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quick workersCommunity relations director Robert Bradley began the program in a Springdale High School classroom 11 years ago, helping students transition from classroom environments to a more independent routine of a sheltered workshop. Students originally spent a few hours at school packaging fishing lures, but the program eventually grew so large that schools began transporting students to the center to complete assembly projects, he said. Autistic students are quick workers, and a fondness for accurate, repetitive work can make the projects appealing to them, Bradley said. "Once they get it, you don't have to remind them what to do," he said. The routines are useful at home, too. T.J.'s mother Linda Bennorth created a rigid schedule of household chores so he can anticipate what will happen when he comes home. He loves neatly stacking plates in the dishwasher and folding shirts on Fridays, laundry day in the Bennorth household. It's comforting and reassuring to see him find fulfillment in the workshop tasks, which give Bennorth a glimpse at his future after high school, she said. Bennorth stopped by the center to observe T.J. working one day in September. "T.J., is it better to be flexible or rigid?" she hollered across the room. "Flexible," he said in a rehearsed tone as he continued to snap and stack signs. After a day on the job, T.J. said he was ready to master a new task and learn a new routine. That comfort and eagerness makes people with autism ideal workers, said Richard Mc-Clintock, the center's contracts manager. The center's contracts were threatened by companies moving labor projects overseas for cheaper labor, but the center obtained new contracts to repackage and reassemble products completed incorrectly elsewhere. The center secures contracts not out of sympathy for the needs of its workers, but because its clients do a better, more efficient job, McClintock said. "They give us jobs because we do it better than anyone out there," he said. A DRAMATIC TRANSITION For autistic students like T.J., college is not an option, his mother said. The day a doctor looked her in the eye and confirmed her suspicion that her son had the disorder, her mind clicked forward, adjusting her expectations for her son's future. "The first thing you think is 'How can we fix this?'" she said. "If I could do anything to improve his life even 5 percent, I'd do it." The family tried various forms of play therapy and experimental diets, but T.J.'s autism quickly robbed him of his verbal skills. His sentences and social interactions are less cogent in his teen years than they were when he was a young child. Bennorth remembers the day T.J. started keeping a journal, allowing his mother to read it each night. She read with interest what he did at school all day, the things his classmates told him, his impressions of his environment - things he couldn't express in a conversation. She also soaked up extraneous tidbits that were only significant to her son - the number of steps from the classroom to the cafeteria, the number of cracks on the sidewalk in front of his school and the number of people he talked to that day. He continues the practice today, writing about his peers who work beside him, assembling and packaging products. Some students with different forms of autism, particularly a milder form called Asperger's syndrome, can be successful college students, said Anne Jannarone, director of the Center for Educational Access at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. People with Asperger's syndrome are not receptive to many social cues and are often uncomfortable with eye contact. The center works with professors, residence hall employees and career development to help special needs students develop a support system in college, she said. The center has 12 autistic students registered for its services this year, but there are likely many more students in the general population who do not seek support, Jannarone said. While many autistic students are capable intellectually and academically of completing college courses, struggles with social interactions and changes in routine can make the experience difficult, she said. The center's employees work with students to identify "triggers" to anxiety and find ways to avoid or adjust to them. They help create schedules, find files on crashed computers, practice difficult conversations with peers in group projects and deal with "the inevitable thing gone awry." "It's a pretty dramatic transition from public schools to living on their own," she said. For example, students with autism frequently lack an understanding of sarcasm, Jannarone said. A parent once called the center, suspecting her autistic son was unaware the men in his dorm were bullying him when they spoke to him in sarcastic tones. As growing numbers of autistic students graduate from high school, the center may need to take a more active role in advocating for students with more severe social problems and marketing itself to families looking for options, Jannarone said. She thinks many more autistic students could complete college, but they are unaware of the resources available to them. "Our focus has always been on the students being their own self-advocates," she said. "I think we're going to need to get a little more intrusive for some of these students to be successful." EMPTY NESTERS? After years of advocating for her son, sometimes battling with teachers and principals as he navigated the public education system, Bennorth must prepare him for a greater challenge: Teaching him to advocate for himself as he plots his path through adulthood and seeks to live independently. T.J. likely will get a job at a sheltered workshop or work with a mentor to find a job on his own, she said. Some graduates of the schoolto-work program live in apartment complexes or group homes with support staff, and continue on to full-time jobs at the center, Bradley said. Last year, the center employed 15 program graduates. Autistic adults sometimes marry and have children, though about half of them never find full independence, living with their parents well into adulthood, according to the Autism Society of America. Linda Bennorth, a receptionist in a dentist's office, and her husband Tom, a manager of a storage facility in Rogers, aren't sure that they'll ever be "empty nesters," she said. She'd like to imagine T.J. getting married and finding his own place to live, but she tries not to think that far into the future. "There's no handbook for this," Bennorth said. "Ideally, I'd like to know there's someone there to take care of him when we're gone."
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