New PFW program empowers local teachers to better support students with autism

There are always times when leading a classroom is challenging and stressful, and often those are the times when Northrop High School teacher Jared McMullen hears Rama Cousik in the back of his mind.

"You hear her voice saying, `You need to look past the behavior and look at the cause of it. Look for the seeds of it,'" McMullen said.

Last summer, McMullen, M.S. '25, and Kristen Bakehorn, B.S. '19, an instructor at Blackhawk Middle School, leaned into the Purdue University Fort Wayne School of Education's recently established autism concentration. Cousik, an associate professor of special education, taught a six-week online course this summer, and both Bakehorn and McMullen enrolled in it as an elective toward their master's degrees.

"I definitely gained some new perspective from the class in a way that would be very applicable," Bakehorn said. "I have a handful of kids each year who are diagnosed with autism, and it was very interesting to take the things we talked about and apply it directly."

Asked how quickly he was able to apply the skills, McMullen said it was on the first day of school.

"It changes the way you manage the classroom because you can start to see when they're about to be triggered," McMullen said. "It helps you with your interventions, not just for them, but for more of the students in general, because a lot of kids now get overstimulated because of all the things they have been through and how everything is in society right now."

With Bakehorn and McMullen, Cousik was able to serve their specific goals. Sometimes that included video examples, but it also involved personal discussions from her own experiences working with those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

As an example, Cousik discussed working with a selected group of musically talented children with disabilities, including those with autism. She helped these students extend their musicality from repetitive rhymes to age-appropriate and culturally relevant forms of music. This, in turn, enhanced their capabilities and understanding in other areas such as communication, attention span, socialization, and academics.

While the number of children dealing with the autism spectrum continues to increase, several School of Education graduates have reached back to PFW in recent years to ask for advice and options they could consider in their classrooms.

"I enjoyed having the opportunity to have a very personal connection to the instructor," Bakehorn said. "She was very proactive about front-loading some of the things that we had questions about and taking it beyond being simply hypothetical discussions. I feel like I have become a much better-equipped teacher and a better educator all around, thanks to everything I have learned, especially over this past summer."

Bakehorn teaches eighth-grade language arts, while McMullen works with various biology classes.

"The class gave me more tools to help," McMullen said. "As I was planning my lessons before school even started, I was better-prepared to think about them in a different way and how to serve students better. I was making sure the guardrails were in place so that they didn't feel isolated or singled out."

McMullen had already experienced Cousik's teaching style during an earlier introduction to special education class. He especially appreciated her willingness to create a collaborative experience and also to provide research resources he could refer to later. In fact, he's been sharing some of what he learned with Northrop colleagues.

"It helps with parents, too, because they can see the results as well," McMullen said. "When the kid comes home and talks about how much they love your class, even though it's traditionally been a subject the students might have struggled in, the parents are like, `Well, what are you doing?'"

As a side objective, Bakehorn said she's found another way to inspire students by sharing her own routine of going home after school to do her own homework or prepare for a class she is taking.

"This was a much-needed course for me, and it has been very applicable in ways that I didn't really expect," Bakehorn said.