Because I constantly have guilt for not serving the needy, for not teaching in my own low-income neighborhood, and for usually finding myself in the company of affluent kids I have turned karma a few steps around. I’ve done this by recently taking a job as a Dance Specialist at a school for kids ‘on the spectrum’ of autism. “Oh, not all of them are autistic,” the director dismissed, certain that their varying degrees of disability equaled out to one complete, slightly below average, child. I have had a few high functioning autistic children in my various classes over the years. There was the high-profile kid who had suspicious Asperger like qualities in my kindergarten class. There was the little boy who stayed in Storybook Acting for a year, happy as a lark and then crying at random intervals–specifically when we sang “Twinkle, twinkle.” Currently, I have a little girl whose obsessive compulsive nature, unwillingness to be called anything but “Miss. Butterfly,” and habit of walking into doors due to out-of-body awareness hints at some sort of placement on the fancily titled “spectrum.” We all know the stats: 1 in 150 births, 1 to 1.5 million Americans; Autism is the fastest-growing developmental disability with a 10 – 17 % annual growth. It is mysterious, devastating, and most prevalent in boys. Because of its growth, the media has finally dragged autism out of hiding. Why just this week you can see Jenny McCarthy crowing about how she ‘cured’ her son’s autism on the cover of People, (using almost entirely diet and therapy according to her book).

On my first day it became clear that, while a few children seemed fairly high functioning, the large majority of the children in the younger grades were not. I was to spend a half hour with seven children (ages 6-9), four teacher’s aids, and myself. One boy was wearing a full body unitard under his clothes. This was because he regularly pulls his pants down. One of the only girls in the class, beautiful, vacant, was in a dress and diapers. One narrowly peered through squinted eyes, suspicious and halting. One, heart-breakingly shy, knew my name already from the board (my welcome letter tacked up next to the school calender and the teacher bios). He stared at me, almost piercing my soul, until furtively looking away and retreating…where? I was unsure? We danced and sang, the kids fighting their handlers at every turn, emotions turned on high. I dodged elbows, shouted praise over the ruckus, and found myself being clung to by the boy with squinty eyes before he immediately endowed me as some sort of jungle gym.

The fifth grade class, all four of them, were much more comprehending. Ages 10-11, they were fantastic in the gawky way they had claimed themselves. One of them, tall with long limbs that he introduced himself to me with a rapping rhyme. Another boy had no sense of personal space and I found him constantly standing right in front of me eagerly staring up at my face. I was surprised at how easy going the only girl of the group was, until I saw her eyes vacantly search the floor. “Many of them have no short term memory,” the director informed me. “They’ll forget your name five minutes after you tell them.” The fifth graders persevered, although the cramped confines of the tiny classroom left us struggling for space.

These kids are endearing simply because they have abandoned social norms, left the standard ideas we have for children about who they are and what they should be, and instead, have created their own struggling, halting, unique personalities. OK, so that’s how I feel today. Two weeks ago, when I started I felt in over my head.