Puppets and Personality
Posted By Courtenay Bell on February 1, 2012
When Dan and Janet approached Melissa and me about potentially teaching a puppet class, I was excited and apprehensive at once.
“What if the students think puppets are lame?”
“What if they get bored?”
“How will we get them to be expressive without unintentionally directing them into something they are not?”
This last question was the most daunting. I have been teaching for five years and inevitably students will copy exactly what you do in hopes of pleasing you. I will admit now, however, this should have been the last thing on my mind. From day one all four young adults have come to Saturday mornings engaged, motivated and most of all true to themselves.
In being so individually self-expressive, we have all learned incredible things about each person. Be it an affinity for Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musicals, a childhood love of Disney films or Super Mario Bros., and hilarious social commentary; these young aspies are passionate, creative and expressive.
After revealing these facts about themselves something more amazing happened than sewing, gluing, or bedazzling; genuine social interaction that was unprompted, naturally rhythmic and challenging for even a cunning linguist like me!
In these lunch time conversations they have beautifully navigated topics from pop culture references, Aspergers humor, and social interpretation, critical thinking about literature, all the way to cartoon Batman versus live action Batman.
(Holey social diversity, Batman!)
As a person who grew up with Aspergers and experienced so many awkward lunch conversations that left me confused, hurt and withdrawn, seeing this blooming of social skills brings tears to my eyes, and a hope in my heart that more people like these students and me can have an Autistry experience just once and feel what it’s like to be understood, heard and appreciated for our uniqueness.
My career in software was a profitable side-effect. In school I was interested in everything and focusing on one thing to get a degree was a challenge. Science seemed to be a recurring interest and my employer at the time (Hewlett-Packard) would pay tuition in that area so I chose to major in physics. After my BS I changed schools to work on a Masters. I was at Cal. State Northridge and they had a world class solar observatory and the astronomers were nice to work with so my M.S. in Physics was based on research into the solar magnetic field structure’s relationship with gas brightness and velocity. For my Ph.D. I wanted to work on something other than solar astronomy so amongst the multitude of choices I had (I think it was two) I joined the astronomy department at Indiana University, Bloomington. I was there five and a half years and finished my coursework, my Physics and Astronomy Ph.D. qualifying exams, and made good progress on my dissertation research. However, family and financial pressures precluded my staying the extra one or two years it would have taken to complete my Ph.D so I left IU with a “thank you for playing” Masters in Astronomy. In the mean time I had picked up good programming skills that people were very interested in paying me for.
I’m a former United States Marine. That probably should make six things you didn’t know about me. I put it here in the Asperger’s portion because many of my most effective coping mechanisms were learned during training in the Corps and I’ll always be grateful for that. I also learned how to get shoes REALLY shiny.
