Nazareth College Family Experience Project
Dear Families,
We are writing to see if you would be willing to participate in a project from our our Interdisciplinary Specialty Program in Autism at Nazareth College (I-SPAN), a graduate-level program designed to prepare professionals from multiple disciplines to work with individuals from the autism community. The program is a 9-credit (3 course) sequence that will examine a variety of contemporary topics related to best practices in person-centered support of individuals on the autism spectrum in multiple settings. The curriculum for this program was partly created using survey information from families and professionals. To date, we have graduated 46 professionals from fields such as speech language pathology, music education, art education, special education, general education, TESOL, and creative arts therapy!
The first course in the sequence, Exploring Autism From Multiple Perspectives, is an introductory course on autism and will explore the contemporary conceptualization of autism from multiple perspectives, including the history, diagnosis, characteristics, and current research. Emphasis is placed on examining the lived experiences of individuals from the autism community as they interact with the societal expectations of “normalcy”. We have 34 participants in the course this fall semester--all with a variety and level of experiences in interacting with individuals on the autism spectrum.
A large component of this course is our Family Experience Project. The purpose of this project is to allow participants to engage in family experiences to gain a perspective on how families live with autism. Their participation in this experience will allow them to recognize the strengths that families use in supporting the family member on the autism spectrum and to recognize the challenges families face in multiple social contexts. Their role in this project is that of a learner and observer, rather than a professional.
We would like to invite you to collaborate with us in the Family Experience Project this fall. There are 3 major components to this project for our I-SPAN participants: 1) Participation in family experiences, 2) pre/post journal writings, and 3) a family experience project poster session. Participants will be required to contact their assigned families for an initial "meet and greet" and participate in 3 additional experiences (such as grocery shopping, going to the playground, dinner, bedtime routines, extracurricular activities, going out to dinner, sports, etc.). The experiences will be designed by the family and the assigned participant.
If you are interested in this project, please complete the information below and reply back to Shanna Jamanis at sjamani9@naz.edu.
**Since I-SPAN participants will be completing multiple components to this project, it is important that participating families are able to schedule the experiences within the time frame below:
Meet & Greet: To be completed by Monday, October 3
1st family experience: To be completed by Monday, October 17
2nd family experience: To be completed by Monday, November 7
3rd family experience: To be completed by Monday, November 28
December 5 is also the Family Experience Poster Session. Invitation forthcoming (attendance by families is NOT required).
We are seeking 34 families, so please pass this email along to any other families of individuals on the autism spectrum that you think would be willing to participate in this project or send contact information to sjamani9@naz.edu!
We can't thank you enough for your willingness to participate in this learning experience. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.
Regards,
Shanna Jamanis and Dawn Vogler-Elias