5/4/2023
Topic:
Students with Disabilities
Besnik Hashani
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I have had a student on an autism spectrum in my orchestra class. The student had perfect pitch, and was very agile with his hands. The two issues that this student had is that he refused to play anything louder then a mezzo forte (he would tell me his "friend" told him not to), and did not like trimming his nails. We were able to circumvent the playing loud part, by offering him to use earplugs. This almost solved the problem 100%, except when we had to play with a full orchestra. He was sitting right in front of the band instruments, and had a very hard time focusing. I had to move him closer to the front by changing his assigned seat. The nails part was more difficult, but instead of trimming, we compromised on the student filing the nails to a point that his hands were functional on the violin.
The other issue the student had was getting out of a routine. So I had to warn the student in advance to upcoming changes in our routine or schedule. If something unpredicted happened in class, he would shut down, and refuse to play his instrument, and his communication was narrowed down to non-verbal. |