By Harlow Berny

I was going to go back to retelling old fairy tales this week, but I am noticing that problems caused by my autism are becoming more prominent in my classes. While the teachers at this school, for the most part, understand that autism has an effect on a student’s learning ability, I believe that they do not have an understanding of how it affects the student. While I know that autism is a spectrum and it is quite different in each case, I will be going over the general effects of it and my personal struggles with it.

A common thing in autistic students is that they let small assignments slip past them but then are able to do larger assignments and projects thoroughly, thus having a negative effect on their grade as they fail to turn in more and more small assignments. This is not because the student does not care for the class or the assignment, and it is not because they do not know how to do the assignment or are not intelligent enough. It is because they have trouble focusing on the small assignment when they are not in a calm school environment, as they will “zone out” or “daydream” easily when the environment becomes unfocused or too silent. Another factor in not completing assignments is short-term memory problems, which is common with autistic students and can make them forget that school even exists. Back to the environment, that has to do with hypersensitivity. Autistic people, no matter where they fall on the autistic spectrum, are to some degree hypersensitive. This means that they are more sensitive to light (specifically certain bright reds and greens), sound, touch, taste, and emotions. In terms of sound, autistic students can’t handle tons of noises and screaming, but they also can’t work in complete silence. We need some kind of sound, such as white noises, in order to focus, as a silent room can let our mind wander onto other things and branch out our thoughts, causing confusion. An example of this is that at multiple points in writing this post, I have struggled to find a way to describe something while my mind is overcrowded with thoughts. I have gotten a headache from straining my mind and had to move on to other thoughts, which is what I am doing as I write this sentence. Another off-topic thing that happened, I remembered that I saw a post on social media that highlighted the importance of stressing certain words when writing. The post took a simple sentence–

 

I never said she took my wallet.

 

–and then stressed different words.

 

I never said she took my wallet.

I never said she took my wallet.

I never said she took my wallet.

I never said she took my wallet.

I never said she took my wallet.

I never said she took my wallet.

I never said she took my wallet.

 

This gave the sentence an entirely different meaning each time.

 

Editor: Brennan Nick