My response to the vile letter sent to Karla Begley, the mother of 13-year-old Max, "We need to help students who have unique minds to be successful."
Temple Grandin is autistic and for many a true hero. A published author Thinking in Pictures (1996) was made into a movie called Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes and won 7 Emmy Awards. Her new book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum came out in April of this
year. As such Grandin is one of the world’s most accomplished and well-known adults with autism; she is a professor at Colorado State University.
During her Tedtalk what came across to me was her ability to describe her experience to the audience. Talking of her High Definition Fiber Tracking that allowed her to see where the connectivity of her brain differs from most people's. And how important that "extra" knowledge can be in working with children, which is where her concern lays.
She relates in writing her first book that she thought everyone with autism saw in pictures the way she does. But in talking to others she discovered that some think differently: mainly photorealistic visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, and verbal thinkers. All people have multiple intelligence – strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. But people on the autism spectrum tend to have extremes, as Grandin puts it, "a specialists mind." They're particularly skilled at one way of seeing the world and truly terrible at others.
"The world needs different kinds of minds to work together."
What I find enlightening in regards to Grandin, she embraces her uniqueness and uses it to contribute something different, and teach us something. "Real change in the real world."
Enjoy!!
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