Event summary
Date
Start Time
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Rochestown Community Special School,
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Autism and Understanding Anxiety for those with additional learning difficulties.
For many autistic students, school can be a major source of stress. Everyone shows their anxiety in individual ways, so the most reliable observations that a student is anxious are going to be made by the people who know the student best. This shows the importance of working closely not only within the family structure, but also with the school staff.
This session is an introduction to supports that can be used to alleviate the experience of anxiety in autistic students. This will include an introduction to cognitively based supports and how to develop student centred supports to deal with anxiety.
Participants will:
- Recognise signs of escalating anxiety and potential emotional responses
- Develop a range of simple supportive approaches to prevent the escalation of anxiety.
- Understand the fundamentals of cognitively based management approaches.
Location
Rochestown Community Special School
Garryduff, Rochestown, Cork, T12 A38N.
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Joan McDonald
Following many years teaching in mainstream classrooms, Joan worked on individual planning in centres for adults with learning disabilities and those with mental health struggles.
She, then, became one of the first SENOs in Ireland, observing and providing school supports for students with atypical needs across eighty rural schools.
While studying for an M.Ed. in Autism, Joan was taught by and met a variety of autistic adults, which ultimately led to her own autism assessment. Prior to meeting such a diverse range of autistic people, Joan would only have recognised autism in people with profound and complex support needs.
Joan is passionate about using students’ interests to support autistic learners of all levels of cognitive ability to access education and contented lives.
She currently works on a variety of projects with agencies such as Middletown Centre for Autism, Dublin City University, Nua Healthcare, Fingal Libraries. In recent years, creating and delivering the Posauteen and Posaudult courses to help autistic people understand and advocate for themselves has been a major focus of Joan’s time.
Event summary
Date
Start Time
End Time
Rochestown Community Special School