My last week at PALS was amazing! I had the chance to plan my own lessons and teach them to the students. I had two favourites; a class called ‘The Body’ and a Cooking class. In ‘The Body’ the students are learning about senses and the parts of our body that we use for taste, smell, sight, touch and sound. My job was to introduce the eye and the different parts of it. We talked about the pupil and the iris and how the pupil changes size depending on the amount of light that is in the room. I loved seeing the groups interest in the new words they were hearing and the excitement when we pulled out mirrors and took a look at the parts of our eye that we can see.

I really felt that this week I had a chance to connect with many of the students and had just settled into a relationship with them. I had the opportunity to learn from a students about claymation and some interesting videos I could watch to see more.

The most important thing that I learned during this practicum was to cherish and accept the good moments when they come. To hold onto those when things get tough and when a student has a bad day and remember that it will all go up again. I have been given a great opportunity to truly see how building a community surrounded by trust and caring makes for a great place to work, learn, and teach. I am thrilled to have spent 3 weeks with the amazing teachers and students at PALS and will, I think, always reflect back on this experience and to what I have learned.

This week has been great! I was able to to a little bit more teaching and get to know the students even better. The classes that I have been teaching range from functional skills, social skills, workplace skills to cooking and baking. Fridays are always exciting as we cook for everyone in the morning, usually a recipe that is easy for the students to reproduce. Then in the afternoons we bake and run ‘PALS cafe’ where the students go around the program and take coffee orders and serve drinks and cookies.

I had a great time running ‘PALS cafe’ last week. I worked with 4 students really excelled at baking. We made sugar cookies as a group and then iced them. It was fantastic to see the students working together and following a recipe, all on their own with little prompting. The end result was great and we were able to see the students’ artistic talents.

During this week I have also had a lot of time to chat with the students during our transition periods and free time. There is a well known phrase around the program “How cool is that!?!” that many of the students say, to just about everything. It is hilarious to hear and gets all the students laughing and having a good time.

As I have not spent any time working with adults before in any capacity, it is neat to have this unique experience of working with adults with autism. They are each such great, unique people with their own quirks and talents. All it has taken is a few days with this group of students for me to appreciate them and everything they have to offer!

Week one at the PALS Autism School adult program has been great. It has been an adjustment going from long practicum where we were teaching everything, to CFE where I have taken on a more observational role for the first week. Now that I have spent a week observing I am exciting to begin teaching lessons in week two.

The adult program is fantastic! It is made up of a variety of life skills lessons that include things such as practicing with money, grocery shopping, social thinking and preparing for work in the community.

What I have found the most interesting so far is the token reward system used by almost all of the students. We have learned a lot about various types of motivation and what has the best long term results vs. short term results. During long practicum I was in a classroom where it was not in the classroom culture to use extrinsic motivation and thus there were no reward systems in place. Seeing how a reward system where students are collecting tokens to work towards a prize, works, has been a new experience. It is clear that this population of students thrives off of this system and requires the extrinsic motivation to focus on expected behaviours for everyday adult life. It is very clear how they respond and react to gaining or for some students losing tokens. I have a lot of questions already about this type of token system and the research that is out there regarding a token system and adults or children who have autism.

Overall, it has been a big change from teaching children to teaching adults. I look forward to the following two weeks when I begin to lead more of the lessons and learn more about managing a group of 4-5 students all with varying needs and abilities.