Up Close and Personal with the Spectrum

Great post by Hannah Cushing on Autism Support Network.

Three years ago, I was teaching in a charter school for students in recovery from drug and alcohol addictions. My campus was closing and I needed a new job. The first four years of my teaching career were spent working with addicts, gangsters, and wanna-be gangsters. This was exactly the population I had pictured myself working with, and I loved it. I had always been most drawn to the students that our society relegates to the fringes, the kids who fall through the cracks, unwanted, unnoticed or blamed for their inability to fit our expectations.
At the time, I had a connection within a new charter school for students on the Autism Spectrum going into its third year and was encouraged to apply. So I did. I applied, interviewed, and was eventually hired. Although there was a part of me that thought, “Hmmmm, this is not what I imagined for myself.” There was another part of me that said, “Doesn’t matter. This is where you are supposed to be.”