One of my favorite things about working at the high school is that our office is within the STP (Specialized Teaching Program) classroom. In other schools, they may call that the self-contained classroom. Though most of the students in STP do go to gen-ed classes for part of the day, they spend a good chunk of their day in the STP classroom and I absolutely love it.

On any given day, I can walk into the room and find one student sprawled across the floor, taking a sensory break. Another kiddo may be pacing the room, verbally stimming, before he jumps into his next activity. I just love the unstructured, yet actually so-structured, feel of that room. Kids are learning. And they’re also getting what they need.

Some days, I wish we could translate that into the gen-ed space. I think we see that flexibility and accommodation a lot more in the elementary setting. It feels like it becomes a lot more challenging as kids get older. We fear that our kids will be made fun of or taken advantage of. So we teach them social norms, teach them social cues. We teach kids how to look more “typical” so they’re not bullied and so they can fit in.

It’s easier to mold the kid than it is to mold society.

Which is why I love the STP classroom so much. People might critique the space, suggesting that it’s not indicative of reality, that we’re setting our kids up to fail by not preparing them for the “real world.” I just think that there’s a happy medium. We can prepare our kids for the real world. We can teach them communication skills and job skills and how to make safe choices. But the minute we try to stamp out their fixations or self-stimulatory behaviors, we lose a piece of them. Instead of stamping out their fixations, we should broaden them and channel them into constructive activities.

Yesterday, our office was being used for an IEP team meeting so I brought my stuff out to the STP classroom and worked out there. I was able to see some of the beautiful artwork that one of the kiddos casually created.

His artwork was so detailed, so creative.

I could visualize a future for him in graphic design. His teacher shared with me that all the characters he created were also animations that he had designed on the computer.

This kid is going places. But only if we allow him the time and the space and the freedom to indulge in what he really cares about.

We should not be focused on eliminating these fixations; we should be capitalizing on our students’ strengths.