Personal Reflection
When I received the email last year from Dr Cathy Little about completing a 15-hour field placement with a young person or kid with an identified disability, I was thrilled because this is an area that I have little experience in. The field placement was the first time that I was working and interacting with someone who has autism. The only thing that I knew about autism before the field placement was what I had heard of and seen on the television, and that was that people who had been diagnosed with autism often had extreme difficulty regulating their behaviour. This left me feeling eager to learn about what I might experience and to gain first-hand experience.
As I progressed throughout the fieldwork, I came to understand the student as a very bright, caring, and happy individual who can sometimes struggle to regulate his emotions and have occasional outbursts. Anytime the student upset someone, he was always quick to apologise and offer a hug to his classmates. While working with this student, I found that it could be both rewarding and sometimes challenging. When it was challenging, the student was either ignoring the teacher and me or having an outburst which was hard for me to watch and could at times make me feel sad for him. However, this made it more rewarding to see him happy and participating in the classroom.
The experience reminded me that our classrooms are diverse places and that we should make every effort as teachers to get to know and understand our students because by…
