Dr. Ana Dueñas: Helping Children with Autism “Learn to Learn”
Aug. 27, 2019
Looking back, Dr. Ana Dueñas can admit she had a lot to learn about autism spectrum disorder when she first began working with children with autism autistic students.
She was working in an afterschool program for students with autism and their siblings, with the goal of getting them to interact socially.
"Being very naïve, and knowing very little about autism at the time, I thought how cool it was that they cared more about ants crawling than with really playing with each other,” recalls Dueñas, an assistant professor with Lehigh’s special education program.
That was before she knew the research about the importance of socialization for children with autism spectrum disorder.
Without it, Dueñas notes, they struggle to integrate in educational settings and with finding and keeping jobs later in life.
