Survey for any autistic individuals!

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Hello all! My name is Hannah and I'm an assistant teacher at a Pre-K. The class I work in consists of roughly 50% autistic children, at various places on the spectrum, all between the ages of four and six. In order to ensure that the classroom is a happy, safe, and comfortable place for all the kids there, I was hoping I could get some feedback as to what behaviors/practices a neurotypical caretaker/teacher should adopt or avoid when working with autistic children, so I would really appreciate it if any autistic individuals (of any age) could provide answers to the following questions:

1)What behaviors/practices do you wish neurotypical caretakers/teachers would adopt when working with autistic children/students?

2) What behaviors/practices used by neurotypical caretakers/teachers do you feel are detrimental to the emotional, mental, or physical well-being of autistic children/students and why?

I'd also like to know the ages of any respondents just out of curiosity, but that's definitely not required!

If you have other experiences with caretakers/teachers that you’d like to share, I’m totally open to hearing those as well! You can respond by just replying to this thread with your answers or if you'd prefer to provide answers more privately, feel free to PM me.

Thank you for reading and/or answering and have a great day!

I am currently enrolled in high school and in my classes I do a lot of essays and in-class work. As the majority of the teachers have almost no experience with ASDs they often rush me to finish a project in class. Whenever they do this I get flustered and it makes the situation worse.

The best way for me to do relatively large in-class work is to organize everything first then to start on the writing of the essay. The majority of my teachers will think I am just wasting time and keep stressing me to the point that my work is comes out very sloppy.

I'd recommend to just ask students how they're doing on their work occasionally and let them be. One thing one of my teachers has done is actually figured out how I act when I need help or am stuck on something. Though this situation was primarily just for me as I am not enrolled into special education classes. As you are working with such a large group of people on the spectrum I think it will take you time to learn each child's body language.

I'd recommend looking for small glances as this is how I usually act when I don't feel comfortable raising my hand. I'd also say to ask people in the special education community for information on how to get the kids to work to their best potential.

I've now just realized I didn't directly answer your questions(there goes 15 minutes of typing on my phone ).

1. I would like for teachers to try to understand a person's body language and how they behave. This however is understandable as they have more than 140 students in high school. But in preschool I believe you'd be given an far smaller learning curve. I hope you'd be able to be patient with the kids as they are just starting psychologically develop and you truly do play a huge role in their future.

2. Don't yell at them individually. I've had too many teachers yell at me for what others have done. I've been punished too many times for acting against my bullies(in a nonviolent way) with them getting away with no punishment. As these are children with little social skill I'm certain there will be conflicts among the class. Don't discipline anyone without figuring out who did what without a single doubt. If you do happen to not figure out who did what and punish both parties it is crucial to explain to both of them why you are doing what you did. I've grown long standing resentment towards teachers who take diciplinary action against me for reasons I was not informed of and this has caused me to not put effort into their class.

Thank you very much for both of your replies, Soomander! I'm open to hearing about all relevant experiences, so don't worry if your first reply didn't answer the question directly; both replies are still useful to me!