HASILUX spoke with Anne Bernabeu, a kindergarten teacher in Luxembourg, about her experiences and insights regarding the inclusion of autistic children in early education. In this comprehensive interview, she shares practical approaches, challenges, and success stories from her daily work in supporting autistic children in mainstream classrooms.
Experiences in Primary Education
Can you describe which measures work well in kindergarten/preschool?
In kindergarten, we can generally be flexible with activities. The instructions are less strict there, and children have a lot of freedom in various activities. Especially with craft activities, it’s easy to make individual adaptations. Children can draw or craft more freely, which works well.
What are the biggest challenges you face when supporting autistic children in primary school?
The biggest challenge is managing a class with 15-16 students plus an autistic child who needs one-on-one support. In our school, we get a maximum of 6-8 hours per week with a second teacher in the class. This means that the teacher is alone for up to 20 hours. That’s really not easy to manage.
One must find a middle ground, and yet you can feel like you’re not doing your job well enough because you’re either “neglecting” the group or the autistic child. The moments when you’re working as a pair, meaning having assistance in the class, are fantastic and you try to make the most of those hours to work effectively. For teaching staff, some daily situations are often draining and exhausting, and one can sometimes feel alone and reach their limits.
How do you structure communication with parents of autistic children?
In kindergarten, we have three assessments, so we meet parents three times a year. For children with special needs, there are more frequent exchanges. In your communication with parents, you also need to try to give more feedback about how things are going at school. But overall, it runs similar to other parents – you have regular exchanges. Communication with parents also includes having to inform other parents that there is an autistic child in the class, and this isn’t always easy.
Collaboration
How does the collaboration work between teachers, ESEB, and other actors?
Personally, I haven’t had a class assisted by a person from ESEB (Support and care for students with specific needs in primary education) yet.
I hear from colleagues that it varies greatly. We also had cases where it was really difficult. The teacher’s goal is to get as much help as possible in supporting the child and making adaptations so that the child can benefit from instruction like the others.
When the ESEB person is sick, for example, they aren’t replaced, which is a difficulty. However, from what I hear, communication runs well between teachers and ESEB teams.
In your opinion, what professional development opportunities would help primary school staff the most?
Regarding professional development – ifen offers many training courses, I’ve already taken several about autism which were very interesting. You can really learn a lot there. I can’t think of any other places right now where you could get further training on these subjects.
What resources do pedagogical teams currently lack to better support autistic children?
In our school, for example, we didn’t have a changing table. That had to be purchased. However, that’s a resource that can be used for all children. The playground wasn’t completely enclosed, and one child would always run away from the school grounds, and we had to chase after the child to prevent them from going onto the street.
It took over a year to get certain measures. In general though, I find that it’s personnel resources that are lacking, more than material resources.
Possible Improvements
What recommendations would you give to a teacher who has an autistic child in their class for the first time?
Further training is always a good idea. Very important is the exchange with others who have already had an autistic child in their class. And the pedagogical team, meaning colleagues, can really help each other and share experiences.
In Part 2 of this interview, Anne discusses how she approaches diagnosis and support, works with families, and structures daily classroom life for autistic children.