[Music]
I am the founder of sense kaleidoscopes
a unit of IIT Trust this Academy was set
up at the single point focus of
providing solutions to those with autism
and Asperger syndrome so what is autism
autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder
that affects all the senses of the human
mind it is something that changes
completely the way a person sees smells
hears tastes and also how one is feeling
when one is touched not just by another
person but by the environment itself
it’s almost like the child is occupying
an alien body it would be useful to
visualize a densely populated circuit
board to understand autism because
that’s the way our brains are wired now
visualize a wrongly by a circuit board
which is always giving out wrong signals
this is autism now India has a very
unique way of dealing with autism first
we hide and that’s because of the social
stigma next we push we push our children
into the regular system in the hope that
they would become more like their
regular players but what we forget is
that an autistic child cannot function
in a classroom of 30 20 or even 10
children what we are doing is we are
ignoring the strengths of this mind and
we are highlighting the weaknesses by
forcing them to perform in a regular
classroom this is a neurodiverse brain
it has its own strengths and weaknesses
also what we are doing is broadening the
delays all of this is only going to lead
to a breakdown this was the reason why
me and my co-founder Annie ma decided to
open an autism specific school now this
is the question that we both hope to
answer with many assessments that we did
we realized that there were two strong
groups that came to us the first group
was of teens and adults with autism who
may or may not have finished their
schooling most of them were non
motivated under-confident had
psychological problems
and we’re on medication for aggression
or seizures the second group was of the
younger ones now they threw a lot of
tantrums within a classroom and so more
schools could not help them so the
challenge in front of us was to provide
solutions to both these diverse groups I
would like to start by presenting my
first case study my student ayushman
Bonnie according to his reports he
communicated with very few words he did
not like to write with a pencil and he
threw many aggressive Tantrums and the
artworks that you’re looking at over
here have been created by him I refuse
to believe that a low functioning
individual is capable of creating
something like this however I do believe
that the educational system did not do
what it needed to now despite the many
challenges today
yosh is our first well-established and
earning zentangle artist however while
we celebrate this talent one of our
constant worries is how are we going to
keep his practice sustainable for the
rest of his life I would like to now
take you through how we made the arts
accessible to many like I use now you
need to note that this is a structured
process it is child centric in nature
and it has a unique delivery model which
is how we create professional artists it
is not a fluke this is the basic arts
curriculum and the subjects in it this
is the advanced arts curriculum the
first thing we had to do was to design
the disability ruler kit now most of the
teens and adults who came to me
did not know how to use a scale so we
started with designing tools that would
be more effective and easily accessible
for them
there’s rulers that you see on the black
sheet have been cut in two sizes of
quarter 1/2 3/4 so on and so forth the
rulers on the brown sheet are of
variable dimensions and a single scale
in the center has similar numbers on the
top and on the bottom the only
difference being there is a plus sign
for the numbers on the top and a minus
sign for the numbers on the bottom this
scale is used to teach proportions in
perspective in the classrooms I’m going
to start by breaking down the first
module which is the form module because
essentially if you do not know how to
manipulate a
there can be no art what we did was we
created a lot of variations now why did
we do that an autistic mind cannot
generalize for example if a child is
being rude to her sister today and you
tell him don’t be rude to your sister
well he won’t be rude to his sister but
the next day he’ll be rude to his father
now that is what I mean by saying there
is no generalization this mind cannot
generalize so we took each and every
line of the form module and we created
approximately 200 or more variations of
it and this was to ensure generalization
the advanced form module took a mix of
all these basic lines and created
complex patterns and breaking down the
portraits curriculum now which looked at
singular details of the face like the
lips the nose the eyes and Rakhi done so
that we could teach proportions the
second step was to teach them how to put
the entire face together now if you
noticed we took them from an aunt’s
point of view to the bird’s eye view
what we also knew was that an autistic
child can solve complex puzzles very
easily so we looked at the basic
principles of puzzle organization and
that is what we used to build this
module we also introduced manga and that
was done to ensure cultural variety
through our art processes now one of the
constant worries or questions that has
been asked to me is with such a
structured curriculum would you be
building very similar artistic styles as
you can see in this slide my answer is
no and the reason of that is because the
intent of this curriculum is to further
expression it is to build on exposure
for the students it is not to kill the
intrinsic style of the artists I’m going
to run through a few case study so you
understand how this curriculum has
worked
this is Reyes an interesting thing about
Reyes is that if you put any image in
front of him he is going to convert it
into a caricature and he’s not been
trained to do something like this I
simply believe that that’s the way he
sees the world in a funny weird manner
this is other now he doesn’t struggle
only with autism he also has severe
seizures others his obsession with
newspapers radio shows and also magazine
helped him become a self-taught linguist
he has learned multiple languages
because of that now if you see his
portfolio it’s mostly with portraits and
it uses a lot of languages and works
with different media this is Kailash now
one interesting thing about Kailash is
worked out you look at the artwork
you’ll see this web-like structures that
have been created now these come
organically to him the second
interesting thing is that these
structures are never repetitive he keeps
changing them they evolve and I find
that extremely intriguing now despite
all these artworks and the artists that
I have presented to you one of the
problems that we have right now that we
are dealing with is that none of these
artists can be independent we are going
to have to build assisted studios for
them to function and keep the carrier’s
going
we know that the problems originated in
the classroom and so we decided to
revisit the classrooms the first task in
front of us was to give meaning to
language most children with autism could
not comprehend what they are reading
writing or even what is being told to
them so we took each and every word we
broke it down into a visual and week
attached meaning to it now we had to
build experiences around those meanings
as well for each individual post which
we introduced parts of speech and the
usage rules the second task was to help
a child with autism understand that a
story has a start middle and finish and
to do this we had to go into association
of emotions we built circumstantial
evidence we developed contexts these
comic strips that you’re looking at on
the slide have been created by my
students to understand or have a more
holistic understanding of water story
means the science class was made
extremely practical we look to develop
two skills essentially in a science
classroom one is analysis and other one
is logical deduction because that is key
to survival if we do not do that then
there is no point in having a science
class so most of their science classes
are in this culture rooms where they are
building solar systems or they are doing
land form models we also got them into
growing their own vegetables because one
of the students thought that a tomato
comes from the shoba market and
from a planet NOW a very good thing for
us has been technology we work with
interactive classrooms and smart boards
and we use a lot of visuals and
illustrations as you see over here in
the lesson plan to make most of the
abstract concepts more tangible to the
artistic mind and this has been an
excellent resource for us now I’m going
to be talking about the case studies of
students who have been in the academic
and the arts with us this is Rohit Rohit
sach atomic program had been installed
many times when he was in school because
he had extremely strong behaviors within
the classroom what we learned with Rohit
was when we brought him into the
classroom and we built his comprehension
and he and which actually initiated a
lot of communication and when he
understood the significance of the
relationship between his actions and
consequences he realized that it is
better for him to develop coping
strategies as opposed to expressing
anger or going into aggressive Tantrums
and that is how we sorted that problem
now one day Rohit came to me and he said
actually ever had a dream of a friend of
mine standing exactly in the way that
you see in the painting that helped me
understand that he has a natural
inclination towards this real arts so
today he’s passionate about the arts and
we are training him to become a surreal
artist
this is Pranav now Pranab never
associated meaning with language words
were like shiny objects that he could
collect and put in his pocket and use it
whichever way he wanted it is foreign of
who motivated us and pushed us to
develop a methodology a model a way of
working to help things become more
easily accessible to the autistic mind
it is because of prana we built a
classroom with one teacher and three
students it’s because of Pranab we moved
into technology and we work with laptops
because he did not want to write and
also today pronoun very happily and
gleefully calls himself the Kandinsky of
the school because of the paintings as
you can see he works with shapes and the
composition is completely his the last
boy I am going to be talking about is
the youngest of the three in the
classroom called ananda quiche
we lovingly call him Nandu and he is
extremely good with technology he works
he’s right now working with the coding
program and he’s also somebody who helps
out not just the trend his friends in
the class but also the teachers in the
school when they are working with
technology
he’s on social media he works with
Dropbox he works in designing lesson
plans with me as well
and one of the things that you will see
over here in his artwork is Nandu has
very effectively learned how to use art
as therapy what you see over here is a
story he’s a fantastic storyteller and
he uses his stories of loss and pain and
he puts them together in his artwork
which is how he’s dealing with his
anxiety nandos program was also stopped
multiple times when he was younger
because of his behaviors and for me the
truth is that the minute we build the
comprehension and the communication it
all got solved well what we are doing or
what I have done in all these slides is
I have introduced a solution to you a
possible way in which we can help
autistic children achieve their true
potential and also become truly
inclusive what we are trying to do is to
help everybody understand that there is
a particular way and methodology that
needs to be used to work with them and
we believe that with the process that we
are using we will be able to create
strong and independent leaders from the
autism community who tomorrow can be the
voices to support the rest of the
community and that is what we will do
thank you [Applause]
I am the founder of sense kaleidoscopes
a unit of IIT Trust this Academy was set
up at the single point focus of
providing solutions to those with autism
and Asperger syndrome so what is autism
autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder
that affects all the senses of the human
mind it is something that changes
completely the way a person sees smells
hears tastes and also how one is feeling
when one is touched not just by another
person but by the environment itself
it’s almost like the child is occupying
an alien body it would be useful to
visualize a densely populated circuit
board to understand autism because
that’s the way our brains are wired now
visualize a wrongly by a circuit board
which is always giving out wrong signals
this is autism now India has a very
unique way of dealing with autism first
we hide and that’s because of the social
stigma next we push we push our children
into the regular system in the hope that
they would become more like their
regular players but what we forget is
that an autistic child cannot function
in a classroom of 30 20 or even 10
children what we are doing is we are
ignoring the strengths of this mind and
we are highlighting the weaknesses by
forcing them to perform in a regular
classroom this is a neurodiverse brain
it has its own strengths and weaknesses
also what we are doing is broadening the
delays all of this is only going to lead
to a breakdown this was the reason why
me and my co-founder Annie ma decided to
open an autism specific school now this
is the question that we both hope to
answer with many assessments that we did
we realized that there were two strong
groups that came to us the first group
was of teens and adults with autism who
may or may not have finished their
schooling most of them were non
motivated under-confident had
psychological problems
and we’re on medication for aggression
or seizures the second group was of the
younger ones now they threw a lot of
tantrums within a classroom and so more
schools could not help them so the
challenge in front of us was to provide
solutions to both these diverse groups I
would like to start by presenting my
first case study my student ayushman
Bonnie according to his reports he
communicated with very few words he did
not like to write with a pencil and he
threw many aggressive Tantrums and the
artworks that you’re looking at over
here have been created by him I refuse
to believe that a low functioning
individual is capable of creating
something like this however I do believe
that the educational system did not do
what it needed to now despite the many
challenges today
yosh is our first well-established and
earning zentangle artist however while
we celebrate this talent one of our
constant worries is how are we going to
keep his practice sustainable for the
rest of his life I would like to now
take you through how we made the arts
accessible to many like I use now you
need to note that this is a structured
process it is child centric in nature
and it has a unique delivery model which
is how we create professional artists it
is not a fluke this is the basic arts
curriculum and the subjects in it this
is the advanced arts curriculum the
first thing we had to do was to design
the disability ruler kit now most of the
teens and adults who came to me
did not know how to use a scale so we
started with designing tools that would
be more effective and easily accessible
for them
there’s rulers that you see on the black
sheet have been cut in two sizes of
quarter 1/2 3/4 so on and so forth the
rulers on the brown sheet are of
variable dimensions and a single scale
in the center has similar numbers on the
top and on the bottom the only
difference being there is a plus sign
for the numbers on the top and a minus
sign for the numbers on the bottom this
scale is used to teach proportions in
perspective in the classrooms I’m going
to start by breaking down the first
module which is the form module because
essentially if you do not know how to
manipulate a
there can be no art what we did was we
created a lot of variations now why did
we do that an autistic mind cannot
generalize for example if a child is
being rude to her sister today and you
tell him don’t be rude to your sister
well he won’t be rude to his sister but
the next day he’ll be rude to his father
now that is what I mean by saying there
is no generalization this mind cannot
generalize so we took each and every
line of the form module and we created
approximately 200 or more variations of
it and this was to ensure generalization
the advanced form module took a mix of
all these basic lines and created
complex patterns and breaking down the
portraits curriculum now which looked at
singular details of the face like the
lips the nose the eyes and Rakhi done so
that we could teach proportions the
second step was to teach them how to put
the entire face together now if you
noticed we took them from an aunt’s
point of view to the bird’s eye view
what we also knew was that an autistic
child can solve complex puzzles very
easily so we looked at the basic
principles of puzzle organization and
that is what we used to build this
module we also introduced manga and that
was done to ensure cultural variety
through our art processes now one of the
constant worries or questions that has
been asked to me is with such a
structured curriculum would you be
building very similar artistic styles as
you can see in this slide my answer is
no and the reason of that is because the
intent of this curriculum is to further
expression it is to build on exposure
for the students it is not to kill the
intrinsic style of the artists I’m going
to run through a few case study so you
understand how this curriculum has
worked
this is Reyes an interesting thing about
Reyes is that if you put any image in
front of him he is going to convert it
into a caricature and he’s not been
trained to do something like this I
simply believe that that’s the way he
sees the world in a funny weird manner
this is other now he doesn’t struggle
only with autism he also has severe
seizures others his obsession with
newspapers radio shows and also magazine
helped him become a self-taught linguist
he has learned multiple languages
because of that now if you see his
portfolio it’s mostly with portraits and
it uses a lot of languages and works
with different media this is Kailash now
one interesting thing about Kailash is
worked out you look at the artwork
you’ll see this web-like structures that
have been created now these come
organically to him the second
interesting thing is that these
structures are never repetitive he keeps
changing them they evolve and I find
that extremely intriguing now despite
all these artworks and the artists that
I have presented to you one of the
problems that we have right now that we
are dealing with is that none of these
artists can be independent we are going
to have to build assisted studios for
them to function and keep the carrier’s
going
we know that the problems originated in
the classroom and so we decided to
revisit the classrooms the first task in
front of us was to give meaning to
language most children with autism could
not comprehend what they are reading
writing or even what is being told to
them so we took each and every word we
broke it down into a visual and week
attached meaning to it now we had to
build experiences around those meanings
as well for each individual post which
we introduced parts of speech and the
usage rules the second task was to help
a child with autism understand that a
story has a start middle and finish and
to do this we had to go into association
of emotions we built circumstantial
evidence we developed contexts these
comic strips that you’re looking at on
the slide have been created by my
students to understand or have a more
holistic understanding of water story
means the science class was made
extremely practical we look to develop
two skills essentially in a science
classroom one is analysis and other one
is logical deduction because that is key
to survival if we do not do that then
there is no point in having a science
class so most of their science classes
are in this culture rooms where they are
building solar systems or they are doing
land form models we also got them into
growing their own vegetables because one
of the students thought that a tomato
comes from the shoba market and
from a planet NOW a very good thing for
us has been technology we work with
interactive classrooms and smart boards
and we use a lot of visuals and
illustrations as you see over here in
the lesson plan to make most of the
abstract concepts more tangible to the
artistic mind and this has been an
excellent resource for us now I’m going
to be talking about the case studies of
students who have been in the academic
and the arts with us this is Rohit Rohit
sach atomic program had been installed
many times when he was in school because
he had extremely strong behaviors within
the classroom what we learned with Rohit
was when we brought him into the
classroom and we built his comprehension
and he and which actually initiated a
lot of communication and when he
understood the significance of the
relationship between his actions and
consequences he realized that it is
better for him to develop coping
strategies as opposed to expressing
anger or going into aggressive Tantrums
and that is how we sorted that problem
now one day Rohit came to me and he said
actually ever had a dream of a friend of
mine standing exactly in the way that
you see in the painting that helped me
understand that he has a natural
inclination towards this real arts so
today he’s passionate about the arts and
we are training him to become a surreal
artist
this is Pranav now Pranab never
associated meaning with language words
were like shiny objects that he could
collect and put in his pocket and use it
whichever way he wanted it is foreign of
who motivated us and pushed us to
develop a methodology a model a way of
working to help things become more
easily accessible to the autistic mind
it is because of prana we built a
classroom with one teacher and three
students it’s because of Pranab we moved
into technology and we work with laptops
because he did not want to write and
also today pronoun very happily and
gleefully calls himself the Kandinsky of
the school because of the paintings as
you can see he works with shapes and the
composition is completely his the last
boy I am going to be talking about is
the youngest of the three in the
classroom called ananda quiche
we lovingly call him Nandu and he is
extremely good with technology he works
he’s right now working with the coding
program and he’s also somebody who helps
out not just the trend his friends in
the class but also the teachers in the
school when they are working with
technology
he’s on social media he works with
Dropbox he works in designing lesson
plans with me as well
and one of the things that you will see
over here in his artwork is Nandu has
very effectively learned how to use art
as therapy what you see over here is a
story he’s a fantastic storyteller and
he uses his stories of loss and pain and
he puts them together in his artwork
which is how he’s dealing with his
anxiety nandos program was also stopped
multiple times when he was younger
because of his behaviors and for me the
truth is that the minute we build the
comprehension and the communication it
all got solved well what we are doing or
what I have done in all these slides is
I have introduced a solution to you a
possible way in which we can help
autistic children achieve their true
potential and also become truly
inclusive what we are trying to do is to
help everybody understand that there is
a particular way and methodology that
needs to be used to work with them and
we believe that with the process that we
are using we will be able to create
strong and independent leaders from the
autism community who tomorrow can be the
voices to support the rest of the
community and that is what we will do
thank you [Applause]
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