Six years old, and he’s reading road signs out loud.
In a singsong lisp, Turner Tackitt calls out every sign that flashes by: “Do not enter. No parking any time. Traffic advisory 35 miles per hour when flashing.”
The kindergarten summer campers are traveling to McDonald’s on a surprise field trip.
Their van vibrates with Britney Spears and chaos, but Turner doesn’t notice and probably would have to be shown, step by step, how to join the others.
Turner is a high-functioning autistic. He has an astounding vocabulary and reads as well as a 2nd or 3rd grader but has a difficult time with basic social skills, such as playing with other children.
Turner will start 1st grade this autumn in one of seven new classes designed by the Seattle School District to teach mildly autistic children and children with a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. No other school district in the nation has offered this many classes for such children.
Parents from around the country have said they are willing to pack up and move to Seattle. One family has moved from New York to get its child into one of the 42 spots in the program, and delegations of educators from as far away as Japan, China and Europe are visiting to study it, according Michelle Corker-Curry, who supervises the new classes.
The district is spending about $1 million to run the classes each year, said Bill Meehan, who coordinates special-education programs. Each class will include six students, one teacher and two assistants.
In the past, children with Asperger’s would have been placed in a class with autistic children or children with emotional or behavioral problems. Corker-Curry said the district saw that these children learned differently and, thus, needed their own classrooms.
“You don’t go to a regular physician for brain surgery. You go to a specialist. And so, we want to provide a specialty program,” Corker-Curry said.
District officials have been contacting parents of potentially eligible children to let them know about the classes. The district is still filling classroom spots and will continue to accept students throughout the school year, Corker-Curry said.
Three of the new classes will target children with Asperger’s, a neurological disorder first defined in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual in 1994. These classes are unique because children with Asperger’s can spend much of their day in classes with typically developing children, spending time in the Asperger’s rooms as needed, Corker-Curry said.
Michelle Garcia-Winner, a California speech and language pathologist with 15 years experience treating people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, said two similar classrooms are opening in the San Francisco Bay area this fall, and one is now open in New York City.
But this is the first time she’s heard of one district opening so many classes.
That might be because the scientific community is still learning about the disability. Because the Asperger’s diagnosis is so new, it’s hard for district officials to say exactly how many Seattle schoolchildren have it, but 114 have been diagnosed with autism.
Experts estimate autism and Asperger’s each strike one in 500 people. People with autism generally have poor verbal and social skills.
Asperger’s is different from autism because people who have it can often speak and read well but can’t understand the meaning of what they’re saying or reading.
They often can’t make friends because they can’t grasp social skills and tend to speak at people rather than having conversations.
Someone with Asperger’s might have, for example, a hard time learning non-verbal behavior like facial expressions or gestures and understanding abstract concepts like humor or irony. .
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“They might be able to go on in extraordinary detail about everything Scooby Doo has ever done, but if you hold up a toothbrush, they can’t tell you what it does,” said Ilene Schwartz, an associate professor of education at the University of Washington and faculty adviser for a preschool program for children with autism and Asperger’s.
Garcia-Winner said Asperger’s students and high-functioning autistics get misdiagnosed because they score well on tests. Those who can’t carry on a conversation or make friends are usually stuck in with children who have emotional or behavioral problems.
Corker-Curry said the district wanted teachers specifically trained in teaching children with autism or Asperger’s. The district advertised nationally for the seven new teachers, drawing them from all over the West. Some were recruited from the University of Washington’s Experimental Education Unit because they had taught Asperger’s children before.
In some ways, educators said, teaching children with Asperger’s will be almost like running a special-education class and a gifted-and-talented class at the same time. The teachers in the seven new classrooms must keep the lessons academically rigorous while still drilling the children in basic social skills such as asking someone to play with them.
Kathie Newell has taught children with autism at Marshall Elementary for eight years. She has found that teaching with visual signals, pictures and schedules works best.
“What we’re trying to do is provide tools for them to use so the kids don’t get frustrated,” Newell said. “A lot of it is unknown, and in a way, that’s the exciting thing about teaching kids in the autism spectrum.”
Kristin Ainslie, Turner’s kindergarten teacher, said she used a schedule to show Turner what kinds of games he could play during free time. Turner would pull out his schedule during free time and choose a game or activity he hadn’t played that week.
She said they also practiced how Turner might ask another child to play by approaching that child with a toy.
Karen Roe of Seattle is the mother of an 8-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome. She said parents get excited at the thought of any new program because they want their children treated as individuals and not just as another disabled kid.
“They’re so hard for people to understand,” Roe said. “Only people who really have a touch, who really understand it, can get the best out of the kids. Other people just get the worst. If you get it right, these kids just blossom.”