Blog #2 Sorry it's so long!!!!!

I guess I could use one of my four blogs for August as a chance to intoduce myself since I wasn't able to make it to class on Wednesday night. To start off my name is Heather Martin and I am a sophomore here at Eastern. I am majoring in Special Edu./Elem. Edu. with an emphasis on autism. The town I grew up in, Dawson Springs, is in western Kentucky and has a population of about 3,000 people. Unlike many, I had an extremly small graduating class, roughly 40 students to be exact.

My senior year I was given the opportunity to take a peer tutoring class working with K-2nd grade special education students for one hour a day throughout the entire year. As you can probably guess, this is where my passion for autism began. I worked with a first grade little boy who had been diagnosed with the Autism Spectrum Disorder a few years previously. Before working with this student, I had honestly never heard of this disorder. However, after just a few weeks of interacting with this amazing child and watching the way he interacted with others, especially the teacher, I knew this was something that I couldn't just merely observe for an hour a day for a year. I wanted it to be a bigger part of my life.

I certainly do not know nearly all that there is to be known about autism and as a matter of a fact I'll admit that I honestly do not know much at all as far as everything that there is to be learned about ASD. But that is why I am taking classes such as SED 260 so that hopefully by the time I graduate I will know enough about this disorder to be able to pursue a career working with children who are diagnosed with it everyday.