Music communicates where words cannot

Music plays a key role in the autistic classroom. Music communicates where words fail. The main role it has in our classroom is to relax. Many of our students find every day life very stressful and unpredictable. 

Don’t take it personally!

Its difficult when you are a teacher, to sometimes step away from the vehicle, look and survey the situation from afar, and make a balanced judgement. We teachers take everything to heart. We care about all our students, and care that they are happy, and achieving to the level we know they are capable of. 

So when one decides to take a personal vendetta on you it is really hard to step back and say ‘it’s not me, he doesn’t hate me really’. But we must learn to do this. 

The anger scale: shared resource

Today I wanted to share some useful resources that I made, after reading this great book. I used it with Autistic students to help them to understand that it was not an all or nothing when it came to managing emotions. Many autistic students think that they are either angry or sad, with nothing at all in between. They do not realise that there are warning signs that indicate that things are beginning to boil up inside them.