Supplementing Our Work With Real People in The Uppers (6th-8th)
Teaching a book for the second consecutive time allows teachers to delve even deeper into the material, try new lessons, and uncover subtleties and details that might have been overlooked. When I revisited Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine, I wanted to foster a more effective and engaging learning environment around neurodiversity. A couple of parents shared resources with me and I was inspired by one particular video. Amythest Schaber is an autistic adult who began making informative videos about autism many years ago. It's reported that she has stopped making new videos due to being trolled online. Trolling is when someone posts or comments online with the intention of upsetting others. The seventh and eighth graders in my literacy class have watched many of Amythest’s Youtube videos and wrote letters to share about the work we are doing in class and the impact the videos have had on our learning. Enjoy the rich tapestry of students' heartfelt expressions as their diverse experiences and perspectives unfold in this short series of letters.
February 29, 2024
Dear Amythest,
In school we’ve been reading a book called Mockingbird. The book is about a girl named Caitlin who is autistic. We also connected to the book by watching your “Ask an Autistic” videos. I have ADHD so I'm not neurotypical, but I feel like I still had some distorted beliefs about neurodiversity. I am SO glad I watched your videos because I feel like I've learned so many things about autism! I really enjoyed your video about how to be an ally because it really opened my mind to the ways that autistic people are mistreated that I had never even thought about before! I really liked the part where you explained how autistic people are very capable and that they can do a lot of things just as well as neurotypical people and some things even better. After we watched the video our teacher showed us an image that was a human saying to 5 different animals, “Ok you all have the same test, climb that tree.” The animals were all different. One was a monkey, one was a seal, one was a dog, one was an elephant, and one was a fish. How can you expect a fish to climb a tree? And although a fish may not be able to climb a tree as well as a monkey, a fish could definitely swim a lot better than a monkey. I thought this was such a cool analogy to put the neurodivergent community into perspective. I just really want to say thank you for educating me and many other people. I understand how it can be hard to have to be the one educating everyone and I just want to tell you how grateful I am for your work.
Sincerely,
Emma
Feb. 29, 2024
Dear Amythest Schaber,
First of all I want to say, thank you for providing information to everyone and telling them the truth about the autistic community. You have told me so many things that I never knew. In school we have been reading a book called Mockingbird about an autistic 10-year-old kid named Caitlin who has a hard time already, but then her brother Devon dies in a school shooting. That not only made her life super confusing, but also made her work super hard at coping with Devon dying.
I wanted to mention that I hate the people that discourage you and bully you, you are an amazing hard-working person and you are hopefully inspiring people to speak up about the things that are hard in the world. Just because the world is tough sometimes, it doesn’t mean you should give up. I learned that from you; so thank you for helping me know that. I also think that you are super brave and awesome for saying and helping people to know that the autistic community should not be looked at like the plague and should be embraced into this world and loved. This is a little off topic but I have a little suspicion. First of all I wanted to ask, have you seen the Youtube channel Mark Rober? If you haven't, he released a video about his autistic son and how it isn’t a bad thing (Vanessa showed it to us). I have a sneaking suspicion that he watched your amazing videos and seeing you be brave on camera helped him as you call it, “Come out”.
Last I wanted to talk about an assignment that Vanessa had us do which was based off of “Ask an Autistic #10 How to Be an Ally:” What it means to be an ally to the autistic community is to let them talk about autism. Another way to be an ally is to listen to the autistic community and presume competence. A different way to support and be a good ally is to be an upstander to help other people stop thinking about autistic people as lower class. We are all different and that is not a bad thing, it is fine to be whoever you want to be. What I think is the most important way to support the autistic community is to be ready for change. What that means is to be ready to not think a certain way about people with autism. So, to wrap it up, thank you for informing me about things that I never knew and I will be an upstander and stand with the autistic community, not in front of them.
Yours truly,
Bowie
March 5th, 2024Dear Amythest,
I really enjoy your videos. I have learned a lot about autism from them. I really enjoyed the Autism Speaks one. I had heard they were controversial from other parts of the internet, but that really opened my eyes on how bad they were. Anyway, the reason I’m writing this is because we have been reading a book called Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. It is about a young girl named Caitlin Ann Smith who says she has Aspergers syndrome. In the book, she is shown doing some of the things you talked about in your videos, like stimming. She also has a counselor named Mrs. Brooks, who uses terms like “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” which we know from your videos are terms you're not really supposed to use. Your videos have also told us to treat autistic people like they are, well, people. And now I kinda feel bad, because there was a kid at my old school who was different from the rest of us, and I was a little… not mean, but I wasn’t the nicest to him. Also, you telling us to say “autistic people” instead of “people with autism” was very interesting to me. It seemed like such a small thing, but I never realized that it could actually hurt people. On the topic of things that can hurt people, your video on things to say and things not to say was also very helpful. I'm sorry you got so much hate from people online, and I wish people on the internet would leave others alone when they see something that doesn’t fit their opinion. But remember that we (and many other people) really like your videos. Your video on how to be an ally was very helpful, and in our class we each wrote paragraphs about how to be an ally. Here is mine:
What it means to be an ally is to be supportive and accept autistic people into a community and treat them as equal to you. You can also listen and learn about whatever their special interest is. You can also try to not treat them as lesser just because they are different. You can support autistic people by being kind and trying to help others learn more about this.
Thank you for making the “Ask an Autistic” series.
Sincerely,
Matthew