Over-the-Phone Interview with Carol Behrens

For extra credit we had to interview someone and I decided to interview Carol Behrens, a special ed activist. I asked her different questions about autism and about some things that I could include in my film. Interviewing her was amazing and she gave me many different ideas and information to include in my film. After telling her about my film, I asked her some questions. One question that I asked was what might autistic kids notice other than everyone else. She responded," I think a person with ADHD or Autism notices everything. That's how they notice things, they're just all over the place..." She told me a classroom would be a great place to film because there is just so many things going on all at once. Carol also told me some things that may overwhelm someone with Autism that I didn't know before. For example, she told me about how when a teacher asked the class to get out their homework the child with autism was focused with everything happening, that child struggled a bit to get out their homework folder. The teacher - thinking the child is getting distracted - starts to bug the child and keeps on repeating and repeating the directions to get their homework. This adds more stress and things to focus on, that they start to struggle more. This causes the student to get a huge information overload. Not only are they noticing every single little thing happening around them, but now they also have the pressure of the teacher on them as well. She gave me other examples like this and told me why this happened to autistic kids. Overall, interviewing Carol was a great experience, I learned a lot, and got many new ideas on what to add in my film.