Roberto

Art by Adults with Autism

www.jammygallery.org

"Help me! Help me!" Roberto (not this student's real name) screamed all the way down the hall after his substitute paraprofessional, unknowingly, took his stuffed animal away. Roberto is in Kindergarten and has made a nice adjustment to elementary school. His educational goals are mostly around socializing and communicating. At an update meeting I was interested to find that he knows all his upper case letters and most of the lower and can count to 37. That would make any Kindergarten parent proud. Mom told us that she has had to stop him from using her computer because he was resetting her computer programs. Roberto has language but generally doesn't express himself when the adults around him would like him to. He is often taken away and preoccupied with whatever images, sounds, feelings he has floating around in his own private world. The challenge of our job as educators is to help Roberto adjust to a world that seems so confusing and uninteresting to him. His mom pretty much accepts him for who he is. His class is very fond of him. He is learning. It is impossible to image his future at this point and that makes him so intriguing to me.