I have had the opportunity in the last year to see education through very different eyes than I have previously. On the one hand, I was persuaded by a colleague and professor at the University of Alberta to finish the Doctorate I started many years ago at MIT. On the other, there is the experience of watching and participating in the learning experience of an autistic child – my son. They have both shaken me to the core.
I have become a student once again and found in that the great joy of challenging yourself as a researcher to discover new things and seriously think through some of the issues and ideas that had awaken my interest in graduate school so many years ago. I have re-learned calculus and inferential statistical analysis and found that interesting but a whole lot of work - all done in the evenings, the weekends and on vacation because my real job is at Stantec.
But none of those challenges can equal those that my son is experiencing. From his early childhood we knew there would be problems although it took quite some time to hear a definitive diagnosis – autism. He was simply not wired in the same way that we recognize as normal in the development of most children. He was challenged and the first of those major challenges was learning to read. Although a diagnosis was a few years away, we knew he responded to one-on-one interactions very well and so we went twice a week to the Centre for Literacy in Edmonton. The Centre was an offshoot of a research program at the University of Alberta where I was University Architect at the time. In the course of the next couple of years, we saw him slowly learn to read and he would make strides that placed him very near his peers in his ability to read and understand what he was reading.
However, the schools available to us could not handle the needs of this one child. He was placed with other “special needs” children and no-one in that classroom was attended to in a manner that would make any significant difference to them. He hated every day he spent in school and we despaired over the public and separate school system that we felt had abandoned these children. We needed to find an environment that would help him grow and learn in his way and at his pace.
After much searching, we decided to place him in a private school in Vancouver. It was the best decision we have ever made. At first, the principal of the elementary school was reluctant to take him on. This school system – the private Catholic School System in British Columbia - would place him in the same class as his peer group, but provide him with one-on-one help and develop a learning plan matched to his capabilities. They did take him on, and by the end of his first year, the school saw him as an integral part of their small community. He would take that into St. Patrick’s Regional Secondary School and continue the attitude of inclusion and help – both directly from the school and with the resources the Government of British Columbia have made available to autistic children and adults.
This week, he received his school’s award for outstanding achievement. No PhD can match what we have seen in his struggle to learn and the dedication we have seen in the people who work with him. I am humbled by what many may take as a normal process for a teen-aged child. For this particular teenager, it is extraordinary and I look at being a student again through his eyes where the simple ability to read is wonder and the development of his social network - so difficult for autistic children - takes shape.
