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0:00
Hi, everyone. My name
is Dr. Jane Roitsch,
and I'm going to be
speaking with you
today on the challenges
of transitioning
from high school
to adulthood for
persons with autism
spectrum disorder.
I have my degree in speech
language pathology,
and currently, I'm an
associate professor
at the University of
Nebraska at Kearney.
I'm excited for this
amazing opportunity
because as a speech
language pathologist,
when you have someone
believe in you enough
to let you speak to your
passion, it means a lot.
0:35
So I mentioned a little
bit about myself.
How I got interested
in working with
individuals with autism
is that's the nature of a lot of
what you do as a speech
language pathologist.
I learned a lot about
the characteristics
of persons with autism.
I'm going to share
them with you today.
Some of the challenges that
I've seen in working with
people on the spectrum
who have tried to
transition from high school
into the workplace
or into college.
I have some case studies
I'd like to share with you.
I'm going to speak
about current research,
and then we will end with
some success stories and
some suggested support
services, and then
speak to future directions
as we move forward.
1:19
I became really interested in
the idea of helping
people transition from
high school into the workplace
and into college
during the pandemic.
As I mentioned, I've been
a speech pathologist
for more than 25 years,
and I've worked with
a lot of individuals.
One of the things I
found interesting was
speaking with the
mother of one of
my clients who was
on the spectrum
and had some challenges
when it came to
adjusting to the
pandemic as we all did.
I grabbed a couple
of my colleagues,
and we put together a paper
speaking to the impact
of this abrupt transition
from attending school
face-to-face to participating in
online programs due
to the pandemic.
So I spoke with
the student's mom
over the phone and in the study
we found some really
interesting things.
Four themes emerged from
the interview that we did.
Three of those included
the adjustments
required to make changes in
routines, but also in roles.
Instruction was challenged
as well as the
social interactions.
But the final theme
that came out of
this interview involved
the benefits, but also
the challenges that
emerged with the following
transition from online learning
for students with autism.
During the global pandemic,
there were understandable
challenges,
but the practical
implications of what
we found was that
a lot of times,
especially for this
student, he benefited from
some aspects of working online
and doing his homework online.
But one of the hardest
things that he had to
deal with was the adjustment
to the schedules.
It highlighted a little bit
of the information that
I'm going to be talking
about as I move forward.
We're going to talk now about
understanding the
history of autism,
what we know and
where we are now.
Next, I'm going to talk about
