TRANSITIONAL EXPRESSION: ON FIELD TO ON SCREEN

As we all know, Covid has spread globally and has had a challenging impact on all of us in some way or the other.At Autism Centre for Excellence, wefollow intensive one on one therapy and we never could have imagined that we could teach virtually to our children on the spectrum. Initially, the transition from offline to online teaching felt so foreign. As a therapist, it was definitely very challenging to navigate through this new reality, managing our curriculum and teaching protocols.We work on a wide range of skills from those required for early intervention to working on vocational skills. Our work does not involve disseminating work or assignments but working on core skills like simply attending and increasing in-seat of the child.It was a very different learning experience for me as a therapist, exploring different and creative ways to teach the kids and helping them understand the concept. There were not many apps that focused on the learning of children with special needs. Either the apps had too much information or did not match the skill set of the child. The apps were generic, and we needed something more individualized.It was imperative to create a safe virtual learning space for the kid and help them understand and develop a virtual social presence. Here at ACE, we follow Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy whichfocuses on principles that bring about meaningful and positive change in behaviors. Its major goalis to increase behaviors that are helpful and decrease behaviors that can interfere or affect learning of the child.Since each child with Autism is unique and gifted with their own abilities and skill set, we design specific protocols and programs for each child catering to their needs. Our initial challenge was to figure out the transition from the one on one in-person therapy to virtual one on one sessions. We began with learning and implementing how to set up the telehealth sessions for our students, from parent training to working on increasing the in-seat and attending towards screen to pandemic specific goals, we worked on all.The sessions in the home setting worked in our favor in the aspect that we planned our programs and activitiesaround house hold things to make it easier and accessible for parents. There are so many opportunities at our homes for practical learning throughout the day that helps a child to generalize the learning, to different contexts. We had counting programs during practical activities like cooking or with vegetables, problem solving and life skill tasks such as sorting house hold items, pairing socks, spreading or folding clothes and cleaning things.This pandemic has been difficult but working with parents and the caregivers as a team on a virtual setup has totally made it possible for us and we surely ACE’d it, seeing our students’progress so beautifully!

Supreet Batra,
Classroom Manager.