Hold a teaching conference about autism. Other developmental disabilities can be included in the conference as well. If held at a school, the meeting can be used as part of in-service training requirements. Talk about the different aspects of autism. You may use examples from your students and associations, but identifying information must be withheld.
At the beginning of the day, ask the conference-goers to divide into groups. Have the groups brainstorm their thoughts about autism and the people who have it. Tell them to write down a list of needs some people with autism may have.
At the end of the day, have the group form again to modify their lists. Ask each group to give informal oral presentations of their findings.
Autism awareness for educational purposes will be beneficial to the teachers and parents who work with children who have autism. The educational needs of people with autism are broad. They can range from needing the curriculum modified to simply needing support to remember lessons.
An awareness exercise to promote inclusion of children with autism into the regular education classroom breaks your training group into smaller groups of two or three people. Each group will be given a scenario of a different child and a different age. All of the fictitious children will have an autism diagnosis but very different needs. The task of each group will be to brainstorm ideas of how to adapt, modify or accommodate the curriculum so the child with autism can utilize the regular education classroom with his typically developing peers.
Awareness training for people who provide public services within the community should be provided. Those who work for the public transportation system, grocery stores, the government and the police meet people with autism daily. Each of these public services benefits from having people with disabilities as customers. Awareness training exercises will teach these people different communication techniques that autism patients may use.