Not Stupid (11 page)

Sean, Alex, myself and Dave, who was the only person out of the shareholders without a child with autism, conducted the interviews. Of course, knowing what to ask potential head teachers had to be researched prior to the interviewing process, and already I had a number of questions drafted. Previously I’d contacted Rosemary Siddles from the National Autistic Society, who dealt with education matters. Rosemary was very helpful in assisting me with a draft questionnaire and advised how much parents paid for their children to attend similar types of school.

One applicant, probably in her eighties, arrived for an interview. She was wearing a kilt, white training socks and trainers. She was one of several who turned up, none of whom we felt were suitable for our project. Fortunately, on the last day scheduled for applications, we received an application from Angela Austin. I’d read only the first paragraph of her letter when I thought, This is the one. Angela had expertise in
speech-and
-language therapy, she was a special-educational-needs teacher, and she had ten years’ experience of working with
people with autism. At the time she was working in a unit in Surrey for children with mixed disabilities. I called her over for an interview.

When she arrived at the school for her interview, Patrick was sitting in an office just off the main corridor near the entrance, reading one of his dinosaur books. Angela was very
well-spoken
, and well-dressed, with blonde hair, and she looked quite out of place in such a dilapidated building. As she walked past the office where Patrick was sitting, she noticed him and went in to say hello. At this time Patrick had the attitude that, if he didn’t know someone, he didn’t want to know them. He didn’t want them in his space. He kept his book in front of his face and ignored her.

‘Hello,’ she repeated, ‘isn’t that
The Oxford Reading Tree
Book on Dinosaurs
?’

Patrick glared over the top of his book as Angela started telling him what was in it.

‘How do you know about this book?’

‘I’ve already read it,’ replied Angela and, within moments, she’d got around him.

I couldn’t help thinking, This is the one! This is the one! She knows exactly how to speak to Patrick as nobody else could. As for the interview, it went really well. We explained our intentions to Angela of including pupils with a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome, high-functioning autism and/or
semantic-pragmatic
disorder or pathological demand-avoidance, then she left to await our response.

Afterwards, it took little persuasion from me to convince the others that Angela was just the person we needed. It was agreed
I would telephone her the next day to offer her the job. Meanwhile, Angela had returned to Surrey, where, after telling her colleagues about our school, she was advised that she must be mad even to consider joining a school run by people like us.

When I called her the next day, she was surprised to hear from us so quickly and asked if she could have a little time to consider our offer. Fortunately, despite being advised to the contrary by her colleagues, she decided she would be happy to join us – but there was one condition. She wanted a teacher she worked with called Karen Croucher to come with her. Angela told me she had already asked Karen if she would be willing to relocate and Karen had indicated that she, like Angela, was interested in the challenge awaiting them.

We had no problem with that. If Angela thought Karen was up to the task, who were we to say otherwise? We knew we would have to put a lot of faith in Angela’s ability and expertise if our school was to run effectively and efficiently.

When Angela and Karen arrived to take up their posts, we still had no idea how many pupils would be on the school roll when we opened. We knew, of course, that we needed more teachers and, after a series of meetings between us and Angela and Karen, it was agreed that the main responsibility for such appointments would be left to them.

Angela and Karen worked well in putting together a series of policies and procedures that proved their worth at a residential school they had previously worked at dealing specifically with autistic pupils at the more severe end of the spectrum. Their appointments were just the start of a dream team that would grow as the weeks progressed.

A broad, balanced, well-structured and stimulating curriculum would stretch the abilities of the pupils and it was decided to adopt the same TEACCH approach to lessons as those implemented so successfully at Springhallow School in Ealing. This approach plays a major role in the education of people with autism. Basically, TEACCH is a flexible method of teaching that was first established in North Carolina as far back as 1966. Its primary aim is to prepare people with autism to live or work more effectively at home, at school and in the community.

Hopefully, the following principles of the programme, complete with references for further reading, will clarify. As we saw in Chapter Four, TEACCH is an acronym for Treatment and Education of Autistic and related
Communication-handicapped
CHildren. It is a ‘whole life’ approach aimed at supporting children, adolescents and adults with autism through the provision of visual information, structure and predictability. Essentially, this means that the approach can be used in all areas of life for the whole of one’s life. Having an autistic-spectrum disorder means that a person may have difficulty in organising their environment and sequencing tasks. Simply put, TEACCH teaches skills that will allow a person with autism to overcome these difficulties.

The TEACCH programme focuses on structuring the environment to facilitate skill development and independence. Clear physical and visual boundaries are established to help children understand what they are expected to do in each area. Visual supports are used to support children’s comprehension.

TEACCH aims to provide the least restrictive teaching
possible. One-to-one support is available to children as they learn new skills. However, they are encouraged to develop independence and opportunities for integration and reverse integration are provided.

Every aspect of structured teaching is predetermined and organised to benefit the success of a person with autism. The programme emphasises certain skills and behaviours, but the effects of this work move into the child’s personal life and everyday activities. The programme consists of precise methods to set up the learning and work environment, make schedules, create activities and teach the learner.

The physical layout of the classroom plays an important role in the implementation of the TEACCH programme because children with autism have trouble differentiating between events and activities. To address this, TEACCH creates several distinct areas for specific activities. Each activity is consistently done in its own designated spot, allowing the child to relate the activity to the work area and, therefore, allowing for more concentration and focus.

Students with autism are also very easily distracted, so minimal decoration of the room and dividers for each work area are necessary for the success of the programme. When working, it is beneficial for the students to be facing a blank wall to avoid added distractions. This can help students focus on the activity instead of what is occurring in the rest of the room.

Schedules are utilised when teaching an autistic child about a sequence of events that will happen during the day, as the child will be more capable of distinguishing between the distinct
events and determining what he or she is to do next. The children receive their own daily schedule, designating times for activities such as play, structured play, work, independent work, snack and circle time.

The students learn what to expect next and this can sometimes motivate them to complete a task because they see that a more enjoyable one will follow. Each schedule is geared towards the individual student, allowing for a higher comprehension level. For advanced students, the schedule could be composed simply of written text, while other students might need pictures of their work stations or actual objects from these stations. The comprehension of these schedules helps the children to learn to follow directions and develop an independence they did not possess before.

The different work stations contain activities that the child becomes accustomed to and, therefore, he or she obtains more proficiency in the activity. In the work area, the child works with a teacher on activities dealing with topics such as shapes, colour and organisation. With the teacher’s help, the child completes an activity and then moves on to another. Each activity is done many times until the child is capable of doing it on their own, in which case the activity is moved to the independent learning station. There, the child gains more independence, working alone to complete the activities he or she is accustomed to.

Structured play sees the child working with a teacher, using toys and games to help gain attention skills and learn to work with different objects such as blocks and balloons. The play station is where children can relax, use their own imagination
and participate in whatever game or toy chosen. The children have their own times for each activity allowing for personal interaction with the teachers and stations.

There are two times during the day in which the group combines as a whole – snack and circle time. During snack, the teacher distributes a portion of food to each child only when he or she is asked for that specific food. The child must say the word for the food or hand over a card indicating a preference. This increases the communication skills of the children.

Circle time is a time when the children sit and sing songs to end the day. Each day the same songs are sung, allowing the children to become familiar with the songs and to anticipate what is next.

Underpinning the above is the need for assessment and measurement. It should also be stressed that the programme is highly individualised for each child. Finally, while the above describes how the method may be implemented among smaller children, the approach can be modified and thus made appropriate for older children and adults. In the workplace this approach could organise a person’s day, what clothes they should wear, what they need to do before attending a meeting and so on. This ‘structure’ would allow a person with autism to work effectively.

TEACCH and connective education run alongside each other. It takes a very simplified view of autism, in that to understand the world the person involved has to take in lots of pieces of information and build interconnections between them.

An example of this may be learning a set of manners or ways of behaving, which is a good thing. But while correct etiquette
is essential in the right situation, it can be a disaster in others. For instance, if Sean attended a dinner party for the Lord Chief Justice wearing a dark lounge suit and called everyone sir or ma’am, that would be fine. But, if he didn’t realise that this approach is inappropriate at the works Christmas party or a shindig at the rugby club, he might be seen as not fitting in.

Thus, connective education teaches in a way that reinforces the interconnections between information. It can be applied to factual information and the learning of socially appropriate ways of behaving. To this end, what would be taught at Hillingdon Manor would be measured. An individual education plan would be rigorously monitored to enable the teachers to build on what is achieved in a very systematic and constructive way.

With the decision to adopt TEACCH at Hillingdon Manor, a mission statement and prospectus were devised. Within these were a number of pledges designed to cover every aspect of pupils’ wellbeing. The school would provide a safe, excellent and effective learning environment for pupils within the autistic spectrum where they could minimise their disability and maximise their ability. This would be achieved through a curriculum of connective education, which would offer pupils the opportunity to make connections and gather meaning that would allow them to progress throughout the curriculum and in the world outside the school.

The staff would, through practice, promote the use of a consistent language-focused environment, which would address the so-called triad of impairment in autism – difficulties in social interactions, social communication and
imagination – and they would work to provide an environment where the emotional, social and physical needs of the pupils would be met in such a way that the pupils would learn to be responsible for and manage their own thoughts, feelings and actions and their learning.

The ethos of TEAM, which stands for Trust, Empathy, Assistance and to discriminate what Matters (and what does not matter) in life, would be promoted. The school would be committed to providing a therapeutic environment that would ensure all pupils would be treated with dignity and respect, and their needs as human beings would be met.

Families would be trained, supported and encouraged to take on the specific philosophy and structures the school would employ to support their children with consistency.

A huge consideration would be how to encourage appropriate and acceptable behaviour. This would require an extensive good-behaviour policy, which would need to provide very clear definitions, aims and guidance about how pupils’ emotional wellbeing and pastoral care would be supported by all staff. There would be a pastoral-support manager and each pupil would have a pastoral-support plan, which would be agreed by all staff involved and by the pupil’s parents. It was hoped this plan would form overall targets for decreasing behaviours that inhibit learning, independence and acceptable behaviour.

The school would maintain a calm, low-anxiety environment that would support the pupils in keeping the school rules and boundaries, and staff would be trained to understand what happens in the brain in times of high anxiety and emotional
charge. All behavioural incidents would be recorded, sent to parents and kept by the school, and would be open to scrutiny by any appropriate individuals or agencies.

Our policy would ensure that all staff would be committed to supporting pupils to comply with the rules and boundaries expected in mainstream education and in the world outside. This would require the introduction of a ‘no blame’ culture in which ‘what works’ is what is promoted, rather than making self or others ‘wrong’. This would be adopted because pupils with autism do not learn or understand the rules and boundaries incidentally, as non-autistic people do. If they are burdened with being made ‘wrong’ by those of us who do understand, their anxiety levels will rise and their information processing breaks down.