TAP

by Elliot Perlis, Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El   Communication is key in any situation. Being a teen aid is not exempt from this rule. Whether it is verbal communication or nonverbal, communication is important to ensure that we, as aides, are doing the best we can do to keep students engaged and learning. In this session of the TAP program, we learned not only how to communicate better with students, but also how to best listen to and understand the communications from students. Early in the session, we discussed the phrase “All behavior is communication”. This phrase applies to everyone, [...]

by Ayelet Cooperberg, Adath Israel During the zoom meeting on the 29th we learned about autism and got to know each other a little better. We started off by doing a show and tell with something in our room. People shared toys from when they were little and other objects that are meaningful to them. After that we watched a video clip from Sesame Street featuring their first autistic character, Julia. Big Bird, one of the other characters on the show, has a difficult time interacting with Julia at first. However, once he realizes that Julia can play the same [...]

by Lea Rubenstein, Darchei Noam In our second TAP session of the school year, we learned about what autism is and how it affects each individual differently. We began with a short video clip from Sesame Street featuring the muppet Julia, a young, nonverbal autistic girl who is friends with the other characters, Elmo and Abby. After the video, we discussed different ways Julia’s friends made her feel safe amongst them. Our group was very fortunate to have Noah, an intelligent Jewish speaker, attend our Zoom meeting and answer the questions we had about how to best address the unique [...]