This ended up being a long post so I have broken it into two parts which I will post separately.
Part 1
I recently
attended a three-day digital storytelling workshop. It is part of research being conducted by
Patty Douglas. The goal of the study is
to improve educational inclusion for autistics.
I should have written this right away (I am currently still writing bits
a month later!) or kept notes for when I could write.
I thought it
sounded very interesting, but really didn’t understand the point of it at
first. I was worried about being away
from home all day for three days. I was
also excited to be able to do something that might be fun as well as helpful to
other people.
Closer to
the weekend, I still had no idea about my story topic and I was getting very
anxious about the whole thing. I wasn’t
sure what to expect. I knew that I likely wouldn’t know anyone there except for
Estee Klar whom I had only briefly met twice in person, but chatted with many
times on-line.
I also had
to figure out how things would work at home.
Would I get a dog sitter to come and feed and let the dogs out? What would Micah do all day? The Friday part of the weekend was a PA day,
so I didn’t have to worry about driving them to and from school. I talked to Micah and we decided that they
would be paid, instead of a pet sitter, to follow the dogs’ regular routine of
feeding and crate times. Since they
needed something to do, I had Micah pick days to vacuum and wash floors and I
also booked extra music lessons for them.
Micah was set for the weekend.
Now I had to
not allow my anxiety to stop me doing what I really wanted to do, which was
attend the workshop.
An email about
what to expect was sent out to us. There
were pictures of the main room and quiet room with lamps instead of fluorescent
lights and there would be sensory toys or we could bring our own. One of the pictures showed people sitting in a
circle in the chairs. I knew that would
be a problem for me- sitting close and facing people. There was an agenda of what we would be
doing. We were also told that we could
communicate however we were comfortable and able. They were trying to make it as autistic
friendly as possible.
Day 1 came
and I arrived in Toronto nice and early.
There were a few people in the room chatting. I couldn’t look at the people, but I did
notice the chairs arranged in a circle.
I didn’t know anyone and the sight of the chairs made me freeze just
inside the room. I think
Patty (I’m faceblind and I don’t look at people at first, so until I learn
certain features of that person, I don’t remember them. This is worse when I am frozen) asked me about
the chairs. We were told that we could
sit wherever we felt comfortable and the circle was broken up. I sat on the outer edge of the room, still
quite anxious. Everyone seemed to know
at least one or more people. Estee came
and sat with me, chatted a bit and got me a juice.
The first
part of the day was introductions and an overview of the digital story telling
research project on autism and inclusion.
I had messaged Patty that I physically cannot talk in groups, so she
asked me if I wanted to write my introduction and she would read it out. I was impressed when she actually did
it. People will say they will do things to
help, but they don’t usually. For the
first time, I didn’t feel odd or out of place doing it that way. We were told about envelopes and colour
communication name badges on a table.
Once I’m frozen in a new spot, I don’t move unless I really have to, so
I never visited that table and didn’t wear a name tag the whole time. I also didn’t get my envelope until it was
handed to me on the last day! Estee’s
son Adam spoke to us for a bit through one of his movies before going off to
school. He has a great way of describing
things. We watched a few other movies. It was very interesting. The stories are short but tell a lot.
There were
many facilitators available to help us with our scripts and then the camera and
audio work. I had finally figured out
what I wanted my story to be and, with the help of a facilitator, came up with
some ideas on how to approach it. After
starting our scripts, it was time to gather as a big group to get
feedback. The facilitator who had been
helping me read mine out to the group as I was not able to. We then had more time to work on our script.
Since it was
Friday, I had to drive home in rush hour.
It was a little stressful because Micah was starting a course at the
barn and I would have to get home, feed the dogs, and then go back out to pick
up Micah (Randy had dropped them off).
After all that, we got home around 7:30 for a very late dinner.
I wasn’t as
anxious as I would have normally been because Micah had been able to keep the
dogs’ schedule so the one dog was his usual self. It was nice not to be as stressed out as I
normally would be with a changed-up routine.
I guess that is one of the advantages to kids growing up!
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| picture shows books with a cable connected to a laptop and the words digital storytelling |
