Department of Things They Don’t Teach in Graduate School: Students With Autism and Higher Ed

September 26, 2011, 7:34 am

In Saturday’s Daily Beast, author Priscilla Gilman writes about “Autism’s Back To School Anxiety.” The parent of a young teenager, Gilman notes that the kinds of discipline and new-ness that can be a source of expectation and excitement for some kids creates anxiety and stress for children on the autism spectrum. “Children with autism typically struggle with novelty,” she writes, “and a new school year can bring an overwhelming flood of novelty—new teachers and classmates, a new physical space to become acclimated to, a new schedule and routine, new demands and expectations both academically and behaviorally.”

It is debatable what kinds of changes are producing a growing population of children who fall into the autism spectrum. Research will likely produce more evidence to show that this disorder is produced in a multi-causal way that implicates genetics, the environment, and spikes in immune function from vaccines. It also seems likely that increased diagnosis is a factor in raising awareness that behavior that has been perceived as peculiar to stigmatizing is related to brain differences that can now be understood and labeled.

What seems not debatable is that our sense of fairness, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is way ahead of any conversation about what it will mean for young people who need a great deal of support to realize their human potential to attend college. It seems certain is that increasing numbers of children on the autism spectrum — many of whom have unusual abilities — will go to college. As USA Today reported three years ago, they are already in our classrooms. This is happening in a context in which there is little to no attention being paid to giving full-time faculty the training to teach students who have a wide range of capacities when it comes to what counts for normal classroom discipline: sitting still for an hour and taking notes, being in crowded rooms where they risk being bumped and touched, overcoming obsessive behavior to get to class or hand in a paper on time, working in small groups with other students, or being in large classes with crowds of strangers. It is also happening in a context in which being full-time faculty is becoming anomalous, and the financial “flexibility” of running higher education on per-course labor makes it unlikely that the vast majority of faculty will be eligible, or open to making unpaid time available, for the training that would make their classrooms accessible to autistic students.

The challenges are somewhat different from the vast category of “learning disabilities” for which responsible colleges and universities provide learning centers to provide the support that makes what we euphemistically call “accommodation” useful. As Gilman writes about the middle schoolers with whom she is currently most familiar:

Once in school, the children are confronted with a flood of confusing and potentially upsetting stimuli. One autistic teen told me that getting used to new faces is especially challenging for her: “I have to learn how to decode the expressions.” Another said that the pitch, volume, and timbre of a slew of new voices always take a good deal of getting used to. Bells signaling the end or beginning of classes, whistles, and fire alarms are all new and aversive noises to children who suffer from acute sound sensitivity. We’ve often come to school to walk Benj through fire drills, and whenever there’s a new gym teacher, we’ve asked him or her to warn Benj before blowing a whistle.

Imagine what it would be like to an easily startled child to be in a class where using clickers in integral to the pedagogy. People with autism, Gilman notes, also tend to have disordered sleep, affecting the capacity to function at high-stress times of the semester when we assume that most students are pulling all-nighters. They have difficulty relating to someone they are intimate with (much less an impatient, overworked faculty member who wants all students to act like the adults they appear to be), what they are experiencing and what is wrong, which would make even the most generous office hours not useful.

So when we are putting together arguments for hiring full-time faculty in the next round of budget cuts and declarations from foundations that tenure is holding us back, think about adding this one in. The demands on faculty to be well-trained, knowledgeable, creative and flexible teachers are growing — not subsiding — and attention to this will make all the difference in keeping our classrooms truly inclusive.

Late afternoon celebration edit: I just realized that this is the 750th post at Tenured Radical.

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jliedl

As a parent of an autistic teenager who’s achieving high academic standards but with support from a careful school system, I’m glad to read your blog post today. I communicate with my university’s office of special needs on a regular basis. They do their best, but colleges and universities don’t have the infrastructure to replicate what these students have relied upon in high school.

Faculty need to cultivate awareness of all the ways in which they rely on socio-cultural norms – those unwritten expectations of how people should behave or react. It pays off not only for autistic students but also for others who don’t always get those subtle signals of how to organize group work or why they need to listen to peers speaking or what have you. Some autistic people are particularly sound or scent sensitive. It’s helpful to realize that the student who bolted from your classroom isn’t being deliberately rude, but is trying to cope with an overwhelming sensation of panic caused by the fresh fruit the student next to them is consuming!

Also, fellow faculty members, please don’t generalize from specific autistic traits to all the students on the spectrum. Our autistic daughter isn’t a visual learner, she’s a voracious reader. Still, the number of times people have assumed that she learns in a visual or tactile way, in the style of Temple Grandin? Too many to count.

One pleasant aside: I teach many students who go onto K-12 teaching careers. Right now, three of my former students are educating our autistic daughter. They all are outstanding examples of mindful educators who’re patiently assisting her in developing her academic skills in general as well as learning how to master her subjects in particular. What a wonderful start to the school year it’s been to see my students and my child, all thriving!

arizona_semi_native

I would like something more concrete. Do you have suggestions for reading? I teach math at a 2 year college.

jliedl

There’s an excellent document up from Sara Langford et al at CMU’s website that summarizes current understanding of Asperger’s (as an autism spectrum disorder) and strategies to support such students: http://www.unc.edu/asp/documents/Asperger_Paper_JECT_1.doc – I would start there. I’m currently reading Stuart Powell’s book, “Special teaching in higher education” (Routledge) which is focused on the British experience but has some great insights.Sadly, about 90% of the literature out there about teaching people on the ASD spectrum is aimed at the K-12 group and, as far as I can tell, publications about college students seem to circulate mostly within education faculties – we need to get word out about useful introductions like the Langford et al. document!

tenured_radical

@jliedl this is an important point about ASD more generally that was made in the Robert MacNeil series on the PBS NewsHour. Public discussion is focused on children rather than the adults they will be for most of their lives. This is married to a policy structure that underwrites virtually no support for ASD citizens once they reach majoritty.

misanthropic789

I am APPALLED that an educated, intelligent person such as yourself would yet again mention the autism/vaccine thing.

To be crystal clear:
1) Only one study has been published showing a link, and that study was RETRACTED due to methodological issues. Specifically the research cherry-picked the “sample”.
2) No credible studies have replicated even partial findings linking vaccines to autism spectrum disorders.
3) The rise in autism has little to do with an increase in incidences of the disease. It is related to our enhanced ability to diagnose the disease and our broadened definition of what constitutes an autism spectrum disorder. A study of adult autistics in the UK found no change in the prevalence of the disease. However many of the people in the study weren’t diagnosed until adulthood because the definitions have changed.

California had the highest rate of parents opting out of vaccination for kindergartners since before the requirement was put in place. This opens up the entire country to epidemics of diseases that should have gone the way of the dodo. We must not lend validity to the argument by referencing it, even tangentially.

lynnefox

Thanks for addressing an inaccurate understanding of the causes of autism, with dangerous consequences for the population. Anyone needing assistance with scholarship on this subject should feel free to contact a medical librarian in your state through the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine – http://nnlm.gov/ or 1-800-338-7657.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

Perhaps the author can defend her statement — I’d be interested to hear that — but her description of the connection did not sound like an echo of the vaccine-blamers. She did not say that children were being poisoned or brain-damaged by thimerosal preservatives or by the vaccine itself. Instead, she raised the possibility of “spikes in immune function” playing a role. I hadn’t heard of that hypothesis. Perhaps there is something to it. I’m withholding judgment.
ellenhunt

I work on vaccines and related technologies. I am in your camp but I want to set the record straight.

1. It is true that Wakefield’s study is not considered valid. However, the outside possibility that there could be an interaction between a rare frequency set of alleles and vaccination (or disease – the one is a milder version of the other) has not been ruled out. I corresponded with Wakefield about designing a study using what he claimed were now hundreds of samples. It made me quite suspicious of him that he was totally uninterested. It is my belief that Wakefield did not actually believe his own paper. But that hypothesis has not been properly ruled out yet.

Additionally -the data shows that blaming him for the anti-vaccine movement is not valid. (See UK vaccine rate records.) The anti-vaccine movement started in the 1970′s as an outgrowth of the back to the land, all natural, hippie subculture.

2. There is some very high credibility work done by Patterson at Caltech in rodent model. He can produce an autism like syndrome in rats at will by vaccinating the mother rats during a short window or infecting the mother rats with a virus. This is also reproducible with thalidomide, and corresponds precisely to the human equivalent gestation window when thalidomide has been linked to autism. Patterson has not sought publicity, but his work is excellent. Patterson’s model also makes sense. It fits together without contradictions. (A major scientific problem with the vaccination of children idea is that the full-blown disease is not supposed to cause it. That just makes no sense.)

3. The “better diagnosis” hypothesis is just that. There are serious problems with it and nobody should think it is a settled question. Having looked at the literature and being quite familiar with ASD, I don’t think the better diagnosis hypothesis is correct. It explains part of it, but not all.

Relative to the epidemics matter, this is true, and children are the ones being potentially damaged by it. The parents in this subculture maintain their beliefs with anecdotal evidence that they collect from the vast majority who don’t have a problem. That said, a paradoxical favor is done by those who do not vaccinate for those who do, particularly for girls.

Vaccinations do not generally produce the level of immunity that recovery from the full disease does. This means that maternal antibody levels in mothers who have only been vaccinated are quite low. Maternal antibodies are the antibodies circulating in the mother’s bloodstream which are actively transported across the placenta to concentrate in the blood of her baby. These antibodies protect her child against disease in the first 1.5 years of life while his immune system is developing.

But if those vaccinated mothers were exposed to the real disease, they will generally get a mild illness that they will usually not even be aware of. This raises their antibody levels to the level they should be, and protects their infant from that disease. Without that infection, her antibodies will only work for 6-9 months.

http://www.elizabethkateswitaj.net/ EKSwitaj

Yes, training and having the time to implement training is important, but if faculty are going to learn to support autistic students, a good first step would be to listen to autistic undergraduates themselves and to put the needs they express first instead of responding primarily to the perspective of the neurotypical parents of autistic children. The perspective of autistic undergraduates, which seems to me to be the most important on the subject, is entirely missing from this post.

One of the fundamental tenets of the disability rights movement is “nothing about us without us”–and this is no less important when it comes to autistic people (and I’m sorry but a single secondhand statement from an unnamed teenager really isn’t sufficient).

tenured_radical

I can’t figure out whether you are critiquing me, or Gilman, or both of us, although I recognize the political position you are speaking from. While essentially I agree with you, that people spoken *about* need to be represented in their own voices, it’s not clear how a post like this could ever have sufficient input from any one or more people to answer that criticism. And Gilman’s book is about being a *parent* of a child with autism, and about her struggle to master the skills she needed to learn to do that.

But as for silencing: the point of blogging is exactly that people with ASD can add their voices in the comments section — and if no one can speak about anything that they are *not* — then no one would write about anything but themselves. So while I think your point is an excellent one, and I am happy to accept critique, total ownership of voice applied to silence everyone else is not something I can live by.

http://twitter.com/dsgnc Daniel Goldberg

Great post, but a minor quibble: the idea that developmental disorders can be attributed to “brain differences” is itself a deeply problematic idea, one that is currently under a great deal of assessment and criticism from a number of scholarly domain (STS, history of medicine & public health, neuroethics, etc.)

Moreover, I would contest the idea that even if we can attribute ASD to “brain differences” that doing so will ameliorate the stigmatization that in-groups have assigned to the developmentally disabled (not suggesting you would support it, but kind of a ‘for the record’ sort of thing).

tenured_radical

I think this is a language usage issue: I don’t believe that humans have organically different brains. But it seems hard to quarrel with that things happen to brains, including alterations in genetic coding, toxicity, stroke and injury that cause brains to function differently. And “difference” strikes me as a more accurate and unstigmatizing description than “damage” — or for that matter any of the words that used to be use.

http://twitter.com/JackDanielsBlk Karl Gottschalk

See, this is the sort of thing that makes me suspect that the Left harbors just as much anti-science sentiment as the Right — the Right thinks global warming is a hoax, while the Left thinks that a vaccine causes autism. (I know, I know — not everybody on the Right or Left buys into these views, but it is ironic!)

tenured_radical

Actually, there is a huge constituency on the right that was already anti-vaccine because it is gov’t interference in the family, etc. — you can find some of them in the home schooling crowd. I think it is something that pops up everywhere.

ellenhunt

Indeed. Michelle Bachman?
I just don’t think our Michelle dearest is a leftist…

badger74

Yes, and good luck with that. Have you heard about the RECESSION? Colleges are lucky if they can mow the grass once a month and pay the existing faculty. You just look like another out of touch academic fool.

tenured_radical

badger74: that is an utterly irrelevant and nasty comment. What is wrong with you? Next time I’m flagging your a$$.

cpotter258

Describing the increase in autism diagnoses in two sentences was going to get me whatever I did, because I know this is a contentious issue, but go here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20049118-10391695.html

henr3782

From the article you cited: “University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Brian Strom, who has served on
Institute of Medicine panels advising the government on vaccine safety
says the prevailing medical opinion is that vaccines are scientifically
linked to encephalopathy (brain damage), but not scientifically linked
to autism. As for Ratajczak’s review, he told us he doesn’t find it
remarkable. ‘This is a review of theories. Science is based on facts. To
draw conclusions on effects of an exposure on people, you need data on
people. The data on people do not support that there is a relationship.
As such, any speculation about an explanation for a (non-existing)
relationship is irrelevant.’”

Particularly since many of the theories Ratajczak is citing are based on anecdotal occurrences that relied on self-reporting by parents, I’m going to concur with Strom and say the review that Ratajczak is pretty much meaningless.

redanlew

It’s always useful to have issues discussed, even when the information is challenged by insight and fact. Commenters provide a range of replies, so I recommend everyone truly interested in this issue (and everyone should be given the diversity which autism adds to the college campus), read and THINK more. Universal design would benefit all your students, including those on the spectrum. And then everyone would benefit from the contributions of the entire students body.

tenured_radical

Access was, of course, the issue the post addresses — not whether vaccines cause autism, something which I do not know as much about as many people and which I recognize is a highly ideological issue. However, it was not the point of the piece, or one which anyone who is giving birth anywhere in the United States will consult me about when their child is approaching its first vaccinations. But actually, there are researchers investigating this in ways that are sound and that do not imagine a simple cause and effect relationship, but rather the involvement of vaccination in some cases of ASD. Yes, not vaccinating children against preventable, potentially lethal, diseases is a real problem (although an abysmally low number of sentient people, who don’t have concerns and autism and who do have access to healthcare fail to vaccinate their pre-schoolers for flu, and children are the principle vector into the human population so what’s that about?)

Another point –I’m actually shocked that there is, in some of the comments, a blind faith in NIH and the CDC, since both ignored, and then mishandled, the AIDS epidemic for year demonstrating the power of bureaucracy to sacrifice a relative few to a right-wing social and political agenda. Similarly, the federal government and its Cold War liberal experts insisted for years that exposure to nuclear fallout was not related to abnormal rates of cancer in the places where weapons testing occurs, that Agent Orange could not have caused illness in veterans, that the pollution at Love Canal was not causing cancer, that CFS and fibromyalgia don’t exist…..should I go on? This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s just history — and a good argument for continuing to support research that supports what some parents feel they know, which is that their children’s autism was activated following a vaccine series. Of course public health agencies will insist that vaccination is the greater good for the greatest number of people: it is. But that doesn’t mean that this is the last word on any link between ASD and killed virus vaccines, that research might not yet discover a multi-factorial cause for some incidences of ASD, or that we don’t have plenty of evidence that ideological attachment to a particular theory of disease that silences dissent is bad science and bad policy.

And back to the “nothing without us” principle of political organizing: it’s incredibly attractive, ethical and powerful. But although bringing disabled people together as an identity group is important in terms of theory and social movement, there should be concern about the similarity that mandates, and silencing, within the group, in the name of empowerment for all. This is the lesson of other social movements. ASD children *can’t* speak for themselves, mostly because they are children, but for other reasons too. Without a movement largely driven by parents up to this point, which may evolve as ASD kids come together as adults in future decades, there would be no attention to this issue at all, vaccinations or no vaccinations.

jiminnc

This seems like a lame reply to the charge that you are promoting the irresponsible idea that vaccines are part of the cause of ASD. You say 1) that it wasn’t your main point, 2) that no one is going to listen to you and 3) that people are doing research on whether they are part of the cause. #’s 1 and 2 are incredibly lame, and as for #3, the fact that people are doing some research on a theory does not mean the theory has any validity. If someone decides to do a research study on whether playing the harmonica stops migraines, a person with the kind of forum you have should not say “I think it will turn out that playing the harmonica stops migraines.” I was shocked when I read your statement, and assumed you knew some research that I had not heard of that showed *results*, not just a research plan. I am shocked now that you have not gone back and edited that sentence.

soccerjerseys1store

Hope someone can give reality help for the Autism ones. Heaven be with everyone.
lifelearner

I work with disabled students at a STEM school (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). Due to the hands on nature of the work, and that these areas are also areas were many spectrum students exceel, we have a higher percentage of students on the spectrum. The other most common disabilities here are dyslexia, learning, and chronic health. I will also admit to being invisibly disabled myself, i.e. like many spectrum students you can’t immediatly tell by looking at me that I have disabilities.

I would make several points. First, there already is support on most campuses through professionals who belong to the AHEAD network (Association on Higher Ed and Disability.) On many campuses facutly and staff do not realize they have access to professional staff who belong to AHEAD; these professionals can be found in offices that help address access for disabled students.

Next, STEM schools and schools that offer computer programing have been adjusting to spectrum students in increasing numbers for years. Though it is not ideal the reality is each of us (I have also taught for 13 years) adapts as we need to. You learn to deal with individual student needs as they become evident. And no two spectrum students have the exact same needs, so it is a little difficult to offer a training session that can teach much more than adaptdability. This is why, as has been mentioned, Universal Design is so important – it improves access for all students.

Finally, the point that demands on faculty should take this kind of diversity into account is on point. And I would suggest that this is how the argument should be approached. We value diversity – this is another form of diversity. In our current social climate disability may in fact be the most challenging form of diversity we live with.

siobhancurious

LifeLearner: I also frequently teach students on the autism spectrum – last semester I had four students in three different classes with (diagnosed) degrees of autism and Aspergers. My experience with these students is almost uniformly delightful. I have no expertise in the areas of learning disabilities and neuro-atypicality, but I have found that students who have been identified as autistic and who have made it to college are extremely self-aware when it comes to learning and cognition. They know what they need, and they ask for it. If they have medical documentation, then I can give them any accomodations they ask for. What’s more, I identify strongly with them (I have begun to suspect that I have a mild case of Asperger’s myself) and so working with them is always interesting.

The difficulty, for me, comes in dealing with students whom I suspect are on the autism spectrum but have no diagnosis. I certainly can’t diagnose them. They have few tools for dealing with their difficulties, and may be extremely frustrated with the academic environment and their lives in general. My college has no LD specialist to steer them toward medical evaluation. It is a recurring problem, not just with autism but with all sorts of learning challenges, and a teacher can feel truly helpless in the face of it.

11301218

(1) What is the relevance of the old Soviet poster to the essay? Nonetheless, this is great artwork.
(2) Autism has a wide spectrum. For example, many classify Asperger’s Syndrome as a highly
functional form of autism. There is a good chance that your nerdy, geeky high GPA student
in computer science, mathematics, engineering or the physical sciences has Asperger’s.
I wish I had more of them to renormalize the curve.

tenured_radical

Illustrations are necessary to a post, but “representing” ASD learners was not something I was prepared to do. So it’s an image of a learner that should be easily readable as aspirational, but not real.

Re. Aspergers: it has become common sense that Aspergers is a kind of talent bonus that some kids have, a bonus that makes its other difficulties — some of which can be socially, intellectually and culturally inhibiting — irrelevant. I know this isn’t what you mean by your comment, but it’s a footnote all the same.

flaviafescue

I’ve taught a number of students on the autism spectrum, generally on the Asperger’s end, but who manifest in a variety of ways — some extremely subtle, others not so. I’ve never had any real trouble with any of them, even the front-row blurters who have a hard time letting other people talk, but what I DO have trouble with is other students’ reactions to those students. There’s a lot of sighing and eye rolling and a general sense that the students on the spectrum are weird and annoying and disruptive (sometimes I’ve actually had other students complain to me about their classmates). They simply don’t understand that their classmates are different for neurological reasons, and there’s often not a lot of patience or respect for how genuinely smart, even stunningly smart, these kids are.

Since disabilities are a confidential matter, I’ve never been sure how to convey to these students’ classmates that they should cut them a break and value their intellectual contributions — and maybe get to know them on a personal level, too.

11301218

Sounds like my life story when I was in school. I was one of those kids who blurted out answers, etc., etc.

95fmw

Hey TR – having long admired both your posts online and your comments in person (I’ve run into you at several conferences over the years), I’m glad to see you tackling this topic.

Because I come from a long line of people with learning disabilities, I spent my eight years of grad school (most in the classroom, first as a TA and then as an independent instructor) and six years of postdoctoral teaching trying to help LD students achieve their full potential. This was almost always an uphill battle. The eight institutions where I taught post-Ph.D. covered every type of school except community college (and that oversight reflects only a lack of opportunity). Of the eight, only *one* had a disability services office staffed and funded sufficiently to make it functional for both the school’s LD students and the faculty trying to teach them. Thus, no big surprise that said school was the only one with faculty workshops on teaching LD students, starting with a crash course on Asperger’s and other autism-spectrum disorders. Everything else I learned came through my own reading and my own trial-and-error efforts in working one-on-one with actual students.

Since my one-year visiting appointment at that school, I’ve found myself thrust into the position at other campuses of being the “educated resource” for long-tenured colleagues who haven’t a clue how to deal with LD students and suddenly discover that they have one. (Just the other night, in fact, my husband – a tenured prof who’s been teaching longer than I have – acknowledged over dinner that he “may” have his “first” Asperger’s student this term and hasn’t the foggiest idea what that means for her learning in his classroom.) They’re the exception, though; faculty colleagues who seem to believe that LD students are just “faking it” to try to get extended test time, or are really too dumb to be in college, or are just too dumb to be in that particular prof’s class if they can’t do the same work in the same way as the other students, are much more common at the schools where I’ve taught.

I’d love to be in a position to serve as such a resource – and to continue to advocate for my LD students – but that isn’t going to happen. Much as I love teaching, working with students one-on-one, etc., the extra hours involved in being an advocate for LD students are one of the factors that kept my salary hovering around or below minimum wage on an hourly basis, in my lengthy string of non-tenure-track appointments. As our family economy cannot afford this over the long term, I have since left academia to work as a historian in other capacities.

I agree with you completely that schools should acknowledge their growing populations of LD students when considering whether to fund full-time TT faculty lines or rely increasingly on cost-saving alternatives, but I’m not very optimistic. In my experience, too many schools still don’t provide even the barest minimum of basic services for this student population, and are nowhere near making the funding needed for such support an institutional priority, even in good economic times. Supporting the faculty who teach these students, whether with one-hour educational workshops or the job security and compensation that make the extra time/work involved for faculty worth their while, is far, far down the priorities list, I fear. Likewise, no one cares about the experience and knowledge I’ve gathered in this area on the academic job market, either. In the end, the students are the ones who end up getting hurt (and getting shortchanged on their education).
http://www.facebook.com/sid.senadheera Sid Senadheera

PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATION OUTSIDE THE HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL TO ELIMINATE CORRUPTION AND DISCRIMINATION IN OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS (4TH OCT 2011)

Please note that this is not a joke. The defendants fired me for having bipolar illness and got away through corruption (watch the movie in the 1st URL). They cannot get away after doing something wrong. I will prove it !

There will be a peaceful demonstration outside the HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL (OR HRTO) courtroom 655 Bay street, on the 4th Oct AT 8.30 am. I invite all of you to come and support me. The location is walking distance from Dundas and Bay (or the Greyhound bus station). I can prepare signs but you are welcome to make your own too. Invite the media if you have connections.

Sid Senadheera

email : sid.senadheera@gmail.com

http://corruptryerson.blogspot.com/.
vivid

I agree: A well prepared faculty will make the difference in the future as more of these adult learners matriculate. While I have known students, faculty, and friends on the autism spectrum in the past, this semester I have my first student with aspergers, and it has been a disaster. My Student Disability Services center simply dropped him off as if he was any other student, and has acted angry and suspicious when I have raised any concerns. His classroom behavior has been challenging but manageable, but then he left several frantic and scary messages on my home phone (which of course, I never give out), repeatedly yelled at and cursed my office mates and dept. secretary, and then did something on a field trip that I am forbidden to mention. Perhaps he has an underlying anger disorder. I don’t know.I get that he has a right and a need to a quality education, but what about my student’s rights to a quality education free of harassment and my right to a harassment free work environment?

I am not trained in special education, and can’t help but feel that his presence has been a burden and not a gift for the class. I can’t imagine how heavy this burden would be if I were not tenured and had to fly from campus to campus or worry about how bad these evaluations are going to b or how mad SDS is with me for not doing their job better. I have spent hours trying to make amends with our field trip site, dealing with a really spectacularly bad SDS program, our associate provost and other admins, comforting the other students, documenting each incident, etc. To place this weight on the shoulders of people not tied to and protected by the institution is unconscionable.

I love teaching, am absolutely dedicated to a progressive pedagogy in the classroom, and I have worked with kids from all sorts of backgrounds with all sorts of issues, but I think that I have found my limit this time.

ellenhunt

I understand. I really do.

Much of the discussion about ASD individuals sugar-coats serious realities. ASD spectrum people vary a great deal. Just like other people, each one figures out life for themselves and is the product of their upbringing. Some are quiet. Others are definitely not. Most of those on the high end of the scale display persistent behaviors that are hard to modify and quite difficult to handle.

It is great when someone like Temple Grandin manages to do something really big with her life. But I am very familiar with ASD I don’t actually think that large accommodations are appropriate at the grad school level. I think the reverse is true. At that level, where we are preparing people to be teachers of others, etc. we should require that ASD people be able to demonstrate that they can learn enough to get on properly. They are there to demonstrate their fitness for the elite. If they can’t so demonstrate, then they need to go elsewhere.

At the undergraduate level, we also need to draw lines regarding what is not acceptable. If that means tossing them out of school or kicking them out of class, that’s just fine. That is part of the learning experience that they need. It needs to happen quickly in order for ASD people to learn well from it.

What Vivid is describing, a long bureaucratic process of documenting incidents, is not what ASD people need. I have seen some of the best results in terms of inappropriate behavior being modified happen as a result of an ASD person getting a job. The employer fires them quickly for some offense and they learn from it. They get another job and they usually don’t repeat it.

henrycalphinjr

vivid makes a strong point concerning Offices of DS (ODS). If the disability officer(s) are not actively involved in the process, whether through lack of student initiative, knowledge of services, or ODS outreach services, then professors – TT to adjunct – will be just as lost as the student. Accessibility should not be an afterthought, and I applaud TR for addressing this issue, even on a specific disability. The experience of vivid should not be horrific and without assistance; as mentioned above, other students should be able to learn without constant disruptions. Yet, on the other hand, as the CHE reiterates, more and more IHEs are reaching out to disabled students and providing a welcoming atmosphere. Just as other accessibility initiatives have been built upon a plethora of resources, we cannot expect those with learning and emotional disabilities to simply plug along and make for good marketing material.

The only part that I wish to argue against is, perhaps, the crux of the post. While TT faculty have a specific dedication to the institution by proxy, let’s not kid ourselves and imagine that discipline and cliques do not supersede the bond between the faculty and institution. If anyone has a legitimate claim to forming a bond with the institution’s locality and training, it would be the staff – including the ODS – who are generally local and not as transient as professors. Also, if said staff produces an on-boarding process that entails accessibility and a link with the ODS – just as the IT Dept. and teaching centers generally welcome faculty with training on LMS and pedagogy, respectively, then the student is part of a process that provides any professor or instructor with resources. Accessibility is everyone’s duty; administrators must decide on ownership and expand from there. This is not an us vs. them ideal. It’s an inclusive training process that provides learning disabled students with an outlet for education and faculty and staff with a repertoire of skills culminating in a process.
urbanexile

Everybody has missed the main point of this post. Congratulations on your 750th!.

I am awed by the amount of thinking, writing and dialogue that has been inspired by your writing since you began penning Tenured Radical, and now that you are in Chronicles, the response is even more wide-ranging and voluminous and sometimes snarky. Congratulations on making a place for your good mind outside the slow, moss covered walls of the Academy!

Oh, and @misanthropic, one of the good things about this blog is that it teaches you how to READ, too! Be sure in the future to read ALL the sentences. That way your comments will make sense and not go so horribly wrong. It was clearly not TR’s point to locate the source of the new wave of neuro-atypical people coming up today. But perhaps you would like to?
battleunit

I am autistic (with no real affect on my career except when I scare my students with an eidetic recall trick or have to fight to get room lighting changed), and I have often thought of the hogwash vaccine >>> autism scare. The first time someone asked me how happy I would have been if my parents had not had me vaccinated, I replied right now I was provably autistic and it is not provably so because of the vaccine, but if I was not vaccinated I would likely be provably dead and thus be cured of autism either way.

Autism can be tiring, having to face read all day is something I barely bother with any more, but for the high functioning at least it also brings a lot of skills and abilities in terms of capacity to produce work or ability to work across fields (that I credit to a few excellent teachers using teaching techniques that modern school systems can no longer employ, that and my parents). So to any nut jobs that think there is a link between autism and vaccination, then give me a second helping.
perfectratio

Sadly, there is little-to-no support for autistic adults (college students are in this category), their families, professors, employers. Many high-functioning autistic adults–especially older adults who were undiagnosed as children or teens, and those people closest to them–are often unnecessarily stymied. The autistic person may appear ‘normal,’ yet others who have close, every-day contact recognize the lack of empathy, focus, ability to cope so common in high-functioning autistic adults, yet we are often clueless to know what to do.

Would that there be considerably more advocacy, for the autistic adult and for those with whom they have personal, academic, social or workplace relationships! It’s the crucial link for success in college and other aspects of adult life.
ellenhunt

There are other issues that can arise with autism spectrum. Readers please note that when I describe the young woman below, I am not saying all autistic young adults are like this. But articles on autism tend to sugar coat some of the difficulties faced. Not all such people are quiet or act shy. Sometimes their social characteristics can be beyond exceedingly trying.

This young lady applied to college with a high flying GPA and was accepted into every college she wished to go to. She could read college level books (and remember them nearly verbatim) at the age of 4. She understands things intellectually with ease. She could not connect emotionally with her peers in school, despite being a long distance track athlete, because of her weird manners. At the age of 15 she sought out and found a man in his late 30′s to have a sexual relationship with. Her father brought it to the authorities, and the man is now in prison for a long time. The girl will harangue people about this event, declare that her father taught her to do this by having an affair, and declaim loudly that she wishes her father and mother were dead. She sends nude photos of herself to men she hasn’t met or barely knows.

This young woman pursues older men with single-minded determination to have vaginal sex with them. In ordinary social situations she shrieks and screams at people about her need to have sex “Now!” without a trace of humor, warmth or social awareness. She also speaks about how many purses and shoes she has, expecting people to be impressed. Since people don’t respond in the way she expects, she appears to believe that she needs more shoes and purses, or that they are not expensive enough or the correct brand. She has lately gotten the idea into her head that people don’t like her because she is a too virtuous. She is starting to make decisions based on doing the opposite of what she thinks people would expect a virtuous person to do.

The parents face a dilemma, along with the universities. What does one do with a young adult female human that acts like this?