AUTISM AWARENESS

THE ANNUAL ISSUE

TEACHING WITH NO LABELS: AN AGILE APPROACH TO ASD

BY GERARD COSTA, PH.D., DIR-C®, IMHM- C®

The first request that I will make of you, the reader, is to pay attention to what happened inside you when you read the word autism. Did you, perhaps, unconsciously stiffen as if your mind and body were preparing for stress? Did you find yourself quickly scanning your memory about a student you have had who was autistic-recalling your experiences, maybe struggles, in teaching that child? Maybe you have a friend who is the parent of a child on the spectrum or you are a parent of a child who has been given this label. So, reflect for a moment.

My second request. a more difficult one after years of teaching or parenting is this: forget the label! While it has value in research, it tells you almost nothing of real importance about who this child is or how you might help this child to be calm and engaged, relate, communicate, and learn. The reason for this is both simple and complex.

To date, much of the field of educational and clinical interventions has focused on emphasizing behavioral change and compliance with outside requirements. This is a practice that is founded on the very meaningful and long history of science in learning theory. We are now beginning to discover learning stemming from

multidisciplinary sciences that is informing us about the neurobiological underpinnings of our ability to feel, think, and behave as social, learning beings. When we consider this learning, we can see the underlying neurobiological forces that lead to observable difficulties in regulation, engagement, communicating, and learning.

Related to this is our learning about the way the brain operates: the Triune Brain with the upper cortex (the "thinking" brain), the middle limbic system (the social processing brain that activates when we feel stress), and the lower reptilian brain that monitors and sustains our biological functions (the autonomic brain) (Maclean. 1990). The limbic and reptilian brains constitute our survival brain – and when stress occurs, the survival brain can disable the thinking brain (e.g., Siegel. 2010). In addition, the survival brain – including the social processing limbic system – is "online," meaning it is very active and sensitive earlier in life than the thinking brain and remains the first line of processing throughout our lives.

Additionally, we have right- and left-brain hemispheres, and while the left hemisphere is considered the more logical/verbal side, the right hemisphere is more involved in emotions, creativ-

AN EASY CHOICE: As a teacher, you can take an important step in promoting the development of your students — helping them to become physiologically, emotionally, and intellectually available for higher-level thinking.