Tag Archives: skills

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Template to Support College Writing Assignments for Students with Aspergers

Many college students with Asperger’s need assistance with writing assignments. Whether it is for a writing intensive course or for an essay in a basic undergraduate class, the following often occurs:

Student doing the notes

  1. Students write too little. Students often presume professors will infer from their most basic of communications what the student intends and, as a result, leave out details.
    • These details, of course, are what professors want to read.
  1. Students write too much. Students are sometimes uncertain what professors want to read and end up throwing everything – including the kitchen sink – into the document. This especially happens when students are writing about a topic that has personal interest to them.
  1. Students with Asperger’s Disorder sometimes cannot predict what professors want to read in a writing assignment. This creates difficulties with emotional regulation, during which students may avoid the assignment or have an emotional meltdown.

Students can more easily complete writing assignments when provided clear instructions about the structure of an assignment and relevant examples. A template is often helpful. The following is such a template, used to help a student assigned with writing a paper for a History class.

Please note: The examples provided were not related to the assignment. They were merely examples.

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Maximize Potential in the Workplace

My job is to bring people together—to create an environment where the employee can maximize their potential and an employer can utilize that potential.

Female Supervisor Using Digital Tablet At Warehouse

As an employment specialist for Compass Resource Group one of my first steps in trying to uncover their potential is to assess the soft and hard skills of the individual. In my experience this seems to be the greatest barrier individuals with Asperger’s face. In the next few entries I plan to discuss the difference between hard and soft skills as they apply to both the search for and maintenance of employment.

What are soft skills? The Oxford Dictionary defines soft skills as personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.

With regards to soft skills, the greatest questions from job seekers and employers are:

  • How do I encourage friendly interactions between coworkers and supervisors
  • How do I create and maintain a comfortable and safe work environment
  • How do I address the unique logistical concerns of employment such as changing schedules and arranging transportation as they affect individuals with Asperger’s

In the next post I will discuss the different strategies we at Compass Resource employ to foster an environment of mutual respect and understanding between the employee, their coworkers and supervisors in the workplace.

By Maggie Cromeens

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Skills for Aspergers Students for Residence Hall Success in College

Many colleges and universities require undergraduates to live on campus, especially during their freshman and sophomore years. “Residence life” (calling on-campus living environments “dorms” is considered a faux pas in higher education these days) requires students to live as a member of a small, interactive society. To be an effective and successful member of an on-campus living environment, students are expected to understand and conform to social norms within residence halls. Students are also expected to pull their own weight both socially and in regard to independent living in their dorms.

Brick Building on University Campus

Students diagnosed with ASD are sometimes challenged in independent living skill development.

Many require additional supports to learn these skills, and in recognizing when to use them. Colleges are not prepared to teach these skills to this population. Less than 5% of public, four-year institutions report employing staff dedicated to teaching independent living skills to college students diagnosed with ASD.

A successful residence hall experience requires one to understand and conform to understood norms and few colleges have employees available to teach those skills. It becomes clear that students with ASD must begin learning and mastering necessary skills prior to their transition into college.

To master the skills necessary for a successful residence hall experience, one must know what is expected for dorm living.

Expectations include:

  • Participation in scheduled floor and resident hall activities, including scheduled floor meetings
  • Understand and follow residence hall rules
  • Interact socially with other students on your floor
  • Communicate effectively with roommate(s), including working through conflict
  • Interact with residence hall faculty and staff
  • Utilize academic support resources made available in residence hall settings

by Marc Ellison

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Aspergers Individuals Can Become Great Leaders, Despite Their Challenges. Part 2: Overcoming Challenges

How to overcome personal challenges

This is Part 2 of a two-part article by Reese Eskridge on the topic of building leadership skills. You can read Part 1 here. Reese compiled the following list of personal challenges that often plague those with Autism or Aspergers. Each piece of common self-doubt listed below is accompanied with Reese’s own personal encouragement and guidance for how to overcome!

Team leader

  • I am not competent enough about role(s)/inexperienced in creating and running events or activities: Be yourself and start with what you know you can do, create something to promote it and to enable others to use it; identify an issue or interesting concept and think about a purpose that will serve the greater good; Take opportunities and think about how you can excel in each role you play.
  • I do not understand what message(s) to convey… Ask yourself many questions and try to answer as many potential questions as possible (i.e. what would they like to know about…? How would they react if…?).
  • I have a problem with perfectionism and fear of failure… If you have challenges, thoroughly examine the challenge and work around it to achieve your purpose as the leader; what are the lessons to learn from each challenge (use keywords).
  • I am too fixated on minor or irrelevant details or do not know most important details; Digresses into restricted interests, rather than piques follower’s interest and serves followers’ best interests… Establish structure in a manner that ensures that you do not miss any important details; then, you can take control of a given situation by speaking with all forms of credibility.
  • I am too shy to speak up when needed; there is too much pressure… Recruit help where and when you need it the most, even if it means developing just yourself, and plan out and organize those resources to maximize their effectiveness; in other words, get those resources to do exactly what you want them to do. Develop passion in what you do or plan to do and the rest will come naturally.
  • I do not feel like I can do this independently… Don’t sweat it! Try to develop abilities to do assortments of tasks that you must accomplish and get guidance as necessary; do not get guidance if you can easily figure out tasks at hand; get help when you absolutely cannot do something yourself; learn team building strategies for this.
  • I am not confident in having a positive influence… Just remember that during an organized event, people are there to listen to you and do what you say, although it is better to give recommendations and to delegate responsibilities fairly, rather than simply take over. Keep it positive every step of the way and devise strategies when the going gets tough for anything. Ask yourself the potential solution to a problem when it arises and keep calm; be a role model by acting like the person you want them to act like.
  • I have poor organizational skills… Do not hesitate to consult with other people and resources that specifically address this. Also ask yourself, how can I best keep track of materials in general. Obtain folders, files, etc. for documents and a calendar or calendar book in which you can write down the dates and times of upcoming events, meetings, etc. Planning is the single best strategy when you or your followers are disorganized or disoriented. Make sure that everybody involved has at least one role and delegate by each person’s strengths and willingness to participate in that role. Ask who wants what and go from there.

by Reese Eskridge

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Aspergers Individuals Can Become Great Leaders, Part 1: How to Begin

6 Practices to Build Leadership Skills

Like almost anyone else, breaking into the subject or field of leadership presents itself as a significant challenge. With many responsibilities to consider and to fulfill, an exemplary leader must have confident power in communication, creativity, competence, ethics, organization, and decisions, just to name a few. Unfortunately, most youth and adults with Aspergers Syndrome often have difficulty in any one of these things. Typically, they desire to be able to learn from others, rather than lead by example themselves for the same reasons that most people fail to become leaders. Often times, they fear failure, rejection, or unfamiliar tasks and responsibilities, or all of these things.

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However, the myth that leaders are born, rather than made, is untrue and many prominent leaders throughout history dispelled it time and time again.

Primarily because most of them faced significant (sometimes extreme) odds to get to their current positions and to form the amazing personal images that they have. Many Aspergers youth and adults can take it upon themselves to work hard to achieve such standout images for themselves.

Initially, entering the leadership arena sounds difficult. Here are a few suggestions to get started:

1. Establish a conceptual foundation in your own mind:

To understand the keywords of quality leadership; understand how you can embrace them; realize the mistakes you make and learn from them as you progress.

2. Study communication tactics and picture yourself using them:

How do you look (appearance to others) and sound when you communicate? The best communicators prepare and deliver their messages well. If a message provides aid, insight in a necessary, moral, and honest manner, it will serve its purpose. Also, use your own feelings to acknowledge if a message has complete clarity and usefulness or if it requires modification. The next step helps with this process.

3. Develop power and structure statements:

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Using Informational Interviewing in Your Job Search

Employment with Aspergers

Now that we have worked on our one minute commercial, a script for networking, and learned about cold calling, let’s go over informational interviewing.

Informational Interview

Informational interviewing is an important tool to use with all three practices we have discussed. Informational interviewing is the act of gathering information about the career field, and specific companies you may want to work for. These are usually informal interviews that take place inside a company that you have an interest in.

Often times when we are doing a work assessment with our clients we are also conducting an informational interview to learn more about the culture, the work, and the environment that our client will be joining. This way we can make a better-informed decision if it’s a good fit.

You can also use informational interviewing by calling employers using your script we previously discussed. You could ask them questions such as:

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20 Things That a Successful Adult with Aspergers Understands and Incorporates Into Daily Life

Starting from an early age, many Aspergers adults consistently feel like they have little chance of success, productivity, or joy in the real world. Negative early-life experiences that typically fall under the categories of isolation, ignorance, exclusion, or sheltering, in addition to present challenges, collectively form this delusional mental/emotional construct.

Fortunately, Aspergers adults who claim to have it hard have the power to turn the tables of their lives right-side-up and to make incredible progress as adults in both their personal and professional lives. Even though Aspergers adults usually have numerous struggles in adulthood for countless reasons, there are crucial practices they can incorporate into their daily lives to work towards success. The happiest and most successful Aspergers adults significantly understand:

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People with Aspergers Become Multi-Talented and Mentally Strong When They Expand Their Interests and Keep an Open Mind

Growing your interests help widen your skills

Surely, anyone who has or works with Aspergers Syndrome has received encouragement of the idea that people with Aspergers and their closest acquaintances (i.e. parents and teachers) ought to discover and to nurture that ONE thing that they know or do best. Such an interest is indicated by extreme focus on a particular topic or series of topics in which the person with Aspergers is able to memorize it down to the last detail and able to recount any detail imaginable.

Ideally, a person with Aspergers uses this to his/her advantage in order to get a head start on his/her education and career, as well as to generally enjoy life. Therefore, such strong interests are also therapeutic in the sense that they help people with Aspergers to confidently tackle their daily challenges within secure comfort zones.

As beneficial as they are, however, restricted interests do not always ensure that people with Aspergers achieve long-term personal development and sustenance. More specifically, restricted interests can take away from the ability to develop mental strength.

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25 Key Lessons about Companionship that Every Aspie Should Learn

Cultivating healthy long relationships can be difficult for everyone, whether they be romantic or platonic. This important life skill becomes a special challenge for those with Asperger’s who can often have trouble making and keeping connections. However, there are ways in which the Aspie can learn to actively create beneficial companionship.

companionship

All of these habits do not come naturally to everyone and should be learned in order to create the best relationships.

Read Reese Eskridge’s 25 key lessons about companionship:

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Job Fairs

Job fairs: This can be very daunting for anyone at any stage in the job search, but job fairs are a great way to get to see the companies in your area. You can see what positions are available without having to apply or call anyone, if you aren’t ready for that.

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As I have previously talked about, informational interviewing is a tool to use in order to get to know a company, and talk to individuals about how they have gotten to where they are. A job fair is one great way to attain that informational interview.