POPARD Certificate: Introduction to ASD – July 2017
POPARD stands for the Provincial Outreach Program for Autism and Related Disorders and there is a certification process in which people are acknowledged to have an introductory understanding of Autism. This certification is a hiring requirement for Education Assistants within School District #70.
This course and certification process provided some theoretical context, background, and understanding to my applied practice as an Integration support worker, and gave me some skills and confidence working as an Education Assistant. There were real-life examples and solutions from this course’s content that came into practice while I was an education assistant.
Autism is a medical condition that is growing in diagnostic prevalence and there is literally no statistical chance that I will not have a student with autism within the first three years of my teaching practice. This training certificate gives me the confidence to work with students on the spectrum. It gave me some communication strategies and approaches that I did not have before. It gave me my first introduction to the concept of Universal Design for Learning. The weeklong course exposed me to a selection of common tools and thought processes for how to assist students with Autism: social stories, use of puppets, Premacking, visual schedules, and ‘colour check ins.’ Finally, it allowed me to hone some soft skills in terms of communication, empathy, and perspective taking with a focus on neurodiverse students.
POPFASD Certification: Supporting Learners with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome – May 2018
POPFASD stands for Provincial Outreach Program for Fetal-Alcohol Syndrome Disorder and they offered a weeklong program for educators to learn more about supporting students with FASD.
The week consisted of learning about how people with FASD tend to think, some common symptoms of the condition, information regarding how professionals diagnose the condition, the relative prevalence of FASD in various countries, and suggestions for professional best practices for students with the disability. I still remember a few of the video case studies from the course due to their very human interactions and struggles. Whenever I worked with a student from there on, I was reminded of the key principle for assisting students with FASD.
POPFASD has adapted a philosophy on the topic called the ‘Eight Magic Keys,’ which I return to still for assistance on the topic, and those Eight Magic keys include using concrete language, being consistent, utilizing repetition, keeping a routine, utilizing simplicity, being specific, providing structure, and providing supervision, with the master key being having a trusting relationship (Wiens, 2017). These nine principles are not just useful for students with disabilities, they are just useful strategies for young students, particularly when you build a relationship with youth.
I will link a PDF from the POPFASD program here: link.
The Kairos Blanket and Building Bridges through Understanding the Village Workshops – October 2017
These two exercises are done via the Kairos Canada organization. The two events basically discuss the history of colonization from first contact onward. It is an emotionally intensive walkthrough that is difficult to explain in a contextual matter without doing the program itself; however, it is equally an uplifting experience when contextualized by the fact that Indigenous people are still here, surviving, and moving forward. At the end of the experience, which composed of two separate nights, I received a certificate for each workshop.
This is, like I previously mentioned, a difficult subject to reflect on because it discusses to what extent we are culpable as individuals for exploiting other people’s past actions and reaping the consequences of that colonization. As an aside, out of everything I’ve discussed In terms of my teaching practice though this isn’t something that I can use, so much as I need it to build upon the further understanding of the subject. It is the bedrock and not a finished product, in terms of my understanding. Perhaps in the future, I can actually do a version of this with children, because there is a children’s version of the Blanket Exercise, but as it stands both of these activities should be used to educate about past and residual trauma, discussions on how Canada came into being in a more nuanced matter than was previously taught to me and advocating a more comprehensive understanding of history.
Wiens, K. (2017). “Deb Evenson and Jan Lutke’s eight magic keys: Planning for students with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.” Fasdoutreach.ca. Retrieved from https://static.fasdoutreach.ca/resources/0-9/8-magic-keys/8-magic-keys.pdf