Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast. Join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Caitlin Beltran, here to bring you evidence based strategies with a student centered focus. Let's get started.
Audra Jensen: Hello, everybody. Welcome back. It is great to be with you again. Today we have a bonus episode for you in honor of World Autism Awareness Day. First, just a reminder to join our new but growing Facebook group for exclusive content and discussions. We are sharing over there short clips that we do from these podcasts, and we share all of our freebies and show notes over there.
So if you're not already part of the community, Search for us over there on Facebook and get in on the fun. Plus, we don't like to be talking in an echo chamber, so we are growing our community.
Caitlin Beltran: Yeah, we definitely want to hear your ideas for future episodes, and I would say at this point we have a free resource that we've shared for almost every episode, so I'm trying to link those each week in the group, and that's just the Misfit Behaviorists in Facebook.
Audra Jensen: Yes, and if you like the visual side of things, check us out on YouTube. That's at the, misfit behaviorist over there, especially this week. We are showing a video this week. So make sure you check that out. You can always listen as a podcast as well, but some of the visual stuff that we do, you want to check out on YouTube for that.
So for today, Caitlin, what is World Autism Awareness and Acceptance Day?
Caitlin Beltran: I feel like this is one thing we talked about in our last episode where it's just changed over time. So when I first started in the field, it was autism awareness. And now I've heard more autism acceptance or autism awareness and acceptance. So I feel like either way, no matter what you're calling it, it's just a great way to highlight.
All of the great things in our community and the great things that our ABA therapists and BCBAs and special education teachers are doing in conjunction, of course, with the families and the students with autism themselves. But I guess I just mean that because I'm thinking of it in relation to a school system.
So, from my lens, and being in the school every day, it's an awesome time to maybe bring some of that awareness to the rest of the school. And we've had a lot of cool like assemblies or buddy reads or classroom visits where we have kids really young learning about what autism is. And that's been really cool to say.
Audra Jensen: That is excellent. Autism is really about highlighting the need to help improve the quality of life for those with autism. Leads to, full and meaningful lives to be, so that they are an integral part of our society, both in the education, working in the schools, but also as they move out of the schools and into our population, our society, sometimes we forget how important it is for all of our students and learners as they get out of school and in the grocery store and in the libraries and in our communities, how important it is for us to make sure that they are part of our communities. While we, celebrate it, so to speak, in April, we want to make sure that it is part of our lives throughout the entire year and every day. So you personally, Caitlin, how has autism affected your life?
Caitlin Beltran: I would say I will share the story of, how I got into this field. So I used to babysit for a family when I was in high school and they had 2 boys and the younger child was diagnosed while I was babysitting his family, as he was a baby. So I kind of was over with the family on their journey to diagnosis, and especially again, back then so many things were different.
So I think it was a lot rougher than it would be today. And just seeing how he grew up and developed very differently and seeing the family struggle and seeing how much some of that, those skills and those teaching impacted him from so early on. I remember I was in college at the time, and I just didn't know what I wanted to do.
And all of a sudden, 1 day, I was like, oh, that's what I want to do. I want to be involved with this. So I didn't want to be a teacher, but all of a sudden I was like, Oh, I would like to be that kind of teacher. So that's when I started doing work at, a school for students with autism and changed my major and everything.
So I haven't really looked back since.
Audra Jensen: That's amazing. Well, today we have a special treat to help bring awareness to this. And on this and every day for our incredible friends and family, maybe even listeners at some point back in 2008, when Isaac, my son was in fifth grade, he was in a documentary on autism and Asperger's and I pulled a short little clip from that documentary.
That's really cute. I find it quite meaningful. he wrote a little bit about what autism meant to him. He was, I think, 10 years old at the time. So let's watch it.
How Autism Affects Me, by Isaac Jansen Well, to me, autism is a social disorder that affects my senses slightly. Sometimes when someone asks me a question, I sometimes not listen to the question and say, Sometimes when things don't go my way, I get all stressed out and keep convincing people to change their idea.
But overall, I think autism was just a particular gift that gave me a challenge in life. Maybe I'm just born with the talent. Maybe, just maybe, I'm a powerful kind of guy who, in the future, can show why that we need a bit more respect. Maybe we can stand up for ourselves and just be a true nation with different talents and stuff.
After all, we're just ourselves. That's all.
Audra Jensen: Alright. So Isaac is a powerful kind of guy, that's for sure. I think that's just a really cute little clip, and I just seen that kind of insight that he had into what autism meant. to him at the time. Certainly grown and changed over the years, but I just think it's really cute clip of what autism is to him and to many guys.
Caitlin Beltran: Yeah, and it's really cool hearing your stories about him and seeing how far he's come.
Audra Jensen: So that's it for us today. Don't forget tomorrow is our regular episode that will be out. It's a good one. We are talking about teacher burnout. So if you are feeling the weight of the job, make sure you tune in tomorrow.
Caitlin Beltran: And again, check us out in the Facebook group, The Misfit Behaviorist, and also on Instagram, Misfit Behaviorist Podcast, and share your thoughts.
Audra Jensen: Awesome. We will see you soon.
Caitlin Beltran: Bye.
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