Reflection 2

ED 640 Mod 4 DB

Liam Breathnach

I have a student this year who is on the spectrum. While there are students in the school with more severe symptoms, he is the first student I have had in class who exhibited what I understand as autistic behavior. I have been trying to watch him during calls and see what he requires from the environment that others may not. I also have been trying to watch my own actions in dealing with him to try and see how I must appear to him and see which of my mannerisms and traits are helpful or understanding and supportive of whatever I felt was required. He was appreciative when I mentioned any concern I had was social, and that I had felt the need to try and alter his behavior with other students a couple of times.  

Starting the student had a tendency to call out more than I find acceptable, and has had to work hard when in a group as he found the experience difficult, but maybe not as difficult as the other students! I have been trying harder than usual to be explicit in any instructions during class or for homework as I know I will be approached with questions on any instruction which can be interpreted in different ways. For better or worse, I have been trying to have him make some informed judgment calls and do what he thinks is best.

It has been interesting for me, and I think fulfilling for him. There have been signs that he is comfortable in our school; he works on and joint hosts the daily news broadcast of school messages posted to YouTube and shown at the start of first period, and he seems to be working better with his classmates. I do think our school is a safe environment and that is one of the things which attracted me to it. Long may that all continue.

I think the answer to the second question is….I have not! I have 71 freshman from a range of different backgrounds and middle schools and many of them have already shown themselves to have difficulty with thinking, assimilating, studying, and synthesizing. I think there is groundwork in some metacognition and learning skills to be laid before they can successfully pursue knowledge in their own areas of interest. Also I am currently working on some basic areas of the structure of living organisms which will be the basis of many areas of Biology for potentially a long time of their study,  which does not lend itself too well to student led learning.

All that is not to say that I do not wish to slowly implement such pedagogies and have students take more control. I spoke about this with my Dept. Chair last week and mentioned that a section on Food would be an excellent area for having students create projects. Genetics and Ecology are other such areas but they fall much later in the year. I am spending a lot of time in the class working on getting students to learn more than definitions, to link and chunk material and to discuss phenomena in their own words with a view to applying the information in contexts they have not seen. These skills will all be vital when it comes to thinking of research questions for themselves, designing project or experiments, and taking and analyzing data. Hopefully when we reach the aforementioned content areas students will be more capable of taking ownership of their learning in an engaging and meaningful way.

Thanks