To welcome children to school suffering from disorders autism, France”lacks a lot of structure and well-trained guides”explained on Saturday April 2 on franceinfo Tiphaine Benoit, teacher in ULIS class (localized school inclusion units) in nursery schools in Île-de-France, on the occasion of World Autism Day.
franceinfo: is the arrival in kindergarten difficult for children with autistic disorders?
Tiphaine Benoit: When they arrive in my class they have no means of communication set up because they are sent to us right after the diagnosis. What matters is therefore to put communication in place so that they can tell us when things are going well, when things are not going well, and make requests. It is this lack of communication that will generate trouble. It can be cries, throwing objects, scratches, bites, it can be quite violent for the child and for the adult. So very quickly we will teach him to ask and say what he likes and what he doesn’t like.
How are the days with the children going?
Children need their own rhythm, I’m lucky to have one adult for every child in my class. I have six pupils between 2 and 5 years old. They are little ones who are not used, for the moment, to living with other children. So, we are going to shake up their habits a bit and we have to surround them twice. We have a very regular rhythm with face-to-face moments between the child and his referent and moments when I teach the class like in any kindergarten class to give these children a school rhythm and benchmarks so that later they can go to regular classes at certain times of the day.
Each child is unique. How do you do ?
I have a psychologist who supervises all the children in the class. We create an educational project for the child with communication, behavioral and academic objectives for each child and over the year. Then, the year is divided into several periods to be as close as possible to the needs of each child and according to their profile.
Interaction is important in kindergarten. How do you ensure that these children manage to integrate without too much difficulty?
We have set up an American method so that these children can learn to play with children of their age. We train children from other kindergarten classes so that they teach my students to play and behave appropriately. It is a fantastic method, which gives very good results. It’s called super buddies and kindergarten kids are fighting to be super buddies in my class.
What are the main difficulties you face?
These are the outings of my class. I keep them for three years and once they get out of kindergarten there are very few classes suitable for them. There are ULIS which are for all disabilities combined, but it is true that autism needs a very specific follow-up and there is a lack of specialized classes for autism spectrum disorders. The older you get, the less suitable structures there are. If we advance on the number of adapted classes, we must also advance on the number of accompanying persons for students with disabilities who will accompany them in ordinary class or in adapted class. So, the big lack is the number of adapted structures and the number and training of specific accompanying persons. We are very behind compared to other countries like Canada.