OARacle Newsletter

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the current rate of autism diagnosis is one in every 36 children. This increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism is frequently a focus of autism acceptance in K-12 schools. However, this also means autistic children are increasingly present in local communities and participating in community activities such as playing recreational or school sports, eating in local restaurants, and playing on local playgrounds.

Yet most autism acceptance programs focus on peer education and do not typically include the local community these peers and autistic students live within. Autism acceptance lessons primarily focus on informing and educating neurotypical peers and teachers within a school building or school district. Although many other community members will interact with autistic students and adults outside of the school building, autism acceptance typically does not expand beyond the brick-and-mortar walls of schools.

Central Michigan University’s (CMU) Departments of Psychology and Communication Sciences and Disorders developed a plan to expand autism education and acceptance throughout the greater community autistic children live in. This plan included autism acceptance lessons and creating autism acceptance libraries in local schools in the Mount Pleasant, Michigan community.

Autism Acceptance Lessons

In 2020, CMU received a peer education grant from OAR to establish autism acceptance lessons in Mount Pleasant Public Schools (MPPS). The goals were to increase:

• Acceptance of autistic students within K-2 elementary schools
• Community-wide autism acceptance by creating autism acceptance libraries in each school

In the fall of 2021, CMU began autism acceptance lessons in three Mount Pleasant K-2 elementary schools. Undergraduate students majoring in communication sciences and disorders and psychology were recruited to provide seven lessons at each school. The lessons occurred monthly in individual classrooms and lasted 20 to 30 minutes. Each child received one of OAR’s Kit for Kids activity workbook. Each lesson reviewed one to two pages of the workbook.

In addition, the student teachers read children’s story books about autism to each class to conclude each lesson. They used a dialogic approach to allow students to ask and answer questions about the stories. The CMU team selected books with strong autistic characters for the lessons, which would later be donated to the autism acceptance libraries. Examples of selected books include All My Stripes by Shaina Rudolph and Danielle Royer and The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin by Julia Finley Mosca.

Children were encouraged to take their workbooks home and share what they had learned about autism with their friends and families once the workbook had been completed.

Autism Acceptance Libraries

At the end of the academic year, the children’s books read during the lessons were donated to the school library. Ten to 20 children’s books were donated to each school. Children were encouraged to check out these books and share them with their friends and families.

CMU expanded the program to other grade levels and created autism acceptance libraries in additional schools and school districts in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years. In 2022-23, the program expanded to fourth and fifth-grade classrooms in the Mount Pleasant district and in 2023-24, to two new K-5 schools. On average, each book is checked out to individual students five times per academic year, meaning that these books are being shared with 50 families annually. With seven established libraries, we estimate that 350 families in the greater Mount Pleasant community are exposed to autism acceptance through these children’s books annually

In the 2024-2025 academic year, CMU plans to provide lessons to children in grades K-5 enrolled at Renaissance Public School Academy and Beal City’s Carl D. Mayes Elementary School. By the end of the 2024-2025 school year, CMU will have established nine autism acceptance libraries, consisting of a minimum of 10 books each, throughout the greater Mount Pleasant community.

Autism education and acceptance should not be limited to school buildings. With more autistic children and adults living in our local communities, efforts like ours at CMU can help increase awareness. Our program is a small step in creating autism-friendly communities for all autistic individuals living within them.

AnnMarie Bates, M.S., CCC-SLP, is a master clinical speech language pathology educator and coordinator of summer specialty clinics at Central Michigan University. She has co-coordinated autism acceptance lessons throughout the greater Mount Pleasant area since 2021, providing lessons in seven different elementary schools, funded by OAR’s Peer Education Grant Program. She is a member of the CMU Autism Assessment and Evaluation Center. Prior to joining CMU, she was a school-based speech-language pathologist in the public elementary school setting and the building autism coach for Elliott Elementary in Holt, Michigan.