I’m not an expert in autism. Nor do I have a degree or teaching credential in special education. I write only from the perspective of a classroom teacher.
This article is a response to the many questions we’ve received here at SCM about autistic students in regular education classrooms.
Before we get there, however, I believe that the SCM approach—with its focus on responsibility, intrinsic motivation, pursuit of excellence, and kindness and respect—is best for all students.
The learning environment it creates allows even the most unique students to thrive.
The questions have centered on how to handle a student who disrupts the class but may not have the ability to curb their disruptions. In other words, what if they’re unable to follow your class rules?
Do you still hold them accountable? If so, how?
These are great questions, but first let me say this: Every autistic student is entirely and wonderfully unique, which is why I don’t answer specific questions about specific students who I’ve neither met nor observed.
But I can answer these questions generally. For the sake of clarity, what follows is a numbered path to follow with autistic students who are struggling to follow your class rules.
1. In the beginning of the school year, you must give every student the same opportunity to follow your rules and consequences just like everyone else. This underscores the importance of teaching and modeling the hows and whys of your plan from A to Z and checking for understanding.
In this way, your students are able to internalize that your plan is for them and their benefit and right to love and enjoy school. This is key.
2. The best thing you can do for all students and whatever behavior quirks, habits, and proclivities they may bring with them, and that might disrupt the class, is allow your expert classroom management and the good-behavior role models it produces have its influence on the rest of the class.
It’s not you and your individual interventions that make the difference. It’s the SCM classroom climate and culture itself that is most impactful and best helps each student improve.
3. Once it’s clear that there is an autistic student who isn’t able at the moment to keep from calling out or making noise, for example, then the best response is your compassion.
Speak to the student and their parents and together decide if your classroom management plan might be better adjusted to them. Perhaps two warnings instead of one, for example, or only half time in time-out.
4. If the student is not ready for anything other than reminders from you, which can be the case, that’s okay. It underscores the critical importance of excellent all-around classroom management. Again, it’s your class as a whole that will make the greatest difference.
There may be a day when this particular student is ready for your classroom management plan, which you’ll again implement in consultation with their parents. In my experience, over time and in response to the heavily shaping influence of your polite and well-behaved environment, many if not all disruptions disappear and there is no reason to do anything more.
5. An autistic student only disrupts the class if you and your students are disrupted. In other words, as long as the class is well-behaved and on-task, then a calling out or other noise is just that. Keep teaching. Let it go. It’s okay and your class will understand.
Even as young as kindergarten, students are able to grasp why one student isn’t being held to the same standard. There is no reason to explain or worry that it’s a reflection of your consistency. It’s not.
6. If the student is behaving dangerously, you’ll continue to use your class and their good habits to influence as much as possible. The better the class, the less chance this will happen. As for your reaction if it does, calm, soothing reminders and kind requests work best.
Guiding them gently where they need to be is the most effective strategy. Threatening, bribing, questioning, and pressuring are the worst. (We can discuss why in a future article).
7. If the student continues to act dangerously—running out of the room, climbing on cabinets, hitting others, etc.—then you must call for help, document the behavior, and then seek direction from your principal. This now becomes their (the principal’s) responsibility.
Parents must also be contacted. Once something like this happens, all you can do is the above and, most important, make sure you notify your administrator and call for help immediately and every time it happens.
8. If you follow 1-6 above, number seven should be exceedingly rare. It has happened to me, early in the school year, but once the sway of your class takes hold, a lot can change. I haven’t had a time where it didn’t.
If it doesn’t, however, and the student is a danger to themself and others, then it’s up to your administration and leadership team, parents, resource department, etc. to as a group decide the best placement or whether an aide is needed. Your responsibility is to document and keep them informed. That’s it.
9. There is no magic wand. Resist the urge to try to get tough with your words or raise your voice or spend time reasoning or begging with any student. These will not work. Nor will amateur counseling or trying to manipulate students into behaving.
If you need help, then call for it. If your administration ignores you and you’re being hung out to dry, then you should consider changing schools. Really. If you can’t ensure your own safety and that of your students, then you need to get out of there.
All Thrive
The overarching answer to autistic students who may not be able to follow rules is compassion combined with excellent all-class classroom management. It can do wonders when applied day after day.
With this approach, it doesn’t matter who your students are or what their abilities happen to be. All can thrive.
However, if you struggle with classroom management generally, and in particular have difficult and disrespectful students you’re unable to control, then the experience having an autistic student in your class will be daunting and potentially traumatic for the student.
The answer, then, is to become an expert in SCM.
As for how to best handle the challenge of having an aide in your classroom, and other questions about autistic students, please leave a comment below or email me. I’ll include my answers in a future article.
PS – Comments that misrepresent the article or are meanspirited will not be approved.
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This is my second year teaching with SCM. I have found it very helpful and much better than my first year of teaching years ago before I had my own kids, when I was less confident about my expectations and consequences. I had stopped teaching to be home with my own children. It is going well. It makes a big difference. Thank you.
A insightful article, but not the reality in classrooms today. SPED students and their parents hold all the cards and rights. Unfortunately, it is their way or the highway. Admin rarely supports any thoughts or suggestions you may have as a classroom teacher. The only thing that matters is the autistic student.
I was driving through a very wealthy part of San Diego, I think it was La Jolla, and saw a large attorney’s building with big lettering across the top: Adoption, Surrogacy, Special Education. SPED teachers get sued more than any others.
Read up on the signs of autism so you can spot those who might be undiagnosed autistic students. I was fairly unaware of them and had a still undiagnosed boy in my second grade class a few years back. On the second day of school I thought he was being surly by giving me raised eyebrows and a forceful thumbs down sign when I asked him if he would help a child. So I began giving him consequences for his continuing rude behavior.
Long story short, though I had kept in text contact (even into the evening) with mom and had done so very much for the boy, including buying him chewy “stimmies” on a neck rope so he’d hopefully stop constantly putting his fingers on his mouth, the mother became a helicopter over me and constantly in the principal’s office. “You’re the only parent complaining,” the principal kept telling her. Dad was present in the home, but seemed to defer to mom.
To this day I wonder why no one—not his KG or first grade teachers (their comments on report cards were blasé) nor, for heaven’s sake, his pediatrician— picked up on what I later learned by my own research were strong signs of autism: his very robotic speech, disinterest in others, lack of any PE skills, stimming, etc. When the psychologist was called in for the SST prep work she said “Oh yeah,” just watching his peculiar gait across the center of campus. The mom just didn’t like bad news, so maybe past teachers and the doctor also deferred to her.
I thought my best accomplishment with him was teaching him to catch. At first he seemed hopeless. He and I practiced for weeks (I thought teaching your boy to catch was a happy traditional dad thing done long before age eight). As he finally became fairly good at catching the ball and throwing it straight to me, he would laugh at my little jokes for the first time and started to converse freely. (Someone do a masters thesis or doctoral dissertation on advancing autistic social skills via physical education!)
Then the mom suddenly had him transferred out of my room because I used in class the word “stupid” (it was in reference to teen smoking). Stupid in Spanish (“estupido”) means something like mentally disabled, but I was speaking in English and she’s certainly bilingual enough to know the differences.
He was sent to a very good teacher’s class, but he soon began striking children in the class, so the mom took him out of school and began a home school program.
Sorry for the long speech here, but I hope my tale will help other teachers, especially the newer ones.
Great article Michael L. I’ve had so many neurodivergent students over the years and they all come with such different needs. I’m glad to hear you support adapting your plan to individuals. I’ve had to, many times (sometimes the only thing you can do is gently remind, over and over), and I felt like I wasn’t staying with the heart of the plan.
YES. Special education teacher in two states and this is my 37th year of teaching. The symbol for autism is a puzzle piece because we have some general ideas but each student is different and what works with one doesn’t always work with another – except for a calm classroom that relies on routines and clear instruction. Kids are wonderfully adaptive at all grade levels when they know someone has a disability and they learn compassion and kindness when they see the adults stay regulated and keep everyone safe. I am going to share this article with our staff.
Just FYI, the autism community doesn’t like the puzzle piece symbol!
I’m not a part of that community and I’m wondering why? Unless it’s disrespectful to ask then I apologize.
I actually have parents who use it and wear it. That isn’t true in all communities.
While not 100% true for everyone, most autistic people do not like the puzzle piece symbol.
1 – It has come to mean that there is a missing piece and that we are somehow not complete until we are “solved”.
2 – It is the symbol for the Autism Speaks organization which has a very bad reputation in the autism community. (Worth a google.)
Overall, most autistics (myself included) do not want to be solved or cured. Just accepted and valued.
“Kids are wonderfully adaptive at all grade levels when they know someone has a disability and they learn compassion and kindness when they see the adults stay regulated and keep everyone safe.”
So well said-I love this comment! Absolutely TRUE! And what a wonderful world we will be when we ALL choose compassion and kindness.
Thank you for this, Michael!
This is very well-timed for me. I have a number of students in my class who are autistic or have some other significant exceptionality, and I’m blessed to have 2-3 aides in the class to support them and the other students in my class.
Question: Is it a good idea to ask my aides to implement my consequences system? It is a large class with a vast variety of needs, and not all students are following the same curriculum, so I have to check-in individually with students often. I would like the aides to be my eyes and ears around the classroom when my back is turned. Thoughts?
I have an aide who knows exactly how my consequences works and I allow her to watch for certain behaviors to let the students know she is to be respected also and the classroom environment benefits from both is us working together. She carries a clipboard of name and the code for certain classroom infractions to mark down. If she is with a small group she carries this clipboard also to document and keep consistency.
I, a special ed teacher, say yes! It’s important that every adult be on the same page and hold students to the same standard as much as is appropriate.
I found a hand signal, agreed privately between me and the student to work quite well. A code word, in which the class got under their desks if the child got wildly out of control and was throwing things. Once a kid started, I called the code word and he too sat down on the floor and got under his desk. Seating a child like that close to the door, made getting help and getting them out much easier.
This is all solid advice! I think your proposed modifications make a lot of sense. Generally, autistic students really want a quiet and predictable atmosphere, so having a calm, well-managed classroom is the #1 path to them being able to be regulated within the room.
There is one piece I’d add: make sure your classroom rules allow them to get what they need as long as it isn’t disruptive to others. Too many teachers/aides will take away an autistic student’s drawing (or other non-disruptive stimming) or demand they make eye contact etc. to make them seem more “normal.” Demanding that makes everyone’s lives harder, and the demands have nothing to do with learning (Autistic kids will generally listen and learn better if they can stim and don’t have to look people in the eye).
I know you didn’t mention this because the SCM plan would avoid this anyway, but it is something I’ve seen teachers do to autistic students a LOT, so I thought it was worth mentioning!
I have a first grade student with an autistic-like disability who cannot stop calling out and making noises. I mostly ignore these but his aide has a behavior plan she uses with him. For this reason I have not really tried implementing my own behavior plan so I focus on the rest of the class. Does this sound reasonable?
I have a similar situation with a fifth grader. His IEP includes a one-to-one TA and a behavior plan. His BIP is used, but with my expectations. (I have been using the SCM plan for several years.) He might receive a warning from me – especially with things we know he can handle – and that warning gets “translated” into his BIP. My other students have no problem with this.
Many of the autistic students I’ve worked with don’t notice or don’t care what the test of the class is doing, so trying to get them to notice and adapt to classroom rules does not work. Special Ed teacher 13 years
This issue can be viewed from multiple angles. While I don’t place all the blame for disruptive behavior on the autistic student, there is a larger systemic problem at play. The responsibility lies in the lack of adequate teacher training, as well as state programs and supports for neurodiverse individuals. What may seem disruptive to some is often a necessary response for autistic individuals, who may need to stim or struggle with sensory sensitivities such as noise, depending on the situation. Tools like visual schedules, “first-then” strategies, and other supports can be incredibly effective. We can’t punish… However, administrators and state policies must ensure teachers have the time and resources to learn and implement these methodologies. As both a parent of a child with autism and a teacher, I understand this from both perspectives.
Great to see this situation addressed, and I love this advice.
I have a related question… What about when it isn’t the student disrupting, but an overly “helpful” aide? The aides come to class with them and when I give directions for everyone to move silently to the next thing the aide speaks loudly to the student giving directions and cajoling him. It creates a noisy classroom which makes it really hard for me to hold the other students accountable. These are nice ladies who are trying to help and do their job. The only tools they are allowed to use are rewards and constant speach/reminders/cajoling.
More trained TAs in classroom and smaller classrooms would be great!
This article is so well timed to what I am currently facing. Currently I am a substitute that gets to be assigned to a Title 1 school. Since this is my second year with the school, I am starting to get to know and understand our unique students and vice versa. The beginning of the year is a bit of a struggle for me to adjust our incoming autistic kiddos and it gets a bit overwhelming to rush and figure out how best to help them. The pitch of my voice goes high, urgent, and pitchy instead of low, steady and calm. What would you suggest to work on changing the tone of voice in delivery?
Is there any advice out there for a classroom that has almost all autistic students with multiple disruptive behaviors?
Thanks, Christina
I have an autistic grandson who is low functioning. He was originally integrated into a regular classroom and now is in a special class and is showing better progress with more one on one attention. I am not an expert in autism either but can say, from observations of my family member and autistic students that I have taught over the years, that generally, many autistic students do well in a structured environment with clear expectations and consistent consequences. Some of my favourite students have been on the spectrum. 🙂
My five year-old granddaughter is being bullied by a kid with autism, and so our other kids in the classroom that is being ignored due to the fact he has autism. How was this fair to kids who don’t have autism in the class Is my granddaughter expected to be bullied along with the other kids he bullies?