Micah Beal

On Tuesday October 11th I had attended potential development, a school for autistic

children. Initially where first entering the school myself and my peer were welcomed by the

sound of screaming children which initially was alarming for myself. After signing into the

establishment, we were shown to the classrooms in which I was introduced to the teacher and the

students of the class. To start the class, I had met possibly the most awesome kid which I had

spent time with throughout most of the day. I started off by playing with the child and basically

doing whatever he wanted. I was able to see that while other children would play there would be

a teacher that would spend time teaching the kids. This teaching was done through activities like

matching colors, learning the alphabet, etc. After some educational activities, the children were

given a snack time which was essentially breakfast which for them included a muffin and

crackers. This is where I had caught attention to one of the children who was a little bit

overweight, the reason the child was overweight was due to the family being referred to as

“pickers” by the teachers. Meaning that the parents in home would tend to not have set eating

times such as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, this resulted in the child usually eating as much as she

wanted at unstable times and a lot of non-nutritionally dense foods and opting for more junk food

than anything. This led to the child ultimately eating the muffin, and crackers significantly faster

than the other two children. She then continually whined until she got some of her goldfish (it

seemed as if the parents would regularly send her to the school with a plethora of extra

snacks/junk food) and after some time the teachers gave her the goldfish. I felt like this forced

the teachers into a difficult situation due to the parents giving the child so much autonomy in her

food choices. This left me with the personal dilemma of trying to figure which is a worse

situation of either feeding the habit and slightly decreasing with time or letting the child throw

tantrums and trying to cease the behavior completely. The children then would go to gym after
Micah Beal

eating which would last about an hour. Here I was able to see some of the habits that the kids

would possess. I had spent a lot of time with the awesome kid I had previously stated because the

child kept trying to keep me near him. Although eventually there was another child who

eventually started playing with him. This gave me time to talk to the teachers about the students.

They informed me of a lot of things about being with autistic children like, it is possible that the

children come in as nonverbal although along with that they tend to bite or pinch the teachers to

get their attention, also like how the children tend to be infatuated or good at one thing. For

example, the teacher informed me of a student who was obsessed with the alphabet, this caused

him to always choose the toys in which he could spell out the whole alphabet and would be

extremely disturbed if anyone would go near it. After gym we finished the day with lunch which

consisted of pizza and crackers, this was uneventful as the children would eat and then play until

naptime. This was a great experience and overall made me feel more comfortable around kids.

At the facility I was able to identify that the teacher was looked at as an educator of the children

although it seemed as if the role also assumes a caretaker role. You can see this by the teacher

changing children, feeding them, etc. As for physical and psychological needs of the children I

was able to see that they made gym class a sort of outlet for the children physically, and

psychologically you can see that the toys in the classroom or the videos are educational but fun

for someone of the preschool age. The children I was around ranged from the ages 3-5,

throughout all three of the kids only one of them was verbal, the other two would speak through

sounds that would reflect their current emotion. With one of the children, I had participated in a

game with him where there were popsicle sticks and clothespins which would have

corresponding colors and you would have to attach the clothespin to the popsicle stick of the
Micah Beal

same color. This was to help the child with his fine motor skills as they would have to pinch at

the end of the clothespin to be able to open in up and insert the popsicle stick between them.