June 1, 2009
Helping People with Autism Find Careers
By Kate Duffy
When asked to co-author a book about career planning with Temple Grandin, the noted autistic animal scientist and entrepreneur, I jumped at the opportunity.
Our book, Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-functioning Autism (published 2004, by AAPC), provides concrete vocational guidance for adolescents and young adults on the autism spectrum. It also is a guide for the faculty, counselors and family members who work with them, the “helpers” in their lives.
Kate Duffy
I was eager to write the book because I am one of those helpers, and I was desperate to know how to coach my two sons, both diagnosed with Asperger’s in their early teens. I had been writing and teaching about career planning for years, but this was different: My kids’ futures were at stake.
The result of a neurological disorder that affects the functioning of the brain, autism primarily impacts the normal development of the brain in the areas of social interaction and communication skills. The autism continuum ranges from a brilliant scientist to a nonverbal individual who will always have to live under supervised conditions.
So my kids, and the other 1 in 150 children in America who have an autism spectrum disorder, can expect a rough journey to independence. For people with autism, high-functioning or not, rarely achieve long-term employment. As the number of children diagnosed with autism continues to increase, so will the number of students on the autism spectrum enrolled at community colleges.
I work at Metropolitan Community College—Penn Valley, which offers the Academic Bridges to Learning Effectiveness (ABLE) Program, a college transition program designed to empower individuals with neurological disorders such as autism, learning disabilities, brain injuries and ADHD to become independent learners and successful working adults. As an ABLE staff member, on any given day, I may find myself helping Jody, who has autism, remember the most important points from her anatomy class and then compose an e-mail to herself about those points. Or I could be talking through a homework assignment with Teresa, who has Asperger’s, so she can hear the information while she is also looking at it in her textbook.
Because we teach self-advocacy skills, I can also find myself coaching a student with dyslexia on how to talk with his instructor about what helps him learn most effectively.
Researching and writing Developing Talents helped me learn about the practical ways parents, teachers, counselors and friends can help young people figure out a career that is good for them and will help them be more a part of the world. Work is more than just a paycheck or livelihood for people on the autism spectrum. It provides social interactions around shared interests and can be the key to a satisfying and productive life. It is the glue that keeps their lives together in an otherwise frustrating and sometimes confusing world.
Just as important, we all lose out when individuals with autism spectrum disorders don’t work or make other kinds of contributions to society. Some of our world’s finest minds, inventions, art and ideas belong to people with definite autistic traits. Albert Einstein and Vincent Van Gogh both had developmental abnormalities during early childhood. Other famous people thought to be on the autism spectrum include Thomas Jefferson, Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Carl Sagan.
Given the problems the world is facing today, I’m not sure we can afford to lose the kinds of talents people on the autism spectrum can offer.
NOTE: This article was originally published June 9, 2009, in the Community College Times.
Kate Duffy, a regular contributor to Spectrum Connection, mentors students with learning disabilities and neurological disorders at Metropolitan Community College—Penn Valley.
