All About Autism

Celebrating Literacy!

Posted on January 22, 2015 by all about autism

January is a big month for literacy awareness. All month long, we celebrate National Book Blitz Month. If you’re like me, your reaction to this was similar to: Great! What’s that?

After some digging, I learned that NBB was created by a PR executive to encourage authors to promote their own books and work more closely with the media to create more buzz about their work.

However, many have chosen to make it about catching up on your “to read” lists, getting better acquainted with your favorite author by reading (or re-reading) their works, or even finding a new favorite author.

Perhaps Book Blitz Month inspired National Read-a-thon Day. On Saturday from noon until 4 pm, readers across the country will join together in four hours of reading, all with the hopes of raising awareness for literacy in our country.

Pete the Cat

And finally, tomorrow is National Reading Day, an annual event celebrated in schools all around the United States. The event is designed to celebrate and encourage reading by Pre-K through third grade students, to develop the literacy foundation they need. At ELBS, we will be gathering together to read “Pete the Cat’s Big Lunch” as a group. He is one of our favorite characters!

Many children and adults with special needs are challenged in reading. Bookshare is a great resource for them. It’s free for any registered student thanks to a grant from the Office of Special Education programs. For adults there is an annual fee of $50, but this provides unlimited access to books and other free reading tools.

I asked a few of our teachers for their favorite books. They included:

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, Eric Litwin.

Pete the Cat is wearing his favorite shirt—the one with the four totally groovy buttons. But when one falls off, does Pete cry? Goodness, no! He just keeps on singing his song—after all, what could be groovier than three groovy buttons? Count down with Pete in this rocking new story from the creators of the bestselling Pete the Cat books.

The Shape Song Swingalong, SteveSongs

What can you make with a line, a circle or square? This inspiring book, based on an original song by children’s singer SteveSongs, shows how simple shapes can be transformed into anything you can imagine from boats to skyscrapers to a circus. The catchy song and animation will soon have you dancing along, making shapes! Includes a dual-purpose audio and video CD to listen to the sing-along on a CD player or listen and watch the video animation on a Mac or PC.

Up, Up, Up!, Susan Reed

This airborne adventure takes readers ballooning over lands near and far, all the way to the stars. The charming sing-along song on the accompanying CD keeps spirits high, while the rhyming and playful text introduces all sorts of settings and vocabulary-building words.

The Journey Home from Grandpa’s, Jemima Lumley

Hop in the yellow car and look for all the other forms of transportation on the way home from Grandpas. A beautiful, double-page spread at the end features all of the colors and modes of transportation from the story. Includes a dual-purpose audio and video CD to listen to the sing-along on a CD player or listen and watch the video animation on a Mac or PC.

What books have you found that your child enjoys?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged advocacy, awareness, barber national institute, bni, books, literacy, reading, school | Leave a comment

Being a Fighter for Civil Rights

Posted on January 20, 2015 by all about autism

MLK In doing some research on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I discovered a quote that I haven’t read before but is great advice for all of us.

“Whatever career you may choose for yourself – doctor, lawyer, teacher – let me propose an avocation to be pursued along with it. Become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life. It will make you a better doctor, a better lawyer, a better teacher. It will enrich your spirit as nothing else possibly can. It will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(April 18, 1959, Youth March for Integrated Schools Speech)

Being a “dedicated fighter for civil rights” sounds intimidating because our initial impression is, “Well, I can’t do that. It is a full-time job.” Yes, for Dr. King it was. But this quote reminds us that it doesn’t need to be a full-time job. Each of us can, in a multitude of small ways, dedicate our time, efforts and passion towards human rights.

Some of these ways include:

Welcoming diversity into your neighborhood, church group or synagogue.
Volunteering – whether it’s at a soup kitchen, shelter, or community center.
Talking to your children and encourage them to accept people who may look or sound different than their family. We are all more alike than different.
Staying informed about current and proposed legislation that may not impact you directly, but would have a great potential impact on society.
Speaking up – be vocal about the support and services you believe are needed. You may think you’re only helping those you care about, but you are also helping others who feel similarly and are afraid to speak up.

It is easy to think “I’m only one person, I’m not making a difference,” but it is important to remember that no one person is responsible for change alone – it is the result of many people working together. After all, it was also Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said:

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged advocacy, barber national institute, bni, caring, civil rights, community, Martin Luther King Jr, MLK | 2 Comments

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Posted on January 19, 2015 by all about autism

martin_luther_king_jr_by_edwinartwork-d6k52r5

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged advocacy, civil rights, inspiration, MLK Day, progress, quotes | Leave a comment

ELBS Recognized for Innovative Use of Technology

Posted on January 15, 2015 by all about autism

Yesterday, we received some great news! The Elizabeth Lee Black School at the Barber National Institute has received the “Award for Leadership and Innovation in Special Education” from the National Association of Private Schools (NAPSEC). NAPSEC, headquartered in Washington, DC, is the largest national organization representing private special education programs.

This prestigious award recognizes the school’s consistent efforts to ensure that children with disabilities receive the many benefits that digital technology offers for state-of-the-art education. In particular, the school is being recognized for an artist-in-residence project that brings a professional artist together with students and faculty to create multimedia publications such as digital books, movies and animations that reinforce or expand upon concepts taught in the classroom. Many of the students create “social stories” that help them achieve their individual communications or behavior goals.

This recognition made me look back in time to when Dr. Barber established our initial program at the YWCA in 1952. Dr. Barber was a school psychologist for the Erie School District, and was responsible for telling parents of children with special needs that they were not eligible to attend school because of their disability. She and the parents wanted more for these children, and so began the first classroom.

A BNI student with Apple’s IIe

In 1963, the Barber Center was designated as one of the first Approved Private Schools in Pennsylvania by the Department of Education. Approved Private Schools were established to serve children with special needs who cannot receive an appropriate education in their local school district. Over the years, the school has expanded and developed an expertise working with children with autism, intellectual disabilities, multiple disabilities, and mental health challenges.

Our first venture with technology was with the Apple IIe, in 1983. Who would have believed that in a short 30 years, we would go from one machine in the school to computers and iPads in every classroom? Today’s software programs and applications focus on addressing students’ social-emotional learning, as well as adding new dimensions to communication skills and real-world exploration.

PreK2 I believe that digital technology continues to change society, self-expression and education, but too often children with disabilities are left behind. At ELBS, we are intent on bridging the digital divide for our students and using technology to broaden their opportunities for learning. Without question, there is great potential, but we need to be thoughtful and intentional in our use of technology.

Who knows what another 30 years will bring us?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged advocacy, asd, aspergers, autism, awareness, barber national institute, bni, special education, technology | Leave a comment

Mindfulness by Emily Pinto Taylor

Posted on January 13, 2015 by all about autism

My niece, Emily Pinto Taylor, is as she describes herself: a full-time chocolate chip cookie baker and half-marathon runner and a 4^th year medical student at Loyola University Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine. She is a graduate of Collegiate Academy, Emory University and plans a career working in Med-Peds palliative care. Emily spent the month of July 2014 working in a rural hospital and clinic in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in northwestern Peru. To read more about her experiences, visit an earlier blog post here. She is one of Ryan’s most enthusiastic supporters. They email each other daily…I don’t know how Emily finds the time, but she does!

~ Maureen

Emily and husband Josh, in Peru.

Anyone raising a child with an autism spectrum disorder will tell you that life can be pretty stressful at times. Growing up with a cousin on the spectrum, as well as surrounded by friends and their families with siblings with intellectual disabilities and autism, I was well-aware of the varied struggles that these families endured during their daily lives.

When I entered medical school in Chicago, I began to see these struggles even more clearly when talking with patients and their families who lived in the communities around Loyola, which are statistically under-resourced. Maywood, IL, for example, contains the Loyola University Medical Center, and also has significant socio-economic risk factors: 70% of families are headed by single mothers; 21% of families receive food stamps; 25% of the residents never obtained a high school diploma or GED (twice the number of US citizens without a high school diploma), according to the US Census in 2000. In this community, which is also notable for being a “food desert” with poor access to healthy foods/grocery stores, and for having higher-than-national rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, parents of children with ASDs have significant added stressors compounding those faced by all parents of these special-needs children: greater rates of depression, anxiety, and parenting stress.

We knew we wanted to help these families and give them skills to add to their own parenting toolbox, but we weren’t sure where to start.

In recent years research has shown that practicing Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction techniques among parents of children with autism spectrum disorders leads to fewer unwanted behaviors in those children. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a clinical psychologist, and has been defined as “a group program that focuses upon the progressive acquisition of mindful awareness.” It’s basically a practice of meditating, body-scanning (where you think about how you feel sitting in this chair, or how the ground is supporting your feet), and simple yoga postures (like sitting fully upright).

Here’s a video of Dr. Kabat-Zinn describing MBSR: http://youtu.be/HmEo6RI4Wvs

Through the creation of a Mindful Parenting program, we have been studying how basic concepts of Mindfulness (like doing tasks effectively, one-mindfully, and nonjudgmentally) can be incorporated into parenting techniques for families with children with autism spectrum disorders. Our class teaches these skills with an emphasis on class discussion, equipping parents with skills for emotional control, nonjudgmental interactions, and positive self-awareness.

What does this mean? It means that once a week for 8 weeks, we practiced some meditation (or prayer, for many of the participants). We texted them reminders of 30 second meditations to take a break from a part of their day, check in with their breathing, be thankful for their health and for their bodies, for the lungs breathing for them and the oxygen in the air. We spent the weekly classes focusing on how to observe our surroundings, to describe the world without judgment (“my child is hearing loud noises”, not “my child is misbehaving.”). We talked about doing one task at a time, which I know many parents have a hard time with! And, most importantly, we provided a support-group environment for parents to check-in with each other, support each other in trying to use their MBSR skills, and learn from each other’s mistakes.

The most interesting part of this study has been the ability to unite the instruction of MBSR skills and the daily realization of them in participants’ lives with weekly class discussion, where community members facilitate conversations and hold each other accountable to utilization of these skills. At the end of the 8-week course, we found that, through survey assessments, parents did not report significant decreases in depression, but anxiety was noted to be decreased at a level that trended toward significance, as well as parenting stress. Interestingly, we found that parents noticed more negative behaviors in their children, which we hypothesize is due to their instruction in observing the world around them mindfully and non-judgmentally, but these negative behaviors did not correlate with them becoming more stressed or anxious (as these scores decreased).

When we repeat our curriculum this academic year with a new cohort of parents, we hope to follow them for longer after completion of the course, with an aim of attempting to trend the positive and negative behaviors in their children – do their kids continue to “do more negative/unwanted things” after the course, or are they just noticing what the kids were doing before? Does this taper off after a few months after completing the mindfulness course? Do parents continue to be less stressed/anxious? Does their likelihood of depression start to go down? These are all questions we’d like to answer.

Right now, our group at Loyola is in the process of writing up our results for publication, and are hoping to also publish our curriculum on an open-access website interface, to allow other groups to facilitate repeating this class with our powerpoints and suggested materials. If you’re interested in more information about a similar study, a landmark study was published recently in the Journal of Pediatrics showing similar results:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/07/16/peds.2013-3164.abstract

If you’d like to try a simple MBSR meditation in your own life, YouTube has lots of good ones. Here’s one we recommend. Enjoy!

~ Emily

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged asd, autism, mindfulness, therapy | Leave a comment

World Braille Day

Posted on January 8, 2015 by all about autism

Did you know that January 4^th was World Braille Day? As I researched Braille Day, I learned some new, interesting facts.

Braille is not actually a language, but a code used by blind people
A blind Frenchman, Louis Braille, in 1821 devised this code to provide access to literacy, intellectual freedom, equal opportunity, and personal security
Braille is the official communications code world-wide

Today, Braille is incorporated into many aspects of public life. braile Buildings with elevators have buttons with Braille markings, and Braille announcements and instructions are posted on walls so that people with vision impairments traveling on their own can navigate through the area. Even ATM machines now include Braille markings.

Technological devices have also been adapted to facilitate Braille users. Computers now incorporate the use of Braille through specialized displays, keyboards, and portable displays that connect to mobile phones. Alternatively, “Stand-Alone Braille Devices” are portable hardware devices that essentially function like PDAs. They include a word processor, email, calendar, contacts, calculator, etc. Users do not have to connect this machine to a computer in order for it to function, making this a great tool for individuals who prefer greater independence and privacy. There are also printers for Braille, known as embossers.

Here at Elizabeth Lee Black School, we have many students with vision impairments. Braille-printed materials are now in all of our classrooms. Not only are they great tools for these children, but also for children who may have limited vision and are non-verbal, as they aid in increased communication and a greater capacity for learning. Our Braille materials, referred to as “texture books,” are used in an introductory, sensory-based manner to assist with orientation and other fundamental skills. Each student has personalized materials with his or her name printed in Braille. That way anything they touch is recognizable to them, making them feel comfortable and safe.

I wonder if Monsieur Braille would have ever guessed that a code that he developed would still be used worldwide, 194 years later?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged advancements, advocacy, blindness, braille, research, technology | 3 Comments

New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on January 6, 2015 by all about autism

Last week, I decided to tackle the four boxes of paperwork that had been relegated to a corner of my office since my file cabinet fell apart. I, like many moms, saved Ryan’s papers, reports, classroom assignments, and report cards going back to Pre-School. I even had his art projects from his days in Happy Hearts Toddler Childcare! My initial reaction was, “Some of these papers are 20 years old; why should I be saving them?” However, as I began reading, I was enthralled by the stories that were unfolding before me. So many of these moments had been forgotten, it was almost like reading a book. Some were happy, some were sad, but by the time I finished reading his 12^th grade file I was thoroughly pleased and proud of Ryan and the way his story has evolved.

So often, I am asked about Ryan’s future. This is a worry of all parents, but especially for parents of children with disabilities. It’s very easy to allow these concerns to overshadow the achievements and successes that your child experiences. So I decided that for my New Year’s resolution I would take a moment every day to celebrate how far Ryan has come. No, I’m not going to stop planning for the future; but I am going to focus on his day-to-day accomplishments as well, feeling grateful that he is able to achieve so much and has been blessed with such an outstanding (albeit ever-changing) team since the beginning, helping to make his dreams come true.

I encourage you to find time in the coming year to pause and celebrate your child’s successes, too. Happy 2015!

RyanAchieve

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2015, asd, aspergers, autism, barber national institute, bni, Future, New Year, parenting, parents, plans, resolutions | 4 Comments

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2015 by all about autism

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beginning, dreams, goals, New Year, new years eve, resolution | Leave a comment

Achievements of 2014!

Posted on December 30, 2014 by all about autism

As we wind down December and head into the New Year, I can’t help but think of the many accomplishments we can celebrate for 2014. My first thoughts are of our children, adults and staff throughout the Erie, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia campuses. They have accomplished so much! Be it learning to walk, to talk, to use an iPad or to secure a job, each person established a goal and worked hard to achieve it. Our staff was with them along the way to aid in their success.

acutepart There were a few notable program additions to Barber National Institute this past year. To further assure a seamless system of care for children, we initiated a Children’s Acute Partial Hospitalization program. Additionally, due to the success of our Blended Case Management services for children we began offering a similar service for adults.

As always, the Arts continued to play an essential role in our programs through the year; we were pleased to be invited to participate in John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ 2014 conference – VSA Intersections: Arts and Special Education. Our presentation was a look at the positive impact digital art has had for children with special needs.

This initial foray eventually led to a webinar through VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, titled “Video Self-Modeling in the Classroom with Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders.” We went global and received such great feedback that viewers were asking when Part 2 would be! (If you’re interested in watching the webinar, click here.)

Also in 2014, two of our students won nation-wide art contests. Jonah Derlink was selected as one of the 36 students art throughout the U.S and Canada to receive the 2nd place award for his National Flagship Safety poster. Todd Harvey was selected as a winner of the statewide art contest for artists with disabilities, Art: The Universal Language. The competition, first of its kind, was a partnership between The Arc of Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

We even had time to do a musical revue in conjunction with the Erie Playhouse, performing a collaboration of several pieces from past autism-friendly shows!

Because we believe that intense physical exercise has many, many benefits for our children, we partnered with two new groups, Achilles International and Variety, the Children’s Charity of Pittsburgh. By integrating Achilles into our phys-ed program, our students are able to complete a virtual marathon through the streets of Erie. One of Variety’s most popular programs, My Bike, generously donated highly specialized adaptive bikes for over 60 of our children. And this is only the first wave!