SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) - In a Truman Elementary classroom full of children diagnosed with autism, teacher Jean Lawson said the one-size-fits-all approach won’t work.
The special education teacher searches for different ways to engage with each child.
“I do a lot of observing. I watch kids. I talk to parents when we have meetings and during the day, through texting, email and phone calls,” said Lawson, 56. “One of the things I always ask is ’What are their interests? What are they into now?’ I get that information from home that I may not know here.”
Lawson, recently named the 2018-19 Springfield Public Schools Teacher of the Year, will use anything at her disposal to connect with a child, including bubbles, games, YouTube videos of Humpty Dumpty and songs.
Constantly trying new things to connect, she described her students’ parents as partners in the learning process.
“With these students, you don’t know what their potential is. Some of these kids have been written off by doctors when they were really young and diagnosed,” Lawson told The Springfield News-Leader . “Parents haven’t given up on them. They are their best advocates.”
She added: “Parents are my heroes.”
Principal Stephanie Young, who hired Lawson 11 years ago, said she has “passion and love” for children with special needs.
Young, who is now principal of Delaware Elementary, said Lawson has an appetite for knowledge regarding autism and constantly devours books, blogs, curriculum guides and medical journals for new ideas.
“People who work with individuals with autism, they have to have a different level of patience,” she said. “Autism, even after all the research that has been done, is still a mystery…In working with kids with autism, one day something works and it clicks, and it connects, and the next day it doesn’t.”
Students with autism spectrum disorder typically have a range of challenges with social skills, repetitive behavior, rigid routines, sensory overload, speech and nonverbal clues or communication. However, the way one child with autism adapts or responds may be vastly different from another child.
Lawson refuses to shortchange students by making assumptions or setting the bar too low, Young said.
“She is pretty phenomenal. I was not surprised she was named Teacher of the Year,” said Young, a former special education teacher. “She thinks outside the box as far as what kids can do.”
One example is Truman’s Rolling Cart Cafe, which Lawson started three years ago.
Twice a day, in the morning and afternoon, students with autism and other special needs will roll the cart door-to-door inside the elementary to sell coffee, tea, snacks and other items to teachers.
Along the way, the students learn and practice life skills. They stock the cart, make the change, track the inventory, identify the hottest-selling items, and keep a tally of both expenses and profits.
The venture generates $60 to $80 a week. The money is used to restock the cart and to pay for educational field trips.
Lawson said the project has helped integrate the students into the school and improved the way they interact.
“For the kids, I was thinking it would be good social skills. They interact with people and develop money skills,” she said. “It has gone so far beyond what I expected.”
A year ago, a Drury University student created a video highlighting the project and it won a $10,000 prize. Lawson used the funds to expand the program in other schools.
Truman Principal Joellyn Travis said the cart was an innovative way to teach skills, and the benefits are more than academic.
“It has been great to see the kids interact with our teachers,” she said. “We see those kids are part of our student population. They are part of our school.”
Travis said Lawson has become a go-to resource for teachers trying new ways to tap into a child’s interests or serve their needs.
“One of the things I really admire about Jean is her ability to support everyone in the building, not just her kids,” she said. “If I have a kid I’m wondering about, I know I can go to Jean.”
A week after Lawson was named Springfield’s top teacher, she said it still felt “dream-like” and overwhelming. “I do what so many other people do.”
She said the best part of the recognition is being able to represent students who have special needs and the educators who work with them every day.
Lawson entered the classroom in the late 2000s, after a mid-career change. She has a master’s degree and autism certificate from Missouri State University.
She spent one year as a special education teaching assistant, called a paraprofessional, at Truman. The following year, she was hired as a teacher to work full time with children who have autism.
Her passion for working with individuals with special needs started during high school in Wisconsin. She volunteered at a camp and kept coming back, year after year.
“They were some of the neatest people on the planet. It really loved them,” she said. “I found out there was a need for special education teachers. I thought at this time, ’This is what I want to do with my life.’”
She moved to Springfield to pursue speech language pathology at Evangel University and ended up transferring to Central Bible College and taking a different route.
In the early 1980s, Lawson married, started a family and found a job. She worked at Gospel Publishing House in Springfield, serving as an assistant editor, managing editor and product development coordinator.
Along the way, she taught Sunday school and preschool through her church.
“I have always had a heart for education,” she said. “I really had an opportunity to teach and be with kids and that was my passion. That was my favorite thing.”
The desire to become a special education teacher never left. In the early 2000s, as her husband changed careers, she decided to go back to college.
As a teacher, she has become a fearless advocate for her students.
“I do teach our kids the curriculum. They are, by federal law, required to have access to the same curriculum as all the other kids,” she said. “I try to expose them to as much as I can.”
She knows children diagnosed with autism often struggle to socialize.
“A lot of these kids don’t know how to have leisure time. They don’t know how to engage in play or how to play with a variety of things,” she said. “They have one obsessive thing that they just want to do all the time.”
Each day, certain activities are referred to as “friend time” to improve interaction.
“They may not know how to make friends,” she said. “They do that parallel play. They are not interacting. Some are a little bit more social but others aren’t aware of others around them.”
She said reading blogs, news stories and books from adults who have autism helped her understand how isolated they can feel.
“They talk about how lonely they are. They see other kids playing and they want to play but they don’t know how to play,” she said. “We’ll do a task analysis. We will break down the steps and then we teach the steps. Some of these kids, you have to teach them that instead of going up and hitting somebody, if you want to be friends with somebody, you can wave and say ’Hi,’ you can give them a high-five.”
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Information from: Springfield News-Leader, http://www.news-leader.com
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