Child+Case+Study

For our child case study, we worked at Jackson Heights Middle School in an autistic classroom with Ms. Honadle. There were 6 students in the class with 4 aides. The child we chose to observe was a student named Chris, who is 14 years old and in 8th grade.

**Type of Technology**: Communication Device
 * Why**: Christopher is almost completely non-verbal. He will listen and repeat almost any word but is not able to ask for things or people that he needs or express feelings verbally.
 * How**: With the use of his communication device, Christopher is now able to participate in many class activities, answer questions about how he is feeling, verbally express interest in his surrounding environment, request specific foods and drinks, and respond to questions asked by his assistants during subject specific activities. For example, an aide works with Chris daily on identifying his numbers. The aide will show Chris the number and he is now able to press the corsponding number on his device. We also discovered very quickly how much Christopher likes skittles candies. :)


 * Teacher interview**: Before working with Chris in the classroom, I met with Ms. Honadle to get a little insight on what to expect. She first told me to not get too close to Chris because sometimes he grabs or bites. When I heard this, I was somewhat nervous because I had never experienced this before. Ms. Honadle also informed me that Chris is completely nonverbal so I will have to use his communication board in order to interact with him. I will be honest that I was uneasy at first since I had never used a communication device. However, I found it easy to use and caught on quickly. Throughout my experience, I enjoyed working with Chris and I didn't run into any problems with Chris getting physical so I was glad of that.

Before going to Jackson Heights Middle School, my group and I were at UCP. However, I didn't enjoy going there because it was very unorganized. I went about five times and almost every time we were placed in a different classroom, so I felt like I couldn't make a connection with the students because they kept placing us in different rooms. I also didn't like the fact that the students were so young. We were in a 1st grade class, then kindergarten, and lastly a Pre-K class. Through this experience I learned that the younger grades aren't for me. I found myself feeling very overwhelmed because the class was often chaotic. Then, Nicole and I decided to switch to a middle school. This was the best choice that we made because I loved it! We were in an autism unit with 6 students in various grades between 6 and 8. The student that we chose to do our child case study on was Chris. At first I was kind of nervous because the teacher told us that he sometimes bites or hits. However, through my whole experience he never once showed any of those behaviors. Chris is nonverbal and never spoke a word other than saying hi, but sometimes I couldn't even get him to say hi to me. But, I didn't take it personal and I kept trying my best because I wanted to be there to help him. We found that he communicates well using a communication board device. If we wanted to ask Chris a question like how are you feeling or what do you want, he could simply click the picture for his answer. His teacher even added a picture of skittles on there for him to click because that is one of his favorite candies. He often times would click that when we asked him what he wanted. It made us laugh because we thought it was so funny that he always wanted skittles. We noticed that Chris even used his communication board to assist him in classroom activities. It's great that he has this type of technology to help him because otherwise I don't know how he'd be able to communicate with others. Overall, I enjoyed this experience and became very fond of Chris. He is such a sweet and innocent boy. I even got to meet his dad when I was working at my job (Albertsons). I spotted Chris and was so excited to see him, so I said hello. But he didn't really recognize me, but he waved. Then I got to talk to his dad and I told him who I was, and his dad was so thrilled to meet me. I felt very proud when he talked to me because he gave me compliments about being in the field of Exceptional Education. He told me that it takes a very special and loving person to pursue my career choice and he was extremely thankful that there are people like me out there to be a part of his son's life. :)
 * Reflection**: