Autism and the art of fierce love

As guest blogger today, we welcome Dr. Laurence Becker, an educator and advocate for the autistic community and creative savants, who is also an award-winning film director and producer based in Austin. Dr. Becker first tackled the subject of autism and artistry 35 years ago in his film Eyes Wide Open, about artistic savant Richard Wawro. His new film, Fierce Love and Art, premieres on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 13, at 7pm at the Performing Arts Center of Austin ISD. You can learn more and support the film via the website. You can also see art related to the film from February 25 to April 8 at Hyde Park Bar & Grill.
 

To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.
—Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

My real mission with Fierce Love and Art is to open the eyes of the world. We need to realize that all of us are related, and we can all make the world a better place. In the film we meet individuals with autism and other disabilities who have been able to transform their own lives and contribute to their communities through art, music, and words as a result of powerful support and love from parents and grandparents.

The film explores the lives of seven savant visual artists, a savant musician, and an author and minister who are living extraordinary lives today because their families used art as a means of connection, bringing them home from solitary confinement on “Autism Island.”

Some of the incredible people we meet and spend time with in the film include savant musician Tony De Blois, who plays 23 musical instruments and sings in 11 languages. Tony is a Berklee College of Music graduate who plays in a jazz band and composes original music at his home in Boston.

Another great story I’m delighted to share is about Houston native Grant Manier, whose autism and obsessive repetitive behavior led him to repeatedly tear paper. With encouragement from his mother, Grant soon began collecting and recycling bits of paper, creating amazing collages, which he calls “coolages.” The artworks are a form of therapy for Grant but also a contribution to the eco-art movement, as he recycles materials and helps us all look at them in new ways. Grant now also participates in educational outreach to share his vibrant, colorful art and point of view with others. His slogan is “Different is More.”

Sadly, one of the young people we had the honor to work with for the film passed away in 2016 as a result of an injury connected to her epilepsy. Kimberly Dixon was a warm and lively spirit who wrote poetry and painted as a way of connecting with her family and community, despite being nonverbal in a verbal world.

I’m eager to have everyone join us in May to see these amazing stories. To me they’re a real testament to what happens in the lives of children with autism when their families fiercely take charge of their development—and also a testament to the power of art in all our lives.

Laurence Becker, PhD
 

Need to find the school that fits your kid?

We have the answers you’re looking for at the Austin Alternative School Fair. Read on for all the details!

When?  Saturday, February 17, 11am–2pm

Where?  A brand-new venue for our event: Spider House Ballroom, 2908 Fruth Street. Park in one of Spider House’s two parking lots, or in the free street parking in the surrounding area.

What?  A chance to talk with some of Austin’s most effective, innovative educators from learning communities where children and teens grow and thrive.

Each booth has some fun activities to engage kids while parents talk with educators about their schools and special programs, which are tailored to all ages from pre-K through high school. The schools represent unique, transformative programs from all over the metro area, including Cedar Park, Pflugerville, and Dripping Springs.

Food and beverages available for purchase next door at Spider House Cafe.

How is this school fair different?  Unlike many of the larger, generic fairs where schools compete for your attention, this one is a collaborative effort by alternative educators who know there’s not one right way to reach all learners.

Is it really FREE?  Yep. Just bring your kids and questions!

Who is throwing this shindig?  It’s brought to you by the Education Transformation Alliance, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and co-sponsored by Spider House Ballroom and Alt Ed Austin.

I’ll be there to chat and help find answers to all your questions about schools and transformative education in our community.

And we have a Facebook page you can check out to remind you of the time and place and to share with other parents.

I look forward to meeting you there!

Teri

5 ways to celebrate Black History Month with kids

Cargo plan for the wrecked slave ship Henrietta Marie at the Bob Bullock Museum

We’re lucky to have a great array of Black History Month events and exhibits happening across Austin and the whole region that can spark kids’ imaginations and interest. Here are five options to consider checking out this month with your family:

1. Black History Month Kids’ Day: On February 17, the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center will host a big family event with crafts, activities, and learning opportunities about Black History Month from noon to 4pm. While you’re at the Carver Center, there’s also something for older teens: HBCU Day, when Texas Historically Black Colleges and Universities visit the center to recruit and show off their talents.
2. At the Bullock Museum, a new interactive exhibit can offer kids a way to explore the tale of a wrecked slave ship, the Henrietta Marie.
3. The Austin Public Library is celebrating the month with tons of first-rate movies telling some amazing stories that will inspire and educate, including Hidden Figures, Glory, The Jackie Robinson Story, and Akeelah and the Bee. You can check out the schedule on the library’s website.
4. If you want to take your kids a little farther afield for some knowledge and fun, consider heading to San Angelo and the Fort Concho National Historic Landmark anytime, but especially on February 28, which is Buffalo Soldier History Day. This is a living history experience honoring the African American soldiers who served in the 19th century at forts across the United States.
5. A little closer to home, you can pile family and friends in the car for a field trip to San Marcos and the Calaboose African American Museum’s exhibits on Buffalo Soldiers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and jazz pioneer Eddie Durham.

Shelley Sperry
Sperry Editorial

Opening the door to gratitude

As we rush toward Thanksgiving this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to model and teach gratitude. During this past year of political and environmental turmoil, it’s often been difficult to pause and remember to be grateful for the many good things in my life.

One thing I’m always grateful for is my weekly yoga class where serenity reigns for at least an hour and my instructor always brings in the perfect quote to set the tone for meditation. So instead of looking for Media Monday inspiration online or in the news or entertainment world, I’ll return to the spoken word. The quote last week was from Melody Beattie:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

How can we help our kids experience gratitude? The answer isn’t a big surprise. Recent research confirms that parents who show gratitude are more likely to create experiences that develop a sense of gratitude in their children. It’s important to teach children not only how to express gratitude as a form of politeness but also to talk about how it feels to be grateful.

Back in 2014, we learned from Nicole Haladyna how Austin’s Woodland Schoolhouse encourages empathy and gratitude through bonds with nature.

We can also look for schools where gratitude is a part of daily rituals and make sure to put kids in situations where people talk the talk and walk the walk of gratitude during everyday life—family dinners, community yard sales, charity food drives, even birthday parties. Writing thank-you notes and taking time each day to list a few things for which they’re grateful are easy but proven ways to increase children’s understanding of what it means to be grateful.

One interesting bit of information in the research is that both optimism and extraversion are strongly associated with gratitude. Extraversion seems to lead people toward the kinds of social activities with larger groups where it’s easier to demonstrate and learn gratitude. And optimism tends to lead people toward activities where they can make the world better, which then boomerangs back and increases gratitude. Because gratitude is such a bedrock part of most religious traditions, parents who are involved in organized religion also seem to increase opportunities for children to feel and understand gratitude.

For the past five years, a psychology project of the Center for Developmental Science, jointly run by the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State University, has specifically been working toward understanding the teaching and learning of gratitude. They’ll hold a conference about their insights on gratitude in January.

In an article by Alyssa LaFaro for UNC, researcher Andrea Hussong says, “We think that a lot of gratitude lessons are learned in daily conversations, rather than big, sit-down, let’s-instill-a-virtue discussions.” The team has recently started producing some short videos to help model such conversations, but the goal is not necessarily to change kids’ behavior, but “helping parents learn how to listen to their kids, how to help kids share with their parents, and then how parents can appropriately share back with their children.”

One more good thing about gratitude: UNC psychologist Sara Algoe says, “Gratitude may actually alert us to people in our environment who are looking out for our best interests. And that’s really central to survival, to the human species. We need to be able to find people who have our backs.”

So in the interest of my own survival: Thank you to everyone who is part of the Alt Ed Austin and Alt Ed NYC communities online and in person, including my sister Teri in Austin and Karen Sullivan in New York, who let me contribute from afar. I’m grateful that I had a chance to meet so many of you a year ago at the 5th Anniversary party, and I look forward to meeting more of you next time I’m in Austin or New York! Happy Thanksgiving!

Shelley Sperry
Sperry Editorial
 

New graphic novels workshop for high school students and adults

Jess Hagemann is an award-winning author and accomplished biographer. She owns and operates Austin’s premier ghostwriting service, Cider Spoon Stories, through which she helps seniors, veterans, small business owners, and others write their life stories as books. She’s helping us celebrate National Novel Writing Month (#NaNoWriMo) with this guest post about her upcoming workshop, Graphic Novels and Novel Graphics.

I was six years old when the Bosnian War broke out in 1992. Protected in my little corner of Kansas, I watched Sesame Street, not the news. I didn’t know that 100,000 people were dying in this artificial conflict, the result of one group of people asking for their independence, and another group of people deciding they had no right to live at all. The largest European instance of ethnic cleansing since the Holocaust didn’t end for three bloody years. By then I’d graduated from PBS to MTV: a rapid coming-of-age that left me wise to the ways of pop culture—but not the politics to which pop culture responds.

It wasn’t until college that I read Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, a graphic novel published in 2000 that recalls the journalist-author’s four months spent in the middle of the conflict. Based on the stories of several Bosniaks that Sacco interviewed in Gorazde between 1994 and 1995, the extent of the violence is revealed through a series of graphic vignettes and black-and-white illustrations more powerful than any photo essay. I learned then what it means for an author to give voice to the voiceless. For an artist to render truths we couldn’t otherwise have known. For trauma victims to share their stories, and finally be heard.

This eventually led me to start Cider Spoon Stories, a ghostwriting and editing service, in 2014. Ghostwriting means that if you have a story to share, but don’t have the time or confidence to write it down, you’ll tell it to me, I’ll write it for you, and you get the credit. It’s just that important to me that firsthand experiences and critical truths be disseminated.

When I’m not writing, I’m teaching other people to write. This month, the topic is (naturally) graphic novels. On Saturday, November 18, we'll be discussing Lynda Barry, Marjorie Satrapi, Mat Johnson, Mark Danielewski, Chris Ware, Tom Phillips, Sophie Calle, and more. We'll look at how they use illustration, obfuscation, and found objects—all layered with (or revealing) text—to create beautiful, whimsical, or disturbing stories—some for the social good, some for the sake of telling a dang good tale.

If you want to learn to create engaging, active characters; develop coherent narrative around those characters; write detailed, scene-by-scene story outlines; and script through page breaks and panel descriptions, register here. The class is appropriate for ages 16+.

Jess Hagemann

Drag those bones out and celebrate!

It’s a colorful, musical week in Austin because of Halloween and Día de los Muertos. If you’re looking for kid-friendly learning experiences related to the celebrations, here’s a little roundup:

Throughout the week, the Austin Public Libraries will host a program of stories, music, and mask-making that will make kids of any age (and their parents) smile. Take a look at all the participating libraries in this full list of events.

For kids who love music and don’t mind crowds, the annual Easter Seals Día de Los Muertos concert raises awareness and money for people with disabilities in central Texas. It’s an all-day wonderland with food, art, and lots of bands to make you clap and dance, including the Grammy-winning Grupo Fantasma. It takes place at Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater. Best of all: Kids 12 and under get in free with an adult. Check out the full musical lineup.

If Halloween is more in your wheelhouse, then the Rec Centers all over the city will host Howl-O-Scream with carnival games, treats, and haunted houses from 6:30 to 8:30 pm on Halloween night. The details are all here, and admission is just $3.

And finally, if you have a little one who’s just now learning to deal with the scary aspects of people in masks and trying to understand the make-believe of it all, they might feel much better after watching Mister Rogers go old school with a paper bag mask and a happy song. I know I did.

Shelley Sperry
Sperry Editorial