ASD Personal Statement Essay

As of this beautiful rainy day, I work with school-age children and adolescents who have learning disabilities and/or physical disabilities. I have previously worked in a classroom environment where I loving working with children who have ASD, ADHD and other learning disabilities, for in which case it lead me on my path to wanting to be a Special Ed. Teacher, yet after working in a home environment with a beautiful young girl, I found my love outside the classroom in a child/adolescents natural environment, their home.
Currently, I have 3 clients, one with Dravet Syndrome, one with ASD and one with ADHD, not to mention one I sub for who is almost with an MR diagnosis that has ASD. Yep, this is a lot of information on what I am currently doing, yet I love the idea of going into early intervention developmental therapy, but I have found that people need help at home where there is a need for more structure to help their children be more complying because of an unstructured environment, in which case that is where I come in. I am pursuing my RBT license and believe I will be able to do what I have done for over the past 5 years, helping

children/adolescents outside the classroom in their natural environment.
The way I organize my approach to motivating and guiding the children/adolescent I work with is first getting to know them, after all, special needs children have to get to know me and I them, so if they are on ABA therapy, I have to do what is required of their therapy, but I also have fun with using the work as questions such as for instance my client may be needing sensory therapy, in which case I may use yoga poses and instead of just telling the child what pose to do I to do the pose and have a little fun competition on who can stay in the pose longer, in which case I usually lose and the child cheers for beating me, in which case we move to another yoga pose and I try again.

This helps them learn to have fun with me and realize I am there for tutoring them yet I can also be there to have fun while

working.
When it comes to motivation and guidance strategies I may use in my approach with children/adolescents is honestly everything because special needs children are usually not consistent with what they maintain and consistency is always beneficial in them retaining what they have learned, regression can happen over a weekend, yet staying on task keeps them motivated, yet changing the pace of how the child/adolescent is learning is how I can either slow it down to help them understand it or up the pace because they know the answers and are ready to move to the next lesson/subject. I will say when I am working with these children/adolescents that everything they do is a milestone, so unlike a traditional classroom environment, they have my undivided attention on the average of 5 to 6 hours, unlike a classroom where they may or may not have an aide and the teacher works at the pace of the other students, where I work at the pace of just one student.