I mentioned the 2009 documentary, Kids with Cameras , in my previous post . The film follows Autistic children participating in a movie camp in Los Angeles hosted by non-profit organisation Actors for Autism, and taught by award-winning educator Brad Koepenick. Koepenick is involved in various acting teaching pursuits…
…Brad ran enrichment programs in over 50 schools throughout the LA area and found his way into Community Charter Middle School in 2000. He is a founding teacher at 4 PUCSchools (Partnerships to Uplift Communities), teaches Media Arts and Speech at CHAMPS Charter High School and is on the board of directors for the CA Educational Theatre Association, Drama Teachers Association of Southern California, CA Charter Schools Association Member Council and Actors for Autism…
The reason why Acting classes may be useful for Autistic children (and even adults) may be similar as to why the ‘Tools of the Mind’ approach looks to work well for this group. A whole chapter was devoted to ‘Tools of the Mind’ in Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s 2009 bestseller on parenting, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children . The ‘Tools of the Mind’ curriculum, developed by Deborah J. Leong and Elena Bodrova at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, includes regular Mature, Extended, Pretend Play as an integral part of the program…
…This curriculum included using pretend play as a means for teaching young children self-regulation skills and executive function skills. The results of the study were impressive with youngsters showing more pro-social behaviors of the kind and quality that, coincidently, we are constantly targeting as we teach children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. I was convinced (re-convinced) that social pretend play is a near perfect system of social learning and children who have autism need more support so that they, too can engage in pretend play learning.
Pretend play is highly rule bound. When a child is pretending to be the mother of a sick infant, for example, the rules of being a mother are demanding. One has to act like a mother and not like a puppy or even get distracted by something that is mother-like but socially off task. Whatever the child knows about being a mother, the child must call to mind and portray these characteristics as appropriate in an evolving social situation. The combination of restricted role and dynamic social play are what hones mental skills that we call executive function skills. The child playing opposite our pretend mother, a youngster playing the mother’s sick baby, may first pretend to cry and then fall asleep and then to crawl away and the pretend mother must decide how a mother would react to each of these situations. Other children are likely to lobby for their ideas about being mother and refine or expand the general knowledge about what a mother can or can’t do. You get the baby some milk the sick baby actor may instruct. No, no, the mother has to stay with the baby all the time! another child may scold as she grabs a stethoscope and prepares to be the baby’s doctor. There is planning and analyzing and choosing from among all the options that the group of players have experienced or witnessed. Learning could not be any more focused or intense than it is during extended pretend play. Pretend play is potent learning magic.
In a Tools of the Mind based curriculum, many hours a week are devoted to pretend play…
(sources: http://www.moviesbykids.com/losangeles/ongoingclasses/details.cfm?programid=71 ; http://autismgames.blogspot.com.au/2008/03/tools-of-mind.html )