Strategies for Autism

New York Educators Using Montessori Insights to Address Aspergers

By Mark Anderson

There’s a growing recognition that Maria Montessori’s insights into child development can deliver valuable resources for use outside a traditional Montessori classroom.

From the treatment of brain disorders in clinical settings to schools set up in the chaos of refugee camps, educators and non-educators are utilizing Montessori’s observations and lessons to benefit children in many new ways.

John Erhart and Monica Smith are adding to that list of Montessori applications with the learning model that they’ve developed for adolescents with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition related to autism.

The pair has spent much of the last eight years working with schools and children in Rochester NY, refining a curriculum built on Smith’s experience as Montessori teacher and Erhart’s background as a child psychiatrist.

Asperger’s is a disruptive disorder affecting children and adults, many of whom have normal or above average intellectual capability but whose social skills remain at a very early developmental stage. People with Asperger’s typically crave order and predictability, and become frustrated and angry when it is interrupted. They lag behind their age group in motor and sensory development and often have difficulty communicating.

In school, those developmental shortcomings frequently result in behavior problems, leaving the children embarrassed or stigmatized.

In 1999, Erhart and Smith started exploring ways their disciplines could be combined to treat special needs children. Two years later, Erhart’s colleagues in the Rochester schools—he was a district adviser on special needs programs—asked them to direct their attention towards developing alternative learning models for teens with Asperger’s.

Erhart was already familiar with Asperger’s. He described the condition to Smith, who recognized a developmental condition that Montessori addressed.

“John was talking about adolescents, but what he was describing was typical four-year-old behavior,” Smith said, suggesting that their development was interrupted—but could be resumed.

They turned to Montessori’s discussion of sensitive periods, when children are primed to develop sensory, social and language capabilities, and they started searching for ways to restore those periods for these adolescents, enabling development to start again.

That eight-year exploration has now produced a comprehensive curriculum, Communication and Social Skills (CASS), accredited by New York state’s department of education.

It will be used this year to teach and treat 40 students in five Rochester-area classrooms—all designed and advised by Erhart and Smith’s company, the Montessori Intervention Program (MIP).

Although few familiar Montessori classroom materials are in use, the pair say that Montessori’s philosophy underlies the evolving curriculum, starting with the teacher’s commitment to follow the child and to stand beside the student as a guide — regardless of the student’s condition.

That relationship isn’t easy to establish, especially in a mainstream classroom where the Asperger’s children’s behavior can seem bizarre and destructive to classmates and teachers.

“They’ve often been treated as though there was something very wrong with them,” Smith said. “But they have Asperger’s. If they eat chalk, that’s why it happens. It’s no help to give them detention.”

What does help is to follow Montessori’s advice, Smith said, starting by creating an environment that matches the special needs of these adolescents.

During the day some students in each CASS class in Rochester will study for periods of time in mainstream classrooms, but all students start and end each day in the CASS room, which is adapted to their developmental goals.

A key piece in the classroom is each student’s cubicle—their individual workplace and home-away-from-home. Before the school year starts, the students come in to prepare their cubicle, bringing favorite objects.
"It’s like Montessori’s Children’s House," Smith said, "a place that provides confidence as these adolescents explore their lessons and move into new experiences."

The curriculum includes New York’s state-mandated academic content, but it integrates those lessons with activities aimed at developing social skills, language and communication, and executive functions or judgment.

The lessons range from one-on-one and group activities in the classroom, to outdoors lessons and observations, community outings and projects with the students’ families.

The activities are rich in sensorial content, Smith said, incorporating Montessori’s recognition that our sensual grasp of the world is where our ability to think abstractly begins.

“One other thing that Montessori would recognize in what we’ve done is that the children are doing real-life activities. If we want to help them learn to socialize, learn to feel comfortable in a restaurant, we have to be in a restaurant.”

That real-life occurs in the classroom, too. On Fridays, for instance, the students frequently decide to bake peanut butter cookies in the classroom’s kitchenette.

“That’s an excellent way to begin socialization,” Erhart said. “Normally getting together like that would be incredibly awkward for these kids. But this is an activity they like, so they have to talk to get it done. They have to divide the work, measure their ingredients. The anxiety level melts away.”

Wider horizons

The success and growth of CASS in the Rochester schools looks like it’s about to win MIP a place on a much larger stage.

The New York DOE endorsed CASS as a statewide option for Asperger’s programs this year, and Erhart and Smith are now working with the department’s special education division and a grant writer to market the program throughout New York and in other states.

They’re developing a research protocol for the curriculum and they also plan to adapt it to serve other autistic conditions.

The new opportunities come at an appropriate time for the founders. Both have just completed major personal goals—Smith obtained a master’s degree in inclusive early childhood education this summer, and Erhart published his first book of fiction, a teen-targeted adventure-fantasy, The Hebredene Journals (available from online booksellers).

“Up to now [MIP] was something we both did because we loved it, and we did it on weekends and evenings out of our own homes,” Erhart said. The pair volunteered their time during the first two years, and after that they began receiving small stipends through grants and the state allocations. Both kept their day jobs, though.

“Now we’d like to see it grow and become a bigger part of our professional lives,” Erhart said.