which to mediate my interactions with other students. Music was a place I could be successful and “geek out” with other like-minded students. My interest in music may have stemmed from the music my parents used for our home-based “early-intervention” program when I was young.
When I was 6 years old, my parents had found a teacher to give me music lessons. However, the lessons went badly. I think the most important thing I learned from these lessons was how not to teach children with autism how to play musical instruments. While I was taking those lessons, however, my parents remained very strict about having me practice 30 minutes a day to prepare for my time with the teacher.
I Learned to Play Most Musical Instruments
I became so taken with music that I would spend hours in the instrument closet with introductory music lesson books, such as A Tune a Day, to learn how to play most of the instruments. A leading factor in my choosing music education as an undergraduate college major was that one of the requirements was to learn all of the instruments!
How I Coped with Physical Education
Physical education was often problematic to me, owing to the challenges I had with motor control, and, later, bullying in the locker room. One day in middle school, I noticed a chart on the wall of the locker room that read “100-Mile Club,” with a bunch of names on it. I asked the gym teacher what it was, and he said that anyone who walked or ran around a track 100 times during the semester got their name on the board. I requested to use my gym period to work on that very task. Upon his agreement, I queried as to whether I could walk or run in my “civilian” clothes, to which he assented. This was great, because now there was no more dealing with locker-room bullies, and I didn’t have to engage in all of those ball-oriented sports I was so bad at. Rather, I could work on something that was a strength for me—running around a track.
In those days, there was no Individualized Education Program (IEP) and no special services for kids with autism. I was lucky to have a sensitive gym teacher who must have agreed I needed to get my physical education in an alternative way.
In high school, I had an opportunity to design an independent-study curriculum for myself in physical education. Bicycling was a special interest of mine, and I developed a weekly training schedule to prepare for long rides of 100 miles a day, as well as bicycle races.
I never had a problem with physical fitness, per se, but rather the social aspects and coordination needed to play team sports. Additionally, I had great difficulty with catching a ball because I always thought it was going to hit me, and I’d run away or duck. This was probably due to my visual perception issues.
Other enjoyable middle- and high-school activities included joining a rock-climbing club, where we went climbing with ropes and carabiners (a metal ring used to hold the ropes when climbing). I also convinced one of the teachers to sponsor the bicycle club I wanted to start, where I’d lead rides of up to 25 miles. It was great fun drawing up maps for the ride by hand, as there were no Google Maps at the time.
EXPERIENCES IN COLLEGE
As an undergraduate in college, rhetoric class was especially hard. It was essentially a freshman course to develop writing skills. Analyzing music from the romantic era posed a real challenge, as I found the forms to be less structured than compositions from other periods. I also found physics of music to be incredibly tedious. The subject interested me, but I found the teacher to be horribly boring—possibly owing to a lack of structure in the class. And, I was still afraid of doing math—statistics class was particularly daunting, until I took it as a summer course. The grade-school teacher who had told me I would never be able to learn math years before had succeeded in scaring me away from all math-oriented subjects. However, in college, when I decided to pursue an accounting degree in addition to my music degree, I faced the sizeable hurdle of required courses in mathematics.
With much trepidation, I took the first two required courses during the summer, when they would not interfere with my other coursework. Those courses went well. Emboldened, I started a statistics class that had the reputation of being incredibly difficult. That class was notoriously a good way to bring down your cumulative average, because poor grades were commonplace and it drained away study time from other coursework. After 2 weeks, I found this to be true, and I dropped the class.
Conquering the Dreaded Statistics Class
The following summer, I took the same statistics course again, all by itself, figuring it would be my lone “D” (and hopefully not an “F”), but at least it would not interfere with my other studies during the semester. To my surprise, my hard work, in combination with the support of an effective and helpful teacher, resulted in an “A!”
Doing well in that class made me realize the following: First, math was no longer to be feared—I could do well and even enjoy it! Second, I could use my newfound math abilities to make money by tutoring other students. And third, it became my impression that many people found statistics difficult because it was taught badly. Therefore, it became a personal goal of mine to teach statistics at the college level and do it well. That is how I came to teach statistics at various colleges as an adjunct professor, until 2008. Once I get tenure at Adelphi University, I may return to teaching statistics, in addition to courses in autism and special education.
In school, I remember struggling mightily to understand the concept of going from broad descriptions to honing in on a specific subject and then expanding upon that subject. This became pronounced when I was doing qualitative research as part of my graduate and doctoral work. It was only about halfway through a doctoral-level course in qualitative research, after drawing a funnel-shaped diagram, that I was able to grasp this concept more fully as I studied the way the broad end narrowed down to a more pointed tip. It would have been easier for me if my professor had included such a graphic in her lecture.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTORS
For me, mentors have played a valuable role throughout my school and teaching years. For instance, the orchestra conductor at my high school took a special interest in my musical curiosity and gave me free music lessons during his break time. When I was a professor of music in the Boston area, the dean of business became a mentor of mine. Although we did not share much in terms of common interests, he was very helpful in guiding me through the political maze that academic institutions can often be. Arnold Miller, the developer of the Miller Method, took a keen interest in my career, as well as in special education and autism. It was he who encouraged me to write my first book, Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome, for which he wrote the foreword in the first edition. Dr Miller’s guidance was invaluable in getting me through my doctoral program at Boston University, right through my dissertation and beyond.
EMPLOYMENT
Working as a Youth
My first taste of work came at age 8, when I began shoveling my neighbors’ driveways after snowstorms. By middle school, I had teamed up with a friend, and the two of us had regular customers we shoveled for when needed. On a good day, we could make more than $50 each, which was a lot of money to a young kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Toward the end of elementary school, I had a paper route, which I maintained through middle school. A paper route was a great thing for a child to have, because it contained all the aspects of a business enterprise at a small enough level for a young person to handle. Part of differentiating my service from other paperboys was placing the newspaper between the storm and main front doors of each house, so my customers could get their paper while remaining indoors—especially in bad weather. After a while, I
