Autism Awareness Month
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Autism has grown to become incredibly more relevant today than it was 20 years ago. Because of this, autism is seen widely in schools across the country. The month of April was Autism Awareness month because autism has generally built a stigma of meaning "less" rather than "different," and this month was created to advocate against this stigma and to celebrate the amazing, incomparable strengths that come hand in hand with an autism diagnosis.
In my time at DAA (and within my career), I have come to see the need for a push for students with disabilities to advocate for themselves and their needs so that peers and adults alike can witness that disabilities do not define a person. This is whether they are a child or an adult, and whether they are in the school or in the community.
Just because a student may need a different manner of viewing material, does not take away from the fact that they are equally capable of obtaining the same output. Because of this, I realized that we needed more books and supplies to educate our students regarding differences & disabilities, not just for my students but for the school as a whole. With this mindset, I created a Donors Choose project and it was funded within 4 hours of my posting! I was so excited! These past few weeks, several of my students have taken their time (and eagerness! seriously!) to present about their disabilities to their crews. Additionally, multiple students who I do not work with have asked to borrow some of the books from my library about disabilities to learn even more about differences & disabilities within their very own community. There are multitudes of experiences that I have available with these supplies now and I couldn't be more thankful! I look forward to implementing and empowering even more of my students throughout the future.