News on Youtube Nov 2 2018

Jessica: Hi everybody and welcome. I'm Jessica Murray, I'm the Managing

Editor for Stairway to STEM. After more than a year in development we

launched STS August 2018. And so we support autistic students as they

transition from high school to college particularly in STEM fields.

So how do we do this and what are some some of our guiding principles? For

students to achieve STEM success we have to address the challenges that the

autistic population and their advocates indicate are the most pressing. So our

research and outreach tell us that things like time management, dealing with

sensory issues, and even say interacting with professors and other students all

contribute and play a role in STEM success. So while we have resources about

how to prepare for your first biology class in college we also have resources

dedicated to skills that all students need for productive and healthy college

experience. There's a saying in autistic communities nothing about us without us

and the bulk of our materials come from autistic contributors and this includes

students, parents, and educators. Those who aren't autistic are longtime advocates

for autistic communities or have personal relationships as well. Our

resources are our contributors, four of whom have joined me here today. I'm

going to introduce you to them in a moment but I wanted to let you know we

use a collaborative approach where Content Creators are paired with

Editorial Board Members and together they collaborate on the resources that

address the challenges and concerns of autistic students. We can create a more

diverse and inclusive student body through fostering acceptance and also

highlighting role models for autistic students who benefit from hearing and

seeing that others have been there and succeeded before them. Finally we believe

in interdependence for artistic students and their families but more broadly for

autistic students and their communities. We have materials for parents and

educators specific to the challenges of their autistic students but often as in

the case of say Universal Design for Learning principles these resources and

materials are beneficial to all students. Since mid-august of this year we have

produced over more than 65 blogs, interviews, videos, and other resources on

STS that instill confidence and support the potential of all autistic students.

So I'm going to introduce you to our contributors but I also wanted to invite

you at any time we're going to take questions at the end but please feel

free to post questions on our Facebook or to Tweet questions at us as well. So

first is Elinore Alms, hi Elinore. She's a registered behavior tech in Fresno

California. She works part-time as an in-home positive behavior supports

provider and she's a biology major at Fresno City College. In her spare time

she watches anime and she cares for her many pets.

Justin Robin...

Elinore: Hi

Jessica: Oh thanks Elinore I'm sorry [laughter] thank you. And Justin Robbins who's

here with me he's a recent graduate of Tufts University who double majored in

biology and history in addition to being an advocate for other autistic people he

enjoys board games, great world building, and truly terrible puns.

[Laughter]

Hi Justin.

Justin: Yup.

[Laughter]

Jessica: Next is Sara

Sanders Gardner, hi Sarah.

Sara: Hi everyone.

Jessica: She's a autistic professional living in

Redmond Washington near Seattle she's the designer and program director of

Bellevue College's autism spectrum Navigators program which is now in its

eighth year and serving more than 200 students.

She also consults with Microsoft's U.S. Autism Inclusive Hiring Program and she

leads training sessions with prospective managers and team peers of individuals

hired through the program. They discuss areas such as social justice, autism as a

culture and a disability, and communication styles. And then lastly

Susan Woods, hi Susan.

Susan: Hi.

Jessica: She's a recently retired

Associate... sorry she recently retired as Associate Dean of student support

services at Middlesex Community College after 27 years. She managed the school's

Disability Support Services supporting more than a thousand students with

documented disabilities as well as alternative and grant funded programs.

She has regularly provided training and workshops to faculty and staff on

creating welcoming and inclusive environments and also on UDL. Now she

focuses on professional development and training for high school personnel as

well as families to help support the successful transition to college for

students with disabilities. So thank you everybody Justin and everybody for

joining us. I'm gonna turn this over now to our contributors and we'll hear first

from Sara who's gonna talk a little bit about autism 101, Susan will talk about

some issues and ideas about pedagogy, Justin and Elinore will then talk about

college experiences as well. So thank you and Sara I'll turn it over to you.

Sara: Thank you so much Jessica. To have truly productive interactions between autistic

and neurotypical people it's important to work towards understanding instead of

attempting to manage or fit autistic people into culturally expected

communication and behavioral patterns. Understanding the true disabling

features of autism while thinking about autism as a cultural difference will

support these efforts. Many autistic and otherwise disabled individuals prefer

identity first language which incorporates disability as part of their

identity. So much as we might refer to a person as tall, thoughtful, or kind, so too

do we refer to them as an autistic person placing their autism as part of

their identity. This is a matter of personal choice and the best thing to do

is to ask the person what they prefer, person first or identity first language

if you need to discuss their disability. I'm autistic myself and I

prefer identity first language. Autistic culture has a history dating back to the

1990s and has developed its own customs traditions and approaches to expression

and social interaction. Autistic culture is created for

and by autistic people and is built around the ways of speaking, thinking, and

acting that come naturally to us.

It's been studied by cultural anthropologists

and continues to grow and evolve. You can learn more at the Autistic Self Advocacy

Network at www.autisticadvocacy.org. When you're thinking about communication

styles that are direct and indirect communicators, concrete and abstract

thinkers, and people who lead with logic or people who lead with emotion. Think

Spock versus Kirk. And a range of communication styles in between. With

exceptions of course, autistic people tend to lead towards direct, concrete, and

logical. Also many of us don't recognize nonverbal communication or implied

meanings in certain situations. This can leave us confused or misinterpreting.

This is a two-way street though because neurotypical people frequently

misinterpret our meaning and are confused or even feel insulted by our

more direct communication or our tone of voice. The best cure for this is advocacy

on both sides. Ask for clarification. If we seem upset or angry because of our

tone or what we're saying, ask us. If you sense that someone autistic or not is

confused by abstract or implied communication try adding a sentence or

two that's more direct and see if that's helpful. My most useful phrase is, "could

you please say that again another way?" There are a lot of myths

around autism and one of the biggest myths is that autism is a purely social

communication disorder and that with proper social skills, instruction,

or mentoring students can fit in. If it were that simple then education and

employment rates would be much higher. What's true is that autism can affect a

person across many areas. Autistic people can have many co-occurring neurological

conditions that affect our daily well-being. The most debilitating of

these is likely sensory processing disorder but there are many more. The

Autism 101 article on Stairway to STEM expands on this and if you read the

blogs of autistic authors you will learn quite a bit about how autism actually

affects us. Another myth is that autism is over diagnosed. If anything the

reverse is true particularly in certain populations including adults, women, and

marginalized populations. Bellevue College's Autism

Spectrum Navigators Program recently moved out from under the Disability Center and

under the Center for Career Connections in part so that we can include those who

for a myriad of reasons could not get a formal autism diagnosis and still

identified as autistic. There are other myths around autism including that we're

unfeeling, we lack theory of mind, we're all intellectually disabled or geniuses

or savants, and that we're violent. None of these are true and they are all

damaging to the autistic community. And much as racism is part of the daily life

for people of color, ableism is part of the daily life for disabled people

including autistic people. This includes internalized ableism or feeling as if we

should be doing better at fitting in, not needing accommodations or support, not

being disabled. Ableism can take the form of microaggressions as in complements

such as, "you don't seem autistic to me" or "you must be high-functioning" or even

"you're so inspiring" or "so articulate." Ableism is also experienced as over helping

or even passing a student who hasn't met the outcomes for a course. The good news

is that you can make a big difference by learning about autism cultural

responsiveness. You can learn even more by reading the posts on Stairway to STEM

and elsewhere written by autistic advocates and activists.

Jessica: Terrific, thank you Sara.

And now we'll hear a little bit from Susan.

Susan: Thank You Jessica, delighted to be

here. So I've been asked to talk a bit about pedagogy and I'm going to do so in

the context of Universal Design for Instruction or Learning as Jessica

mentioned. And my view on this that I'd like to share is that Universal Design

is essentially good teaching and it's approaches that are going to be

beneficial for the few but also beneficial for all. I view it as part of

an institution or university or college's diversity mission. So there are some

approaches that are effective and I'm going to talk a little bit about

strategies as well as ways that faculty and institutions can support autistic

students. So one of the ways some of the strategies that are effective would be

things like using scaffolding techniques, reviewing content before moving forward,

linking concepts to previously learn material,

cuing to allow for adequate processing, modeling good note-taking and

organizational skills, and presenting information in organized fashion,

providing things like guided notes and posting notes online.

I also recommend reinforcing written material verbally and reinforcing verbal

material in writing. The other recommendation that faculty often

embrace is bringing closure to each session by summing up important points and

concepts as well as using multiple measures for students to demonstrate

competency. This can be done through a faculty syllabus and their rubric of

standards for demonstrating competency, things like e-portfolios, student

presentations, video or web-based reports, and multiple format tests. Ways that

faculty and institutions can support students on the autism spectrum in their

institutions are becoming aware of accommodations, helping students in their

self-awareness, self confidence, and metacognition, learning how you learn

knowing how you know, practicing communication, email, and verbal

communication, and practicing ways to participate as part of a group. So I

often encourage faculty to help our students seek the support that is

available through the institution. Thanks so much.

Jessica: Thank You Susan. And I'm

sorry I can't remember if I mentioned this but Sara and Susan are two of our

Editorial Board Members and Justin and Elinore or two of our Content Creators.

So we're going to hear from Justin now.

Justin: So in college I founded the Coalition for

Autism Support at Tufts, otherwise known as CAST. CAST was a confidential, weekly

meetup for autistic people in the Tufts community. Every week we would email out

a discussion idea in advance and then we would talk about anything from current

events, socializing tips, romance, how we're portrayed in the media, and countless

other topics. That was my vision as I crawled my way through the final leg of

high school. I was isolated, rejected by most of the people I

thought of his friends, in an untenable home situation, and suicidal. But then on

the first day of college I met a guy and he was autistic too. We were the first

confirmed other autistic person we had ever met. [Laughter] 18 years of being the weird one,

the broken one, the thing nobody cared for unless they were volunteering or

being paid, and now we had each other. Suddenly that desperate vision didn't

seem so strange anymore. And with some signal boosting from the LGBT Center we

had some initial members and we held our first meetings. Fellow autistics saw

opportunities they never thought they'd see. We looked after each other, made

space where we didn't have to worry about neurotypical rituals or beliefs or

whether we really counted as autistic or not. We forged a community where had once

only been isolation and fear. That was all I could have hoped for but we grew

so far beyond that, as did I. When we started for example,

there was an Autism Speaks chapter on campus, within two years there wasn't. We

started holding annual Q&A panels about autism for the general public and they

were enormously successful. After establishing a solid foundation in our

first year, year and a half or so, we opened up the group for neurotypicals

and greatly benefited from their experience and insights into strange and

mysterious corners of human existence, like dating. [Laughter] We had visits from high

schools helping spread the ideas of neurodiversity to a new generation. Generation

here being used extremely relatively. Outside groups even came to us and our

members for advice, such as Mass General's Aspire program and the fine folks here. And

when push came to shove like against our own Child Development Department we

fought for the dignity and worth of autistic people in the court of public

opinion. I really think it's fair to say that we changed the way the Tufts

community thinks about autism. We forced the world to see autism with human faces

and as a part of our identities as real human beings. That we have our own

thoughts and desires and emotions independent of our parents or the other

neurotypicals around us and that we overall kind of like who we are

and accept our autism as a rightful part of our existence and all that entails,

the good the bad and the, by the way have I told you guys how much I

love the musical Hamilton? [Laughter] Thank you

Jessica: Thanks, Justin.

[Applause]

Thanks. And then lastly we're gonna hear from Elinore. Elinore?

Elinore: Hi everyone!

Earlier Sara mentioned that many students lack access to official diagnoses, I'm one of

those students and I'm really interested in making programs accessible to

students with and without DSO services.

So when I was younger I was a gifted student and I had a lot

of social problems. I mean I couldn't find a single friend until high school

when I met one friend who was with me until very recently.

I had a rough time in high school and a couples years after graduating I was homeless.

Fast forward about a year and a half and I had moved to Central

California and found a job working with autistic children. You should have seen

me when I met these children, I bet my entire body lit up like a lightbulb.

I could see every one of my quirks in these children.

Eureka!

My obsessive research shifted from the mental disorders I was interested in after

my parents were both diagnosed with bipolar disorder

to autism and neurodiversity in general.

I know my dad has actually received an ADHD

diagnosis since I began working as a behavior tech so my family's clearly

more neurodiverse than we first understood.

All of these developments really affected my desire to study autism and neurology, I'm currently a biology student at my local

community college. Along this ride I've come to accept my stims

and other more visible traits but there are some issues I wish I had more help with,

particularly co-occurring conditions, which of course, are more

common with individuals on the spectrum.

My wrists and other joints have been painful my entire life

And I develop wrist ganglion cysts about every year or two.

Unfortunately I don't have access to healthcare so I lack both an autism diagnosis and management for my wrist problems.

Additionally, since I have no documented

need for DSO services I cannot use DSO services to help me get access to the

documentations of my needs. Due to inadequate information processing it's

been incredibly difficult to get through paperwork, confusing goose chases around

different departments and the frustration that quickly builds up while

I'm attempting to complete these tasks. As a matter of fact I attempted to go to

college three times before succeeding last semester. Each time it was always something

like the FAFSA application, the assessments, or simply trying to navigate the school's online

process. To succeed this time around I had to simply continue picking it up

getting one or two items filled out and setting it back down over the course of

about a year. When it came to assessment time I pretty much just cried for two

days straight waiting for people to help me from step to step, building to

building, and then bam! I was enrolled in college for the first time.

Dear lord, I never want another hidden autistic student to go through that again.

So, I want to make some changes at my

college and see where it goes.

Sara mentioned that her school's autism program is no longer under

Disability Services but instead under the Office for Career

Opportunities and Justin's program at Tufts made incredible changes for their

artistic population. I want to combine these two qualities and make

Community College truly accessible to people with autism and/or information processing

disabilities. My initial idea is to begin a club for neurodiverse students. I want to know if it's

possible for us to set up a one-stop accessible application workshop

featuring peer to peer assistance. I will actually be meeting with our DSO director tomorrow

to learn more about accommodations and where we might begin to branch autism

supports away from disability services. When we talk about for folding autistic

and differently abled students into community college and STEM majors what

we're really talking about is best practices for everyone.

It follows that when our most disadvantaged students' needs are met,

we're leveling the playing field for all, with or without a documented need.

Thank you for believing in students like me.

Jessica: Thanks Elinore.

[Applause]

Jessica: Great, thank you everybody and for Justin and our long-distance

contributors. So I want to, you know, turn this presentation over to you to see if

you have any questions, comments, any anything you want to ask any of our contributors.

Audience Member: The STS website

Jessica: Yeah

Audience Member: Jessica would you tell that to people?

Jessica: Oh yes, absolutely. So yes if you came in late

sorry, it's been in development for over more than a year we launched October of

sorry August of this year 2018 and we have more than 65 resources on STS to

support students as they transition from high school to college particularly in

the STEM fields. So a lot of our contributors are students. Justin

maybe Justin and Elinor could even give the titles or talk a tiny bit about some

of the resources they've created.

Justin: Sure I think the first piece I wrote for them

was a letter to my past like me five years ago when I'm just going through

the first part of my story there, the not good part. I also have written about

what to expect for intro STEM classes, how the and how science curricula is

different in colleges than in high school.

Jessica: Thanks Justin. And Elinore?

Elinore: Yes?

Sorry, can you, what, can you

share some of the STS blogs that you've been working on?

Elinore: Oh yeah I, well as you know right now I'm working on

prepping for kind of scenarios that we're not really excited about like maybe police encounters and things like that.

But I've also covered topics such as getting ready for

the first day of school. You know, it's really helpful to go to school at least a couple times before you

actually start your semester.

And I've also worked on one for your schedule. I know that that's

not quite up yet but it'll be coming soon and I'm actually

really excited about that one.

Jessica: Terrific. Thank you.

Yes?

Audience Member: Oh hi. I had a really good, quick question.

Are you working with any potential employers that are actively

recruiting for autistic students and in particular

I know of a few that are looking at actively recruiting around

[Inaudible] testing because repetitive systems

[Inaudible] works really well. And I can speak, I have two kids who are autistic

So I'm a I'm a I'm a mamma bear.

So I really understand it from that perspective

but I'd love to hear what your views are with employers taking an active role and

seeing it as a value for some of the work that needs to be done

especially if it's repetitive and requires certain types of problem solving.

Jessica: Yeah and that's a great question we I mean right now we don't necessarily have

any collaborators but we have featured articles on people, on companies like

Microsoft, SAP, Aspiritech so we do try to raise everybody's awareness that there

that there are companies out there who do value neurodivergency and who

see the value not and in part maybe because of a match for skills but also

just thinking about what a diverse workforce means for the success of your

company too.

Justin: And to normalize the practice of hiring people who don't on the surface

seem normal.

Jessica: And we're also really focused sort of initially on this

original transition from high school to college but you know Justin can maybe

talk about those too, but you know we know that's that's the next transition

you make it you succeed and then what supports do you need from that point?

Yeah.

Yeah?

Audience Member: First and foremost just congratulations

to both of your students

Justin: Thank you.

I had a tear coming down my eyes just thinking about what you guys must have gone through.

In your high school days. So kudos to both of you.

Is there any pipelines set up for students to let's say with with with

these characteristics to start working for a public agency let's say for the

city or the county? Cause' we just got awarded an NSF grant to start

piping those students into a city position and and they have volunteer

programs already set up for for students. I'm just wondering what type of procedures if any

are available or intact for for city employees to hire?

Justin: I'm aware of a lot of

I don't know all like the super deals but I know a lot of like at least

federal policy is kind of geared towards the assumption that autistic people kind

of we just stop at age 18 and so you have you have this narrative like,

I, I guess they're trying to like make us officially normal, so you know the the

kids 13, 14 you're trying to make them normal, 15 you're trying to make them normal 16 you

know college is coming graduation year is coming up you're trying to make them

normal 17, 18 they're not normal because that's not going to work and oh look you

haven't spent any time or resources preparing for the future.

Like I know in the like the federal autism research budget less than four

percent of it actually goes towards adults and the rest of it goes to like

genetics and child affairs. It's really skewed and it shows like how when we

think of autism we think of like someone half my size and like not staying still.

This is hard by the way, staying this still is not easy

[Laughter]

Jessica: Yeah and so we don't necessarily like STS as an entity but I did want to check

with Sarah and Susan to see if they know of any place in their their areas where

maybe they have some connections to that kind of pipeline. Sarah or Susan does

that sound?

Susan: I'll pipe in I'm coming in here from the Boston area so there is a

wonderful organization that I know STS is interfaced with which is called the

Asperger's Association of New England AANE and they've been doing a number of

things it's a it's a grassroots organization that's been doing both

training with with school systems which is very very important as well as life

mapping with individuals to sort of help in that transition first from high

school to college and then from college to employment. So they've had a very very

profound impact and advocacy in the in the Boston area so that's one of the

resources that I'm aware of. Again they're aane.org.

Sara: And this is Sara

I would just say that the Autistic Self Advocacy Network that I mentioned

earlier is a an international really network that focuses on all the rights

of autistic adults and of course children as well but they're really that

is really where an autistic adult can go to get support in all different areas so

they they really cover the gamut.

Audience Member: One of the things that we've done with

one of the populations we're working with is

first-generation students and we've done summer camps or we've called it lots of

different things but we get them to campus a month early and you know try to

work through some of this. Would that have been valuable to the two of you?

Justin: Maybe not me personally, but I've seen some stuff like that done, in fact one of the

programs Aspire does is what they call a college boot camp where they, you

know, go to a campus and they you get a, you get a tour, you see some of the

major sites, and you learn about the kinds of expectations. So yeah I've seen

that work pretty well for autistic people.

Elinore: Yeah, I'm pretty sure we do have like boot-camp style things at my school.

A lot of them require the paperwork that I was talking about.

[Laughs] And so if we could simplify that process

I do think that it could be helpful. I really do.

As I said I wrote about the first day of school,

and so you really can incorporate

all of that into, you know, small groups of autistic students getting really

familiar with the college grounds.

Susan: And if I could make a comment one of the

programs that I oversaw at a community college in Massachusetts was a Trio

program and it's a federally funded support which originated in

first-generation low-income but has expanded to offer additional support to

individuals documented as having a disability and so one of the initiatives

was an early orientation, some early advising, some previewing, which again was

was can be generalized to a number of populations that might find that

transition challenging and embrace some of the principles of universal design

around access, so it was very very useful and it was federal money that supported that.

Jessica: Thank you, Susan.

Audience Member: So I have a question perhaps Susan

could help with this, this is a some advice for us, we have an intern working

in our lab right now who is autistic. And the question was we're dealing with

some oppositional opinions from the student who doesn't want to follow

protocol because they think that they have a better idea of how this could be

done. How can and then that works for a career so can you give some tips

on that?

I'd be happy to, so one of the blogs actually I I authored that's up

on the site sort of sort of looked at some of some challenges in a classroom

environment and it was through the persona of a college faculty and some of

the work that was done with the the student as well as with the student

support services and it really sort of carved out a conversation and the

conversations really were very transparent and varying that you know I

think one of the first and foremost steps is to talk about it, to name it. And

perhaps have some support as an employer versus you know as a student employee or

whether it's an individual employee by the institution to come out with some

strategies to come out with some support. Some individuals you know respond very

well to some previewing, some scripting, some practice, some orientation, as well

as having a very very direct conversation about interactions and I

think that that's where the staff perhaps in an institutions disability or

student support, I oversaw student support, were able to be very valuable in

sort of framing that conversation and really coming up with some strategies

that are going to work for it the work environment.

It's not easy necessarily there's no one-size-fits-all approach, but I think

you have to start with an initial conversation.

Jessica: Thank you, Susan.

Susan: I hope that helps.

Jessica: Thank you. And I know we have to wrap up in one second

I just wanted to see, Sara, if you had

anything to add in terms of strategies because I

know you do a lot of that work as well and then we'll say thank you to all of

you for stopping by.

Sara: I do that's actually the training that I provide for

Microsoft for their autism hires. I would definitely say take a look at the autism

101 article as well there and look at the information about autistic culture

and communication. Another resource that I have to recommend is called

collaborative problem solving through Massachusetts General Department of

Psychiatry, you can find it on thinkkids.org. Those

and it starts that conversation that Susan mentioned so those are all additional

resources for you.

Jessica: Terrific, thank you.

Well thank you very much everybody we really appreciate you

coming. We'll be around after if you have any further questions or comments.

Thank you so much to Justin, Elinore, Sara, and Susan. It was really great

[Applause]