NWCA Shines a (Blue) Light on Autism

 For Camelot’s Northwest Center for Autism in DeKalb, this is a very special time. April is Autism Awareness Month, a time to make an even greater effort to educate the public on what Autism looks like.

While all of Camelot’s therapeutic day schools include some students on the autism spectrum, NWCA is the only site primarily focused on these students. The school’s staff has planned special activities for every day of the month, including April 2, World Autism Awareness Day, when even though it’s a Saturday the school building will be lit in blue.

School staff bought blue light bulbs to shine on the school building and also to sell, with all proceeds being donated to Autism Speaks, an advocacy organization that sponsors autism research and conducts awareness and outreach activities aimed at families, governments, and the public.

“We created a flyer with just a few facts about autism that our students and staff delivered to businesses in our community as well as job sites our students work at,” Jennifer Johnson, NWCA’s principal said. “We asked them to hang the flyers in their business.”

Autism is one of the most widely growing disabilities for students. One in 68 students is now being diagnosed with autism, and one in 42 boys. Ms. Johnson wants NWCA’s community – and the world – to know what autism is and what we can do to help these students.

“This is especially important in our community, where we are out and about with our students,” Johnson says. “They work at some of our local businesses, both paid and volunteer work. When they see us with our students we want them to be aware that although our students may look and act differently it’s because they are unique, not bad.”

One of the highlights of the month is a contest among staff members in which they submit a design for an autism awareness tee-shirt. A winner is selected and staff can wear the tee-shirt every Wednesday during April. And for the annual Autism Walk, the school walks as a team in these same tee-shirts.

NWCA has attracted positive attention for the advances it has made in accelerating progress for its students.

“We’ve done a lot of research and have used several curriculums for educating our students, and have had outstanding results with the PEAK Direct Training Module that we began using about a year ago. We have seen double or triple the gains with PEAK compared to other protocols previously used,” Ms. Johnson said.