Thematic PhotoBooks in Public School

Mr Kajow- a special teacher for special children
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  Mr. Kajow works in a traditional public elementary school as a Special Education teacher. In his school, as with many schools around the country there can be as many six or seven autistic children in his classroom at any given time. In the past, autism was considered to be a relatively rare condition, and many public schools were simply not able to take on the complications of the autistic children in their classrooms.  Today, because there are so many autistic diagnoses every year, it is more and more likely to have more autistic children in a public school than ever before. A survey done about ten years ago showed that teachers believed that at least 1.5% of their children had disabilities related to ASD.

  Mr. Kajow’s shared with me a list of characteristics of those with autism and the difficulties they may have when interacting with people in the general public. He understands that his students’ words and actions can often be misinterpreted as being disrespectful or hostile. A person with ASD might:
·   Not understand what is expected of them, often misinterpreting a movement or

verbal prompt

·   Not respond to commands

·   Not respond to nonverbal cues such as facial expressions or tone of voice

·   Run or move away when approached rather than being open to approach

·   Be unable to communicate with words, often turning away in frustration rather

than in disinterest

·   Be unable to express feelings

·   Only repeat what is said to them, sounding as if they are mocking, when they’re really trying to join in the conversation   

·   Only talk about what interests them, even when that topic is of no interest to anyone else

·   Avoid eye contact, giving the appearance of being disinterested

·   Appear argumentative or stubborn, unyielding, shunning overtures of friendship because they misinterpreted a social cue

·   Say “No!” or “Yes!” in response to all questions

·   Have difficulty judging personal space, coming far too close and being perceived as annoying, or standing far apart giving the impression of being disinterested in the activity

·   Try to avoid sensory input (e.g., flashing lights, sirens, crowd noise) due to hypersensitivity of sight and sound

·   Have a decreased cognitive ability when experiencing heightened anxiety or

frustration, giving the impression of being slow and stupid rather than just

confused

·   Become anxious or agitated, producing fight or flight responses or behaviors such as screaming, hand flapping

·   Speak in a monotone voice with unusual pronunciations

·   Reverse pronouns (“Can you play?” instead of “Can I play?”)

·   Have problems speaking at the correct volume, either far too loud or soft

·   May, if verbal, be honest to the point of bluntness or rudeness, not understanding the concept of tact

  Mr. Kajow’s dedication to his occupation cannot be ignored.  He believes that it is  his responsibility to make the experience of being in school easier for autistic children, and has made it his life’s mission to help others understand the behavior of autistic children.  He has recognized that autistic children have little or no concept of social cues.

  They do not understand that a raised voice indicates anger or frustration.  They do not perceive angry looks on a person’s face because they usually avoid eye contact with other people.

  Mr. Kajow believes he may have a slight degree of Asperger’s himself, and felt
that while he was in school as a boy no one wanted him around.  His teachers often excluded him from common activities in the classroom.  He recalled numerous times when he was actually “put in his own class” where the teacher would make him sit in a chair at a desk that had tall sides on it, commonly called a study corral. His teacher would say, “You are in your own math class.  Do not leave this chair until you complete all these problems.” Mr. Kajow acknowledges that he had a lot of trouble in school, and had it not been for one or two kindly teachers who really made an attempt to understand him he would never have made it through.  He is now a Special Education teacher and he wants to make a difference for the autistic children in his school.  His interest in PhotoBooks was most enthusiastic.

  His first project was to work on helping autistic children socialize with other
children in their classrooms.  Most autistic children believe that the socially popular kids in their school are mind-readers of some sort, they can immediately know and understand something without anything ever being said.  The autistic child has trouble reading expressions on faces, and does not understand social conventions that indicate that another child may be interested in playing with them.

  Mr. Kajow decided to create a “Facial Expression” PhotoBook where he would
first take pictures of the faces of each of his children.  They would talk about different emotional states, anger, sadness, happiness, frustration, thinking, dreaming, hope, pleading.  They worked together as a class talking about different feelings. Most of his kids were used to hamming it up in front of the camera, and for the first few days, every child would slap on a huge grin that showed their teeth and tonsils.  After a couple of days of this, Mr. Kajow printed and posted these pictures on the wall. He left them there for a few days so that the novelty of seeing their photographs would wear off.  Then he
talked to his class. “Is this how we look all the time?”   They all realized that they didn’t always look like that when they were in their “normal” state.  This led to a discussion about what different kinds of expression they might have on their faces at different times.

Mr. Kajow suggested that when they see one of their classmates doing something they thought was “interesting” that they were given permission to go and take a picture of that person, then to say “Thank you,” when they were done.  By the end of the week, Mr. Kajow had dozens of pictures.  He made certain that every child had numerous expressions that had been captured on film so that each child could create his or her own PhotoBook on Expressions.

  Once they had pictures of one another, Mr. Kajow talked to teachers in the
students’ mainstreamed classrooms and asked permission for his kids to take pictures of various activities that go on in the other classrooms.  His main goal was to get his autistic spectrum kids to understand expressions were a form of communication, and he wanted his kids to learn how to take what they were learning in his classroom and transfer that knowledge into other areas of their lives at school.

  Another week passed, and again, most of his kids did a pretty good job of
capturing various events in other classrooms.  They photographed tables of students working together on a project showing focused faces and sharing of materials like pencils and crayons from jars in the middle of the table. They brought in pictures of children on the playground playing different games like jumprope or kickball. They brought in pictures of students in the cafeteria, lining up to get their hot lunch and at the tables eating.  Mr. Kajow’s students were very busy photographers.  It was the first time they felt as though they were “special” in a good way because no one else in the school was going around taking pictures of various activities.

Once they had gathered all the photographs together, Mr. Kajow selected several
social situations that he believed his children faced on a regular basis. One was to work “committee style” on a regular classroom project.  The other was to learn how to join a game on the playground.  Mr. Kajow’s entire class worked together on the two PhotoBooks. He hoped that once they completed the classroom PhotoBooks that it would later be used for new students in his classroom next year. Once the classroom book was done, he wanted each student would be able to choose a PhotoBook topic for him or herself.

  Mr. Kajow’s school belongs to a cluster of schools in a larger metropolitan area, and while each school cannot have a trained interpreter or facilitator, they have the services of one who travels from school to school working with the autistic spectrum students.  This individual helps the children to work on understanding the vast variety of communication styles humans utilize.  A little known fact about communication is that when people are face-to-face, ninety percent of their communication is actually nonverbal.  This is a very difficult statistic for those on the autistic spectrum.  Most autistic individuals have little skill reading facial expressions and body language, interpreting tone of voice, especially sarcasm, and voice pitch. This facilitator would come in once every two weeks to coach the students on various social interpretation topics.

  As they worked on the PhotoBooks, Mr. Kajow noticed that many of the children
talked about anger as something “red” and “hot” and “feeling like your going to
explode”. He would gently suggest that faces depicting anger be placed on paper of a corresponding color. His experience has taught him that helping his students to color code to feelings they sometimes performed better when they were able to just think of the color rather than trying always to remember the hundreds of expressions the human face can make.

 Committee Work
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  For the Committee PhotoBook, Mr. Kajow had the students decide on a project
that they might be working on in their regular classroom.  Most of his students were required to work “committee style” which forces all children to learn to work and interact with the other students in their classroom.  They decided to focus on a Social Science project where they were to take news clippings from the middle of the table, choose one that they were interested in, cut it out, past it in the correct place on their worksheet, then they had to draw a picture depicting their topic and write a title.  Each student is required to work independently, but shares space at a large table. In the center of the table are
containers of pencils, scissors, crayons, markers, glue sticks.  There is a stack of many news clippings on sea animals.  There is also a stack of worksheets.   

  This provides the students with numerous opportunities to see how they can work
with a group of other children sharing materials while creating their own page.  Mr. Kajow insisted that they take pictures showing good sharing techniques.  He also suggested that they might take some pictures of people who refused to share, or were hoarding their materials. Each day Mr. Kajow’s class worked for an hour at a time on his PhotoBook project.  The first step was to decide what kinds of topics needed to be included.  Sharing was the most important, but because he was still very interested in the social interaction aspect, Mr. Kajow also suggested that they include the faces of children who were working hard, of the children who were talking, of the children who were not “on task” looking around, or misbehaving in some manner.

  Little by little, Mr. Kajow’s PhotoBook on Committee Work came together.

·   Page One: The first page showed an empty table with all the supplies and
necessary papers in the center of the table.  The caption read, “Project Time”.

·   Page Two: This showed pictures of the students sitting at the table before they began their project.  One picture showed a student who was looking over his
shoulder, and that had a caption of “Pay Attention”. The main page title was
“Time for Work”.

·   Page Three: This page showed students with their hand out, obviously asking for something.  These had a caption that said something like, “Please pass the
scissors”. A picture next to it would show another student handing scissors over in a safe manner with a caption that said, “Here you go.” A third picture on this page shows the original student saying, “Thank you,” and finally a fourth picture that has a caption saying “You’re welcome.”

·   Pages Four – Eight: These pages were very similar to page three, but it shows
different students asking for a worksheet, a glue stick, a pencil, certain crayon
colors, etc.  All the pages repeated the captions that depict the students asking
politely for another student to pass them something, then saying “Thank you,” and
“You’re welcome.”

·   Page Nine: This page showed the students working hard, with appropriate
captions praising their industrious behavior.

   Page Ten and Eleven: These pages showed a time or two when a student was not
working on task, or was hoarding some of the supplies. 

·   Page Twelve: This page had pictures of the students holding up their completed projects.

  Time spent on the Committee Work PhotoBook was very helpful for Mr. Kajow’s
students.  He noticed that while they were in the process of creating the PhotoBook, he heard more discussion of manners and more words of “please” and “thank you” than he’d ever heard in his classroom before.  Once they completed the PhotoBook, they decided to post each page up on the walls of Mr. Kajow’s classroom so that other students would see it.  That week the school held a Parents’ Night, where parents came to meet the teachers and their children’s classmates.  Nearly every parent in the classroom exclaimed over the
PhotoBook pages that were posted on the wall.  They all wanted to try the activity at home, but claimed they didn’t know where to start. Mr. Kajow said, “Just do it!” It’s easier than you think!

Playground Games 
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  Mr. Kajow’s next PhotoBook project was entitled “Playground Games”. Every
time he was on the playground, Mr. Kajow would try to encourage his autistic students to join in some of the games with the other students.  He noticed that they constantly misread the signs other students were making.  For example, he would tried to encourage one student to join in a kickball game.  When one of the players kicked the ball at his student, the boy turned in fear and ran away.  He believed that the ball kicked in his direction had been an act of aggression.  Mr. Kajow had to explain to him that when someone kicked a ball at him, he was to kick it back. Mr. Kajow understood that this was a little more difficult a topic than he first expected, so he and the school language facilitator would take pictures of various scenes on the playground for the students to use in their PhotoBook.

Because his students were so socially inept, he knew that they would have a much harder time understanding the very subtle nuances of body language, facial expressions, and physical actions. 

  In order to keep his students interested in the project, however, he continued to have them take pictures of different events on the playground, and when they sat down to work on the PhotoBook every morning, he was very pleased to see them really focusing in on the faces of their classmates.  That way they were able to talk about what different expressions meant, when someone was friendly and approachable, and when someone was angry, upset, and best left alone.

  Again,they worked on the PhotoBook one page at a time. Each morning, Mr.
Kajow would read from the Committee Work PhotoBook that they had completed in time for Parents’ Night to remind them of good behavior when working on a group project. By this time, Mr. Kajow had also printed and laminated photographs of the classroom committee tables showing where he wanted all the supplies were kept in the center of the tables.  Each morning, before work on their favorite project, the PhotoBook, started, Mr. Kajow asked certain students to make the tables look like they did in the pictures.  This way he was able to give his students the task of preparing the work station.  Little by little, more and more photographs were appearing throughout Mr. Kajow’s classroom that hadn’t been put into a PhotoBook yet, but he was using the technique in other areas of his teaching.

  The Playground Games PhotoBook was laid out in this way:


·   Page One: This showed an empty playground with no children milling about.

·   Page Two: Page two showed a picture of three of Mr. Kajow’s students standing
on the outskirts of various activities with many children playing in the
background. A second picture of the same students was a closeup, and the sadness
and longing in their faces was really heartbreaking.

·   Page Three: Showed two girls swinging a jumprope with a third girl jumping.
One of Mr. Kajow’s female students was in the background, again looking longingly at the jumprope.

·   Pages Four – Five: These pages showed other children in various games on the
playground: on the swingset, on the slide, on the teeter-totter, playing marbles, on the jungle gym, playing kickball, playing tag.

·   Pages Six – Eight: These pages showed a closeup of a student with a ball in his hands, his eyebrows are up, his mouth was open and the caption on this one was a big, huge, “Wanna Play?” Another picture showed a little girl extending her hand with the end of the jumprope in it, implying that she wanted someone to twirl the rope for her.  There was another picture showing one student pushing another on the swingset. When Mr. Kajow would read this book aloud to his class, showing them the pictures, they would spend the longest amount of time on these pages. 

·   Page Nine – Ten: These showed pictures of Mr. Kajow’s kids playing on the
playground with other students, and he had at least one closeup of each of his kids with them smiling to one degree or another.  These smiles were not the same
 “fake” smiles the kids usually gave when someone came around them with a camera.  These were real smiles of pleasure and joy.

 .  Pages Eleven – Twelve: These showed pictures of children enjoying their playground activities, with captions that were positive reinforcements.  “Don’t run away, we want you to play!”   

Recommendations
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  Mr. Kajow understands that a single PhotoBook would not completely ease his
students’ feelings of being uncomfortable and unsure in social situations, but he believes that he sees a difference already, and can tell that his kids are beginning to visualize themselves as being more successful in their social encounters. 

  One more thing that Mr. Kajow tries to teach his students is that they should try to find fellow classmates who share an interest in something, whether it is music, running, or bugs. He explains to his students that they will make more friends in the life when they share things with people who are already interested in them too.

  When Mr. Kajow first began the PhotoBook projects with his students, he asked
his kids to take pictures of what they considered to be appropriate social behavior. Some of the pictures his kids took and demanded that he print were pretty strange. Pretty soon he realized that he had to let go of the idea of what makes up a “good” picture. All too often adults project their own ideas of perfection onto the kids. Without meaning to, we’re putting them down, somehow diminishing their efforts. Try, whenever possible, to include most of the photos that the kids take. Discard them only if the child has a valid reason for discarding.  You don’t have to use every picture, keep extras in a folder. He
also reports that some of his students are bringing pictures of their home life, many of them are of their pets, of their room, or of the supper table. He continues to encourage this kind of behavior, and is very excited to see it bleeding over into other aspects of their life outside of school.  Most of the parents in his classroom are supportive, but they’re not sure they really understand the purpose behind the photographs. Mr. Kajow admits that he was skeptical too when he only heard about the idea and hadn’t yet seen the book, but
now that he’s seen some of the results of all their efforts, he really believes that the PhotoBook idea has a lot of promise.

  Social understanding includes everything from facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, figurative vs. literal language, and that all important but most confusing category of “feelings”.  People on the autism spectrum have a very difficult time expressing themselves in terms of “feelings” and yet they can tell you when they feel left out.  They certainly know that they are different. The use of PhotoBooks can help them on their journey of discovery learning just a little bit more than they knew the day before.

PhotoBooks don’t work quite as well when talking about tone of voice, it is pretty difficult to show sarcasm in a photograph, but showing facial and physical cues in a photograph is often enough to begin a conversation that will bear fruit eventually.