Elitheni Primary School shines the light on autism
The school recently hosted an awareness event to educate people about autism.
April is marked World Autism Awareness month, Elitheni LSEN Primary School dedicated the whole month of April to shining the light on autism to develop knowledge of the disorder, especially in our local communities. On Wednesday, April 21, the school hosted an event to create autism awareness. Present at the event were Department of Education Johannesburg North District, Inclusion and Special Schools officials, Ntombizodwa Magabane, Sibongile Mogase, and Mathabathe Makuba
Based in Diepkloof Zone 1, the school is a Mild Intellectual Disability (MID) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) combined school. Autism is a complex developmental disability that affects social skills such as playing, learning, and communicating with cases falling on a spectrum ranging from mild to severe. Since the disorder can present a broad range of challenges when it comes to learning, teaching these learners comes with challenges that teachers face accommodating learners with ASD as research says 1 autistic learner equals 6 non-autistic learners in class, so if an ASD teacher has 6 learners the weight is the same as a teacher in a non-autistic class with 36 learners. Through the passion and dedication from teachers at Elitheni, who wore t-shirts written ‘Proud Autism Teacher’ on the day of the event, most learners were seen responding and following basic instructions and others were even able to recite meaningful poems.
Speaking at the event the school’s principal, Mathoto Molefe, who previously worked at the district for Inclusion and Special Schools commended teachers for their dedication in teaching these learners.
“I would like to thank the teachers for pulling through even with the challenges that come with teaching ASD learners. I always make an exception of their casual attire when coming to work because I understand the pressure that comes with their job, them spending a day with ASD learners, definitely requires them to be comfortable at all times because it is not easy,” said
One ASD teacher who is also a parent to an autistic teenager, Cynthia Zondo shared her experience in her journey to finding out and accepting that her daughter is autistic.
“When she was young, I could spot a strange behaviour but I did not pay that much attention because I did expect or even knew autism at that time. So, she was coming okay with reaching her milestones, or so I thought, at around 3-years -old she started talking, saying words like ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ but suddenly she stopped, my baby could no longer talk. Going to the clinic nurses would be worried about the baby not talking but others would just say children reach milestones differently and at their own pace,” Zondo says.
“But then my daughter reached the age 4, no talking and this time I got worried because even playing with dolls for her was different, she would make dolls and tie them with tapes. People started coming with theories and because I was desperate, I followed the theories. I was told that it’s ancestors so I need to do some sort of rituals for the baby and I did it, but my daughter was still not okay,” she added.
Zondo said that even with the medical diagnosis she was taken back and forth because her daughter did not tick all the boxes for autism, so that was creating confusion as to whether her daughter’s problem was speech delay or autism, but in the end, one doctor got it right. She says it took her long to accept and even affected her emotionally, she was then taken in for therapy and says that helped her in accepting and doing more research about the disorder. She is now a proud mother to an autistic child and a proud teacher of autism.
“No lies, being a parent to a child with ASD is not easy but being a teacher and a parent to such a child benefits me, sometimes I can deal with my daughter’s behaviour because I got the experience here at work and sometimes, I can deal with these learners with ease because I have seen and dealt with similar behaviour from my daughter at home,” she concludes.
Because the school is a combination of MID and ASD, the school’s principal Molefe, said that as a school they make sure that they teach learners with MID as much as they can about autism so that they can be able to understand their behaviour, accommodate them and co-exist with them in the same yard.
She also mentioned that the awareness is to also make parents aware of autism so that they don’t keep their children at home and not take them to school because of lack of knowledge and the stigma attached to the disorder.
“This awareness will also help the community to learn about ASD and to not stigmatise those living with it and their parents. We encourage parents to bring learners to school, however, our admission process is different, applicants need to go via the district or hospital as we are going to need a letter confirming that a learner was referred to our school,” Molefe said.
These are some of the early symptoms of Autism in Children:
-Avoids eye contact
-Does not respond to name by their first birthday
-Does not show facial expressions like happy, sad, angry, surprised by 9 months of age
– Delayed speech and language skills
– Repetitive behaviours like hand-flapping, rocking, jumping, or twirling
Please note that children with autism may not show all or any of these symptoms at all.
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