught with access to those curriculum standards, just as all other students are taught,” CCSD Special Education coordinator Amelia Butler said.
Butler, who previously worked at Cedar Shoals High School, began her current position in August 2011. She specifically serves students and their families within the special education department at seven CCSD elementary schools, working with teachers to determine services needed for each student.
“(CCSD) does everything within the realm of education to meet the needs of our students based on GPS, so those students are taught with access to those curriculum standards, just as all other students are taught,” CCSD Special Education coordinator Amelia Butler said.
“At times, there may be goals and objectives (for students with ASD) that we may want to address beyond (GPS), but for the most part, (curricula) primarily go back to those same standards for all students,” Butler said.
As Butler works with elementary students who are relatively new to school, she often advises parents and teachers concerning home care.
“I work with teachers to help make sure (students’) needs are being met. If that might be at a place where the service needs to carry over, or the intervention needs to carry over into the home, we may work with that family to set up instructions, set up some learning or some teaching for the family to be able to implement some of those practices at home,” Butler said.
If a student enrolled in general education courses begins to need additional assistance or enrichment, a Student Support Team, composed of the child’s instructors, a school psychologist and (a) counselor, meets to determine what type of help the individual student needs. Intervention may come in the form of assistance in a general education classroom or enrollment in special education courses.
In the U.S., all students with disabilities receive a frequently-updated “individualized education plan,” as per the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, first passed in 1975 as the Education for all Handicapped Children Act, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. IEPs, which must be reviewed at least annually, are documents reflecting the goals, objectives and needs of each child. Yuran works with a student’s SST to create and regularly evaluate their IEP and assure students’ needs are met.
“I’m the leader of the IEP team for any (CCHS) student with a disability, whether their disability is autism or a specific learning disability or an emotional behavior disorder,” Yuran said. “It’s the IEP team that meets and talks about the student’s strengths and weaknesses and the areas of support that they need.”
CCHS CAPS department teachers Philip Walter and Dr. Ashlee Wegmann have each taught students with ASD during their collective (?) years of teaching, giving them each insight and perspective on the education of students with ASD.
“(Autism is) a huge spectrum disorder, (ranging from) someone who’s just very, very bright but socially has a little social disorder, all the way to completely non-functioning,” Wegmann said. “There are so many different aspects of (ASD), and each person is so different, that it’s hard to put a real definition on it.”
Wegmann works with students on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, and currently has six students diagnosed with ASD enrolled in her classes. According to Web MD, ASD symptoms of high-functioning autism are less severe than those of other forms. A person with high-functioning autism usually has average of above average intelligence, but may struggle with social and communication skills.
“For my classes, each (student) is completely different. You have to be able to be very flexible and willing to kind of gauge that mood when they walk in because one day they might be completely different than the next,” Wegmann said. “(Students with ASD) get support every once in awhile because they take things the wrong way, or social cues, they just don’t pick up on them.”
Students with a milder form of ASD, especially those who were diagnosed at a young age, may have already internalized coping methods through education and reinforcement in the home, which allows immersion in regular education.
“Some of the real stereotypical-type things for individuals who have what is sometimes called “classic autism” are the repetitious behavior, the rocking or the tapping — the “stem” behaviors is what we call those,” Yuran said.
However, these stereotypes do not apply to all students “on the spectrum.”
“Because (ASD) is such a spectrum, there are some individuals who, if you met them, you’d have no idea that they have the diagnosis of autism because they’ve learned so many strategies to manage their symptoms. They interact in this world, hold jobs and they’re successful (and) get married with children and all of those kinds of things.”
Fully-immersed students with autism may not have an IEP.
“I don’t want it to be misconstrued that, simply because you have a diagnosis of autism, you have to have special education courses, because that’s not the case,” Yuran said. “You could have a diagnosis of autism somewhere along the spectrum and actually there be no educational impact, nothing going on in a school setting that you can’t handle.”
“Because (ASD) is such a spectrum, there are some individuals who, if you met them, you’d have no idea that they have the diagnosis of autism because they’ve learned so many strategies to manage their symptoms,” Yuran said.
Although the label of ASD applies to a broad range of abilities and needs, Wegmann appreciates that the knowledge from diagnosis can point to certain behavioral symptoms and educational tactics.
“I think that, especially (with) early diagnosis in elementary school, then a lot of the behavior issues can be done away with at that point rather than getting to this point and having to work on that kind of stuff,” Wegmann. “But there are so many different aspects of it that, and each person is so different that it’s hard to put a real definition on (ASD).”
All diagnosis aside, Walter, who works with students on the low-functioning end of the autism spectrum, similarly views the education of all students as a chance to start from a clean slate.
“I don’t really like to know (what a student’s disability is) at first. I don’t read anything on new students until I’ve been with them for at least a week in the classroom,” Walter said. “(I get to know) the person, instead of a label or their bad history, so that how I teach them comes from a pure place.”
