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Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Episode 79: More Than Words: A Parent's Perspective on Autism
In this powerful episode of the Compass PD Podcast, Michelle Kearns—educator and mother to her son Gehrig, who is on the autism spectrum—joins Dr. Natalie Fallert to build upon her touching blog More Than Words: An Autism Journey. Michelle shares what she wishes every educator, parent, and student knew about autism, and how we can all do better to cultivate true belonging in our schools.
From leading through compassion to making space for students’ interests, Michelle offers heartfelt stories and practical advice from both her professional and personal experiences. She encourages teachers to view autism as a difference, not a deficit, and reminds us all that every student’s needs and gifts are unique.
Whether you're a classroom teacher, leader, or parent, this episode will inspire you to create a more inclusive, understanding, and joyful learning environment. (And yes, we know the audio gets a little wonky—but we promise, this conversation is worth it!)
Thank you for joining us on the Compass PD podcast. I'm Dr Natalie Fallert with Compass PD and today I am joined by Michelle Kearns. Welcome, michelle.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 1:So if you've been listening to the podcast lately, you will notice that we've been working to create opportunities to support education as a system. One way we're doing this is by having the Compass PD team talk with different stakeholders about what needs to be on their radar and the predictable problems they will face throughout the school year. An additional layer we have added is bringing guests on who are outside of our organization but have worked with us in some way to share their stories, especially in the areas where we are not experts Today. I am happy that Michelle will be sharing her story with us. Our hope is that you gain some insight into the topic and find ways to take this learning and make education even better. Then come back and share it with us, because that is how we collectively get better as an organization. So Michelle and I have known each other for I don't know how many years, like, say, at least 15, if not more Gosh, probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say 14 or 15, right, at least yes.
Speaker 1:When we started talking about showcasing autism for the month of April, we were looking for or thinking about people to write blogs for us, and Michelle's just came into mind because immediately that's where my mind went, because I just think that she has such an amazing story with her son, garig and their family, and so we had asked her to write a blog. So we're going to start with, like what were your thoughts whenever I asked you to do that, and kind of working through that process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, when you first asked me, I was very excited. I am definitely more vocal about Gehrig and his autism in April, right, just because it's kind of the way of the world, with it being awareness month pretty, you know worldwide world, with it being awareness month pretty, you know worldwide. And I'm not apprehensive to share our story by any means, because I really feel like it benefits anybody who's willing to listen, especially other families with children with autism, especially teachers, given that he's going to be 16. And we've learned a lot throughout this process of how to talk to people, how to talk to kids, how to talk to teachers in IEP meetings about what autism looks like with him.
Speaker 1:So when you first asked, I was very excited, right, very, very excited, just to have another opportunity to share his story with people it's interesting because I know Garrick, because we've been around him for years, but I learned so much from your blog, even though I know your family and I've been around him. Um, it just there were parts that you don't notice, like you really don't notice or pay attention to, and so I really loved reading that, and so if you have not read Michelle's blog, it is a must read and you need to make sure that you put that on your to do list. So when I first read like the unedited version of her blog, I immediately shared it with the Compass PD team and I was like you guys got to read this.
Speaker 2:It's such a heartwarming story.
Speaker 1:It's just a feel good story about your life, and after publishing it, our founder, Dr Carrie Hepburn, wanted more from Michelle, so she asked me. She was like will you invite her and see if she will come and do a podcast with you and talk a little bit more about her story? Specifically, there were two questions that we felt were important to ask and we're not really covered in the blog, and so we're going to kind of kick off with one of those. So the first question is what do you wish every educator or parent understood about supporting children with autism, not just during Autism Awareness Month, but every day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. You have to view it through a lens as a parent looking for a community of support. I think one of the things that you know as a parent, that was the most I don't want to say difficult, but it is. It's not an easy road. One of the things that's most difficult is feeling like you have a group that you, as a parent, belong to, because a lot of times, like you said, you know you have a lot of friends. You do things with other families. It doesn't always mean that somebody has a child, that's that's different, that's neurodivergent in some way. So I think for from the parenting perspective, you know, finding that community was really important and and I did it by, you know, going through Facebook right Gehrig 16, facebook had been around for a little while trying to find groups to network with and I found one just as easy was autism moms. That was kind of my stepping stone to learning a little bit more about how I was going to navigate this road. From a teacher perspective, I think that one of the most important things is that you try to look at your students right With the compassion you don't have any experience with until you have a student with autism. Right, like I said before, when you meet one student with autism, you've met one person with autism. They're not the same. Everything is totally different.
Speaker 2:One of the best ways that I was able to relate to the process of going from you know, toddlerhood all the way to you know, post adolescence was actually through a movie and my husband being a principal when I being a teacher, you know, we we sat down and there's a movie and I don't know if you're familiar with it, natalie. It's about a young man named Owen Susskind and his dad, a Pulitzer Prize writer, and when he was young the things started going different. He stopped talking around the age of three or four and you see this happen in videos that they had just home, videos that they had taken of him when he was little. So when he's young, he's talking to his parents, he's, you know, interacting with his brother, he's got an older brother and everything, and then, all of a sudden, you see this regression happen. So we watched this movie, life Animated, and when it was done, we watched, we had our kids watch it.
Speaker 2:I said this is this would be the best way for anyone who's not familiar with autism, be it a parent or an educator to take an hour of their time and try to view children with autism through the right and understanding in a brief amount of time. And so I really told Spencer. I said if, for professional development purposes, you could show this movie to every teacher that's going to interact with our son, it would be amazing, right? And of course, obviously right, they, you know, can't do that. Disney owns it, whatever. But as as far as being able to provide people with a very simple way instead of saying, hey, go read this book. Or, and if you don't have a family that you could talk to or have experience with, this would be a great tool for you to use.
Speaker 2:What's the name of the movie? It's, it's called Life Animated. It's the story of a kid named Owen Suskin is his name. It's actually called that because when Owen is little and he stops talking, he kind of speaks gibberish. Right, like all of our kids with autism are different, but a lot of times, right.
Speaker 2:The verbal part is very, very difficult, especially when they're young, when they're toddlers, when they're pre preschool years and through their younger elementary school years. The verbalization is the biggest thing because so many of them are nonverbal. Or if they are verbal. It's very intermittent, right they're. They focus so much on one thing, that's all they want to talk about.
Speaker 2:And in the movie life anime, echolalia, right, which is just the repetitive speech that kids with autism use a lot of times, what they want to express themselves. So the only thing they can express a lot of times is something they're very familiar with in this case, this case, it was animated Disney movies. So he takes on the characters in different movies and that's how he starts talking to his parents. You know, gehrig was very much like that with the echolalia speech when he was little. He wouldn't say a lot, but a lot of it was that repetitive he had heard until he came into more words, but that didn't happen, for, you know, really expressing himself in a way that we lot, but a lot of it was that repetitive he had heard until he came into more words, but that didn't happen, for, you know, really expressing himself in a way that we could totally understand, and a lot of kids with autism are like that.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting that, like I haven't heard of that movie, so now I'm going to go watch it Life Animated. So that's another plug of something that you can do quickly and learn about it. And I just think that I'm old school, right, and we're about the same age that I think of. When I think of autism, I go back to Rain man. That was kind of, I think, my first ever experience with it growing up or on like having any understanding. But then, as an educator, I will agree with you in the fact that there are predictable problems with some kids that are on IEPs.
Speaker 1:But like autism, you're right. Like I have never had two kids who are the same. I have had a lot of them who are hyper focused on something, but they still just their executive functioning is different. It is very interesting I never thought about it until I read your blog and until you also are talking about it now that when I go back and I think about all the students that I've had in my professional career who were autistic, that like they were all different.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's one of the things too I think, right as a teacher from you know the educator's perspective, understanding that autism it's not a deficit, right, it's, it's not, it's not a deficit, it is a difference. I really do believe that there is there's, there's a very important understanding that goes with that, because a lot of times you know that that initial thought process as an educator right, especially after we read IEPs and the goals and all of those kinds of things is you know, how am I going to make up for this? What am I going to be able to do to, you know, to bridge these gaps and everything? Are there deficits? Yes, but the autism itself is not necessarily the deficit, right, it's just understanding that it is a difference and you're going to have to go about things differently as an educator. No two strategies are going to work for.
Speaker 1:I and tell me if you think that this is wrong or not. But I do remember, with one of the students that I had, we really just focused on on his strengths, and so he loved sports, like absolutely loved sports. So it's like I was an English teacher and it was like then write about sports, Like everything you can do can be writing about sports, because I didn't care what the content was, I wanted to know what his writing ability was and what his thought process was in that, and so we really that's what we focused on, which I guess some people could argue and say well, shouldn't they learn to write about other things? And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure they should, but like I'm here to teach them the writing process, so I don't care what they're writing.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, no, and that's very true because you know that's where they find comfort. So much of autism is that anxiety piece. Right Comes along with it that people, people don't realize, you know, when they are perseverating on a topic, be it in conversation or in a behavior, that they do that you know they're just doing that because of the anxiety they have and that is their comfort level. That's what they're doing so that they can feel comfortable in your space, you know. And so if you do find anything, it's like any other student, right, like you find the hook, whatever the hook is right, and you bring them in and you get them going on.
Speaker 2:You know whatever, yeah, whatever topic they're comfortable with is kids with autism are no different, right, and if you've got one, you did those right and you know that, natalie, you've been around them enough, right, everything is wheel of fortune, you know. Everything is is. You know the price is right, you know, but you can find something like that and it's okay, right, it's okay because that gives them comfort, that puts them at ease, that takes that anxiety level and it brings it down for them. And that's one of the things in creating a classroom that's accepting that they're going to feel like, okay, I do have something to offer here, and maybe everybody else is writing about something very intense and very scholarly. But if they're doing what you ask, using that topic of their choice or whatever it might be, then so be it, because you're going to be able to see what they can do if they're comfortable. It's like any other student.
Speaker 1:But I also I don't know if I ever told you this. Does Garrett know that I was on? The Price is Right.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think he does.
Speaker 1:No. So when I was in college, my roommate we went to California and my roommate got on the Price is Right and she won the showcase showdown. I have it on VHS tape.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, he would love that, right, yes, yeah, oh, that's like one of his goals in life. Right Is to, because we've looked into it. Trust me, you can go and you can be a member of the audience at 16, but you can't be a contestant until 18. So, yeah, that's definitely one of his goals would be to be able to go out there and and be on that, or, of course, wheel of Fortune. Yeah, yeah, that's too funny, I did not know that about you.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's move on to the creating that and cultivating that in a classroom setting.
Speaker 2:I think the most important thing you can do, no matter the age of the students that you're teaching, is to approach differences positively and to teach differences in kids from a positive perspective, right, instead of maybe the one that society presents to us sometimes. You know it's negative any kind of differences is a negativity. When our children were little, there are a lot of different books that you can read. I mean, being an elementary school teacher, right, I was always about picture books and that kind of thing in my classroom and so when Garrick was probably probably around three-ish, right, and the kids were typical, started to really kind of ask a little bit more questions as he got a little bit older. So I found some picture books about kids that are different, specifically kids with autism or kids at night. Instead of, you know, reading just whatever books, I'd throw a book in there about a kiddo with autism. I took those books and I took them into my classroom. I didn't have a lot of kiddos with autism in the regular ed setting, I really didn't, but I felt like it was important for me to start doing that even to my classic kids. I didn't have kids on IEPs, you know. I've been in a situation where you know, in my elementary school there's like literally 12 classes of third grade. It was not a co-teaching classroom, but I wanted to expose them just because that is what cultivates that, that environment of inclusion. So if we can start teaching kids from a very young age that, hey, these are some differences that we have and it's okay to ask questions and let them be comfortable asking those questions so that they can learn about it. Because, just like any intervention, the younger you start, the more you're going to learn, the more you're going to accept, the more open you're going to be to differences. That was true for our family from a parenting perspective and it's also true from an educator's perspective and to you know, to just make sure that you know, if kids do have questions, ask, make them comfortable asking when they're with their peers.
Speaker 2:The inclusion that, as a mom, that I seek for Garrett is not one necessarily from an academic perspective, I feel like the goals and things in his IEP. All of that is very important to his academic success. The inclusion that is also as equally meaning to us is from a social perspective. Garrett comes in my classroom at the end of the school day and Garrett will come in my classroom because he's on a different schedule and he'll sit in there for about half an hour or so.
Speaker 2:I will have kids who will, you know? They'll look over at him because he's flapping his hands. I mean, he's almost 16 years old, he's six, four, and he's over there just flapping his hands, you know, because he's thinking about something or he's looking at something on, you know, one of my Chromebooks or whatever he's doing, and they'll ask, like, what's he doing? Why is he doing that? Right, and I'm happy to tell them because I want them to understand and I want them to see and approach it from, you know, a view of compassion, like I said before, because we've got to cultivate that in their peers, you know, and the younger we can do that, I feel like, the better off our kids are going to be when it comes to people of many differences, not just ones with autism. I think that that's probably one of the most important things that can do for those kids.
Speaker 1:I find that interesting because I think that I've shared this before on the podcast. But my boys are adopted. We have never hidden that from anybody. It is something that we speak very openly about and I think that sometimes people don't want to talk about things because they think it might be rude to ask or any of those things. But I feel that the more that we do talk about it, the more we normalize it and the more that we understand that, like I tell my boys all the time that them being adopted is part of their identity. It is part of who they are and that will never change. It's interesting because it has opened up a lot of conversations with people. Like people ask questions about it and want to know more, and so I love how open your family is with discussing this because I think that it does open up that opportunity for people to not be afraid to ask questions and to learn and grow and become more accepting and understanding.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and the diversity of thought, right, not getting trapped in what seems to be accepted or what is okay, you know, in the world around us, and and trying to approach that when kids are younger, you know, I think that's part of why Gehrig siblings are the way they are. This is all they've ever known, right, life with a brother with autism is all they have experienced. I think that because of that and it's been around them their whole lives and they've always asked the questions because it's their brother, so they're comfortable, right, it's your family. You know that I'd like to think that they are more open to the differences in people.
Speaker 2:Some of our friends from when we went to Four Paws for Ability to train to get Frodo Garak's service dog A lot of different differences there amongst the kids who were receiving service dogs. Some had a physical disability and it was a very unique experience because we got to be around families who we just talked about it. There was no elephant in the room when one of our kids was, you know, seeking a door to a low. When we're sitting there in the middle of our training and, you know, one of the dads jumps out of his chair because his kid's literally about to go out the door, and that group of people who aren't scared to talk about things.
Speaker 2:So you have to provide that in your classroom, you have to provide that in your home so that people are accepting of who your child is right, because if we're ever going to get to the belonging we have to, you know, we have to get through those kind of unspoken walls and barriers that are just up in society as a whole when it comes to neurotypical people. You know, and and the only way we're going to do that is by podcast, by people talking about talking it out and being comfortable and getting uncomfortable in the process, like I said in the blog, right, you have to. You're going to have to get uncomfortable sometimes, and that's okay. That's okay. That's how we learn.
Speaker 1:Right, I 100% agree with that. That. You know, learning is messy. We falter through it, but that is how we do learn and grow. So I want to thank you, michelle, for joining me and talking about your journey. If you don't know, compass PD aims to impact the learning of 1 million students. One way you can help us meet that goal is by sharing this podcast with a fellow educator. If you've not taken anything away from today, make sure that you read Michelle's blog and also check out the movie Life Animated. Learn a little bit more about autism through that perspective. So thank you for joining us on the Compass PD podcast. Remember, at Compass PD, we believe that every educator has the power to inspire, change and transform student learning. Stay focused, stay inspired and keep making a difference. Thank you so much, Michelle. I loved having you on here and talking with me about this topic.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for the opportunity, natalie and to Compass PD, for branching out and looking at all stakeholders in this setting, in classrooms and as far as parenting goes and families go, because it really does extend well beyond the four walls of our classrooms.