Dan: I assume if your students are enrolled in a college class, they’re at the end of the spectrum formerly called Aspergers.
I once had such a student in a documentary production class. (Alas I learned this ‘the hard way’ as he was apparently undiagnosed and his parents in denial. But I have a young cousin with the condition, and it became pretty obvious what was up.) Anyway, it was largely unpredictable how his neuro-atypicality would affect his classwork. Our first assignment was a fairly straightforward interview piece, and he showed something that had a disturbing subtext of which he was completely unaware, which was apparently completely accidental, and which he seemed incapable of understanding was problematic, despite the fact every other member of the class was wincing. Folks with ASD tend to be very literal, and struggle with any kind of metaphor, and with the first piece as evidence, I worried about what he’d do with the second assignment – a more impressionistic ‘experimental’ doc short. To my surprise he showed a very moving piece that used objects and film technique to figuratively represent the kind of heightened sense perception a lot of ASD folks get from certain industrialized environmental stimuli and the mental agitation thatb results… My advice, based on this very admittedly limited experience, is that you shouldn’t alter your assignments, but rather just be sensitive to how a different sort of person will address them, and do what you can to ensure that the rest of the class will treat the work and the maker sympathetically. As for the students themselves, I’d probably just re-double the advice I’d give any student: make your projects about something you know and really care about – make them in some way ‘personal’. Most students are afraid to go there, even indirectly, and too willing to take the route of superficially imitating some form they like or feel is somehow validated. My admittedly corny maxim was “Your work won’t be any good unless you put yourself into it, and it won’t get any better unless you can take yourself out of it (in evaluation afterwards…)” _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
