Classroom for 8 with Autism Spectrum Disorders

We served a class today that we’ve been serving now for over 18 months.  It is called Bauleni Street Kids, but actually is a school, and has a wing of the school for children who have disabilities.  We work with all the classrooms, but mostly the class for children with fairly severe autism (most of the children have no verbal language, and their cognitive ability is tough to teach to in this setting).  Many organizations have come and dropped off PECS (picture exchange communication system) on their short visits to Lusaka. They are sitting in drawers not being used.  Frankly, without constant modeling of how to use them, and going back to see what is being done, and tweaking what needs to be changed, folks here just have trouble picturing how they (PECS) can benefit the student and the teacher as she tries to teach.  So, last Saturday, we took Devon, our fully US trained teacher of folks with autism to say what we’ve been saying to them for the time we’ve been working with this class and staff.  She showed them how to use the visual supports, and explained why, and I think, it finally clicked for the head teacher!  Yeah!  We reorganized her room, moved things around, cleaned, and set up a group time area complete with songs and their matching PECS, and set up a rice table, with scoops and buckets and little hidden toys under the rice.  That was the truly culturally absurd thing we did, since people think of rice here as a treat, only for special occasions, and then we bought a 10 Kg bag of rice and *gasp* poured it into a child’s classroom water table?  Oh, my, how frivolous!  Hopefully, they’ll have some fun with it before cups of it begin to disappear to be eaten.