To Judge a Fish

To Judge a Fish

As I have As I have mentioned before, internships were a part of my high school. Just as a refresher, here's how the internship program worked. Freshman year- you go to a pre-chosen site with a large group of students, and a teacher on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sophomore year- same except with a smaller group. Junior year- you get to choose your own site and you do it on your own. Senior year- you go to a site full time for the second semester.

My freshman year I worked at a daycare. I was placed in the 3 & 4 year old classroom with another girl from my school. We both ended up planning our own activities for the kids to do. Mine was a sensory game in which the kids would pull clay apart to find coins I had hidden in it. This was the year I decided that I wanted to be a teacher.

My junior year I was at my old grade school. I worked with grades 1-5. During that year, I did so much it's impossible to describe it all. But I was basically just a glorified teacher's aide. And I say glorified, because the kids loved me. I mean, every time I walk into the classrooms, they all just look at me with a huge grin on their faces; sometimes they even cheered.

I enjoyed it so much and really did not want to leave, so for my senior year site I found a way to return. This time I worked with the sixth grade teacher almost entirely. He and I built a friendship, and he is one of the best mentors I have ever had. I was allowed to make my own lesson plans, I got my own desk and I felt like an actual teacher!

I graduated last year around this time, with high honors. How many kids with autism can actually say that? Honestly I probably wouldn’t be able to say that, if it wasn’t for my high school. While I do have a lot of complaints about it, it was very individualized and worked well for me. They would show inspirational quotes and videos. My favorite one started off with a quote by Albert Einstein that goes a little something like this, “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.”

As soon as I heard that quote I realized that is the best way to describe autism. You can't judge people on the spectrum by the same criteria, because they might not physically be able to do what you are asking of them no matter how hard they try. Telling a kid with autism to make friends “normally”, or do better in school is like telling a fish the climb tree. We need to support people with autism and judge them not by what they can't do, but by what they can do.

Have a greattastic day!

~J. Mitchell Ulibarri

PS- Congratulations Cousin Simple on releasing your new song  Star Destroyers. Rock on.