The Kennedy Krieger Institute opened its first school for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders outside of Baltimore this year. It held a grand opening Tuesday in Rockville, Md.
Parents are often the first to notice unusual behaviors in their child, according to the National Institutes of Health. In some cases, the child may seem “different” from birth, unresponsive to people or focusing intently on one item for long periods of time and other times an affectionate, babbling child can suddenly becomes silent, withdrawn, or self-abusive.
The Examiner spoke with Linda Brandenburg, director for school autism services for the Kennedy Krieger Institute, about the challenges of educating children with autism.
What are the general differences between teaching children with autism and regular public school education?
Autism is a spectrum disorder. Because of that, individuals on the spectrum have very different manifestations of the symptoms on the spectrum. These symptoms include communication, behavioral, emotional and movement impairment as well as some degree of cognitive impairment. We have to meet the disability head on and meet the challenges inherent in the disability, which may be different for each child.
So this is a little different than a typical teacher who must adapt to minor degrees of learning differences among their children?
As many as one-third of children with autism are nonverbal, meaning they do not talk at all. You have a lot of individual specialty communications system. Some children have high-tech voice-output devices. Some use sign language. Some have low-tech communications, which may be pointing to pictures they string together to make sentences to make their wants and needs known. Even the students who are verbal may not be fluently verbal. They may have very limited language ability.
