Hi all,
I just started working as a strategist for a large Canadian school board. Officially, I am meant to offer strategies for teachers of gifted students. Interestingly, many of my initial referrals are for gifted students who have Aspergers. Of course, I can read the literature and offer my limited insights, but AI wondered of some of you could offer me some advice. I imagine that some of you have had some effective teachers. What was it that they offered that worked for you? What was offered that didn't help? Your insights would be greatly appreciated.
Greetings Hal!
One thing that cannot be stressed enough is knowledge. Knowledge knowledge knowledge. The teachers of these gifted students NEED to be aware that they have Aspergers syndrome and it is a DEFINITE plus if they know as much as possible about Aspergers Syndrome as well, of course.
But I'm guessing you can figure that out yourself.
One thing is that with aspies, you need to be literal, as literal as is at all possible. As we aspies are known to be quite bad at thinking outside the box - we adhere to the rules we know and change is not handled very well - homework and tasks should be written and formulated in as clear a manner as is possible. If any ambiguity is present, Aspies have been known to experience mindnumbing confusion and a lot of frustration with the inadequacy of the teacher's formulation usually follow.
Also, aspies are quite bad at organizing their own work, and, if given homework in a field that is not one of their special interests, they tend to forget said homework quite easily. This is rectifiable by using structured schedules in paper format, as an aid to help the students remembering. The problem here however is that the aspie might not be good at handling paper either (it is quite common). A way to rectify this is by using computers and digital documents, aspies are often a lot better at handling computers than, for example, human interactions or anything of the like, and we like the absolute order that exists within a computer-generated environment. Any material given to an aspie student in a digital format is therefore, i believe, much less likely to be lost.
Also, NEVER assume that the aspie is able to understand what you mean by any other means than direct literal interpretation. No matter your facial expression or body language or even your tone, we have a very hard time interpreting something said as antyhing other than completely literal and always assume that we are completely able to do so unless you have gotten to know a person really well and KNOW them to be able to understand irony, sarcasm and the like.
However, you need to remember that any and every person wit Asperger's syndrome is just as much an individual as anyone else, and just because one of them works really well with computers doesn't mean everyone else does, even though computer skills are quite prevalent throughout the aspie community.
Hmmm... as you can see Hal, i am quite a talkative sort and i was wondering...
Maybe you'd like to have continual contact with someone with aspergers who is quite good at expressing himself? I believe i am such a person and i would be willing to offer my aid. I'm saying this because i just realized that what i just wrote is quite general and you would probably be a lot more helped if you could get some more specific advice. It's just it's a lot harder to give specific advice without any specifics given. (Oh, and i don't normally express myself in such a formal manner
)
If you would like to, you could have my email and msn, if you have an MSN that is.