Tag: music

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Disability

Jaden and Autism Acceptance Month

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We’re featuring “Slice of Life” conversations with Autistics of all ages — kids through adults — throughout April’s Autism Acceptance Month. Our goal is to help TPGA readers understand that autistic people are people who have interesting, complicated lives and who are as diverse and varied as any other population united by a label. We are the people in each other’s neighborhoods, and the more we know about each other — the more visible autistic people and children are — the more common autism acceptance will be. That is our hope. Today we’re talking with entomology academic & enthusiast Jaden, who is also a tattoo collector and musician. What is your name and age? Jaden. I’m 31. Do you have a website? Several: Personal (for my music): theeternalmusic.com Twitter: twitter.com/theeternal Autism advocacy: aspergersissues.tumblr.com Professional (entomology): boyandbugs.blogspot.com  What would you like a one-sentence description of yourself to say? Entomologist, musician, and…

Disability

Stephen Shore: The TPGA Interview

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Stephen Shore is noted for his tireless, globetrotting autism advocacy and education work. He is also such a busy and accomplished individual that he doesn’t always mention roles like being a public member of the U.S. IACC (Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee). TPGA editor Shannon Rosa had the pleasure of talking with Stephen two weeks ago. You do so many different things that people aren’t always aware of everything you do. Can you tell us about yourself, in terms of your various pursuits? I do a lot of teaching and researching at Adelphi University on issues related to the autism spectrum; specifically teaching courses on autism: an intro course, and a more second-level course called “Diagnosis and Intervention in Autism,” in which we go deeper into different approaches and techniques. I also teach an intro to Special Education and a master’s course in which students are expected to piece together everything…

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Disability

Learning to Play a Musical Instrument is for People with Autism too!

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Stephen M. Shore, Ed.D. www.autismasperger.net Preparation  “Can you help me draw a straight line down the middle of the page?” I ask my student upon our initial meeting. Done! “How about three more lines, going sideways?” Done! Soon we have eight empty squares on what was a blank notebook-sized piece of paper. “A!” responds my student when I ask for the first letter of the alphabet. I then ask him to write that letter in the first box before moving on to B through G. The 8th box is filled with the word “extra.” “Excellent!  Gee, could you finish writing out a line of ‘As’ on this specially prepared yellow stickie™?” Done! “Now let’s write up some ‘B’s…” And we continue until we reach the letter G. Now with a “bank” of letters I’ll have the child use a scissors to cut the bottom part of the stickie™ off before…

Disability

Lessons from Season 10

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Joan T. Hocky Expectation: The act or state of looking forward or anticipating Surprise:  To strike or occur to with a sudden feeling of wonder or astonishment Two stories: 1. A girl grows up in Port Arthur, Texas. On the surface, she has a nice, middle class life: dad is an engineer, mom is a registrar at the local college and she has two protective older sisters. But life is anything but easy. She’s overweight with acne and long stringy hair and the kids in school all tease her for being ugly and weird. She spends hours every night holed up in her room, listening to Bessie Smith sing the blues and imagining life as an artist or musician, somewhere far away from where she lives. She finishes high school, goes off to college (UT Austin, the flagship school), but things are no better—even in a big university town. Lonely…