Introduction

I wanted to be a baseball player-a pitcher, in fact.  My youth was spent developing the skills I would need some day to play in the big leagues.  It was a dream I held onto until the day I was invited to a tryout and the major league scouts didn’t call me over.  I never knew what they were looking for, only that, it wasn’t what I had to offer.  This became one of Life’s first big lessons for me - things just don’t always come to you just because you want them so badly.  Enter the void and a long process of letting go.

Fast forward to February, 1996, when I found myself practicing as a therapist with the North Carolina  TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic and Communication handicapped CHildren) program, working with children who have autism.  One of my responsibilities was to do work sessions with these young children, most of whom had shown little or no response to directions from their parents.  The purpose of these sessions was to demonstrate how to create an appropriate structure within which the child could begin the process of “learning how to learn”.  The sessions were conducted in a small room with a window, which allowed the family to observe from an adjacent room without the child seeing them.  Working with one of these children felt similar to pitching a game of baseball.  It was a one-on-one competition, where I needed to stay alert and be responsive to the ever-changing needs of the situation.  Although I found the process to have similarities, the desired outcomes were very different.  In baseball, the goal was to better your opponent and prevent them from defeating you.  However, during these therapy sessions, the goal was to create a situation where the child could shine and show all that they were able to do.  It was not a clash of wills or an attempt by the bigger person to control the outcome of the interaction.  If anything, the smaller and less significant the bigger person could become, the more successful was the outcome.  One’s timing and ability to create something of interest were extremely important.  As a TEACCH therapist, I benefited enormously from the knowledge and experience gained through the efforts of therapists working for years with individuals on the autism spectrum.  Because this spectrum ranges from those affected most severely to those more mildly affected, there was a wide array of activities and ideas that were available as resources as I interacted with an energetic young person, new to a therapeutic situation.

With the support of coworkers and this wealth of ideas, my work with autistic children progressed with positive results; however, a pattern began to develop that was troubling.  It was clear that many of these children displayed an ability to focus on details within their immediate environment-details of their choosing.  The challenge for me was to redirect their focus to the activity that I was setting up before them.  Since many of the activities that I worked with had several distinct parts, it took several moves on my part before everything was in place.  In addition to displaying tremendous focus to detail, these young children were very quick and agile.  Before I could get the entire activity set up, they were dismantling what was already set before them.  My repeated attempts to get everything in place often resulted in a flurry of arms and hands moving chaotically in the air, resulting in a face-off between the child and me.  Needless to say, some of these activities were never completed, and it often appeared that the child was the one setting things up and I was responding.

As a therapist, I worked to create a structure within which the student can demonstrate the full breadth of their abilities.  Always being aware of not giving students tasks beyond their ability level, I tried to build upon their successes in those areas where they needed just a little help.    How the activity is structured, as well as how it is presented to the student, are important elements in this process.  Being successful also means being independent.  This requires close observation of the student at work and evaluating those aspects of the session where he or she needs the therapist’s help.  How can we, as therapists, phase ourselves out of this teaching/learning interaction completely?  Do we need to come in contact with or verbally prompt the student during his/her work?  Is hand over hand guidance necessary for the student to be successful?  Sometimes this might mean lowering our expectations and establishing a starting point from which the student will have the greatest opportunity to act independently.  How we structure our environment and activities and how we are able to create interest and motivate the student all play important parts in this teacher/student interaction.

Who can say exactly why someone would turn a cardboard shoebox over and begin experimenting with design possibilities.  In my case, I was certainly motivated by the frustration I felt as a result of some disastrous outcomes with these young children.  Having done some carpentry and not having a typical background in this field of work probably contributed to the “why” of my actions.  In any case, I designed a few rudimentary activities using shoe boxes and tried them out with a young child with whom I had been having some particularly challenging sessions.  We had a very successful session together using several of these new activities.  He completed them without any difficulty or challenge.  In fact, he appeared highly motivated to do them.  It was almost too easy.  Buoyed by this success, I created more of these “shoebox activities” and began to use them in all my sessions with these young children.

It was during this time that other therapists at the TEACCH Center began to take notice of my new-found success using these shoebox activities during work sessions.  They suggested I do a presentation about them at the upcoming yearly TEACCH conference.  With the conference in mind and with the understanding that many of those attending my presentation would be teachers, I worked on developing 16 activities with a progression of skill levels from a simple “put-in” to a “4-way sort.”  By refining the form and function of this novel design, it became increasingly clear that these activities might have a credible place in the educational process for young children as well as

severely challenged individuals on the autism spectrum.

I could not have anticipated the response I received when I presented the activities before more than 100 teachers, therapists, and parents at the TEACCH conference held in Chapel Hill, NC, in May of 1996.  Literature, with drawings of each of the 16 activities created by my wife Linda was quickly taken by all of the participants.  I encouraged teachers and fellow therapists to go to their local shoe stores for empty boxes and begin producing them for use in their classrooms.  A number of teachers and several TEACCH directors from other Centers questioned the possibility of these activities being mass produced and made available for sale.  The seed had been planted!

If it weren’t for Linda, my colleagues, and my friends who loved the idea, these activities probably would have remained as cardboard constructs.  Once it was decided to pursue the manufacture of these ShoeboxTasks, so named by a fellow therapist at the Asheville TEACCH Center, we began to find sources for all the parts that go into making the 16 activities.  Linda and I decided to make 50 sets of tasks 1 through 16, now called the Basic Curriculum, on a trial basis.  At the time, our means of letting potential customers know of their availability was through trainings conducted by the North Carolina TEACCH Center (information about the activities is included in the training manual) and through the product list of the North Carolina Autism Society’s Bookstore.  Despite such limited advertising, we sold the initial 50 sets within a few months, at which point, we decided to continue production.  Over the years, we have added additional activities to complement the Basic Curriculum, created a website for greater visibility and  a database for mailing newsletters and brochures, maintained a close connection to the TEACCH program, and enjoyed an ongoing relationship with our customers/clients.  We now have a workshop which employs adults with autism who assemble and package the many loose parts that comprise each activity.  I guess you could say that this idea has come full circle.

 We'll look at how ShoeboxTasks are used in classrooms, offices, or homes in our next installment in late August.