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I remember seeing the TV program about this a long time ago. It was absolutely amazing! There is hope to teach those who are severely autistic! Here are a few links to check it out!
*Note the BLACK UNDERLINED is not a link*
Overview of Rapid Prompting Method for Students with Autism
Description:
This course will provide an overview of the Rapid Prompting Method, an instructional technique designed to develop academic and communication skills in learners who are severely affected by Autism. Developed by Soma Mukhopadhyay, a teacher and a mother of a son with Autism, RPM is used to teach academics and communication by eliciting responses through intensive verbal, auditory, visual and/or tactile prompts, designed to keep the learner focused and successful. Student responses evolve from picking up answers, to pointing, to typing and writing.
Soma Mukhopadhyay is a teacher and mother who developed the Rapid Prompting Method to instruct her son, Tito, who has severe autism and is now a published writer and poet. She has instructed more than 300 students (youth to adult) with autism and other challenging communication delays.
http://www.autismlink.com/calinfo.php?id=92
Subject: PaTTAN Training Announcement
The Pennsylvania Department of Education, Bureau of Special Education is pleased to announce the following videoconference opportunity:
Overview of Rapid Prompting Method for Students with Autism
When: Thursday, March 10, 2005
Time: 9:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Location: multiple sites across Pennsylvania, including:
· PaTTAN Pittsburgh (gate code 47301#)
PaTTAN Harrisburg
· PaTTAN King of Prussia
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http://www.pbs.org/kcet/closertotruth/explore/show_03.html (video clips about this method)
Tapes can be ordered from CBS News. Please visit www.cbsnews.com and click on "60 Minutes 2."
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http://www.comprehensivenet.com/Autism/css/Autism_4.html
REPORTED BREAKTHOUGH On January 15, 2003, CBS 60 Minutes II ran a short program on a new research foun- dation called Cure Autism Now, CAN. Estab- lished by Jon Shestak and his wife Portia Iversen, who have an autistic son, Dov, CAN is presently the largest private supporter of autism research in the country, funding sev- eral hundred scientists working on the genes responsible for the disorder. The program focused on their most recent breakthrough. One of their students, Tito Mukhopadhayay, is a 14 year old boy who, like Dov, suffers from the most severe form of autism. Tito is almost mute and has little con- trol over his body. How- ever, unlike Dov and other autistic children, he can write elo- quently and independently. His teacher and “miracle worker” is his mother, Soma. For the past 11 years, she has been talking, teach- ing, prodding and stimulating, keeping Tito’s mind on track. She has taught him literature, geometry and music. She tied a pencil to his finger with a rubber band and taught him to write. Her “Rapid Prompting Method” ap- proach, which she recently started imple- menting at CAN, keeps the children‘s attention focused long enough for them to communicate. She ignores their erratic move- ment and wandering eyes and focuses rather on the mind locked inside. Dov’s parents were astonished at their son’s progress. “From a boy who six weeks earlier couldn’t even tie his shoe suddenly came full sentences, complex thoughts and words spelled correctly. ‘The best way I could put this is it seemed like I was seeing the kid that had disappeared seven years before.’” Dov says that all those years, when people thought he was lost in his own world, he was actually listening to everything around him. He says he is much happier now because now “I can tell others my feelings.
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http://www.halo-soma.org/main.php?sess_id=b8656cfbd28578f77d fb94ac4e1197c8
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Success stories - unbelieveable! http://www.halo-soma.org/community_stories.php?sess_id=b8656 cfbd28578f77dfb94ac4e1197c8
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http://www.bridges4kids.org/articles/1-03/ABC1-16-03.html
…….Tito's mother, Soma Mukhopadhyay, had somehow found a way to communicate with her autistic son. She forced him to focus by gently prodding him, sometimes raising her voice to keep him on track whenever she asked him a question and required an answer.
And Tito responded. First by pointing and then, slowly, by writing out sentences. The sentences grew into elegant observations about life as a child locked in the body of an autistic.
"The thoughts are bigger than I can express," Tito wrote.. "Every move that I make shows how trapped I feel under the continuous happenings."
Thousands of Titos?
His case raises the question: Are there more children like him?
"There might be thousands of children like Tito, and one of our challenges is to determine whether anything can be done about that and whether there are more children that can be in a sense awakened like Tito," Merzenich said.
Tito's poetry caught the attention of world-renowned autism experts, who wanted to study him. The boy was one of the few people with autism able to describe his inner experience.
Halfway across the world in Los Angeles, another mother, Portia Iversen, was doing everything she could to give her son Dov a chance.
"There's certain intensity and vigilance you feel when you're the parent of an autistic child," Iversen said. "A vigilance to help them break through and break out of the disorder."
Like Tito, Dov was severely autistic. But Iversen had refused to accept her son's fate and had started a foundation, Cure Autism Now, to fund research into the condition that ruled Dov's life. And it was that foundation that brought Soma and Tito to the United States.
"I was just filled with questions to ask Tito about all these behaviors," Iversen said. "So that I could understand my son Dov better."
The Unexpected Happens
During Soma and Tito's visit something unexpected happened. Soma taught Dov the method she used with Tito, getting him to focus, point and spell out entire sentences. For the first time, Dov could tell his own mother, in rich detail, everything she wanted to know.
"This is not a cure for autism, it's a tool," Iversen said. "It will probably not work for everybody the way it has for Tito, or for Dov, but we have to try and determine if it can."
For Iversen, the changes have been astonishing.
"Every day was a new excitement," Iverson said. "Making up for all these years of 'what do you want to be when you grow up? What's your favorite subject in school? Do you like school? What's your favorite color? How do you like having brothers and sisters?,'" she said.
Soma and Iversen are at work on a manual that aims to teach other parents what they call the "rapid prompting method." Now Soma has begun to teach the method at Dov's school, working with nine other autistic students.
When Iversen asked Dov what being able to communicate has given him, he spelled out an answer:
"I am understood."
Merzenich says Soma and Mukhopadhyay's efforts should be examined closely by the medical world. "So we need to look at the strategy more widely and determine whether or not it is a valid strategy for a large number of children," Merzenich said. "That's still unresolved . But The initial observations are extremely hopeful."
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