Bright Little Learners
Helping a School for Autistic Students Tell Its Story
Some assignments are definitely special. When the Bauhaus team got the call to visit the Rawson Saunders School in Austin, our response was “Road Trip!” But as fun as it did turn out to be, we found a serious team of professionals doing exceptional work with autistic students. And they needed to tell their story.
First thing we learned is that autistic kids are just as cute, bright and personable as any students you may meet. They just learn differently, and they need teachers who know how to teach them. That’s what happens at Rawson Saunders, and we decided the best people to tell the story were the students themselves. We also found their teachers and parents had great success stories to tell.
We began by interviewing likely suspects and helping them refine their stories to fit the length and format requirements. We also spent a lot of time at the school, observing and videotaping the things that were going on. Everything from classrooms to playgrounds to shared dining experiences came under our lens to expand the bank of images we had to work with. The head of the school is a sensitive and brilliant woman who didn’t care much for being on camera; but she did a great job, anyway.
So, we completed the video in 2019, telling the stories of students who struggled and then found success at Rawson Saunders. The presentation was a sort of report to donors for their annual gala. It was well-received, and we hoped to have an opportunity to work with the school again.
2020 was the year of Covid. We didn’t hear from Rawson Saunders, but in 2021 we did. They wanted to re-use the 2019 video, updated with a couple of new students and some information about how the school and its students had fared the pandemic. They wanted their supporters to know that they had put safeguards in place to continue in-person instruction and the students had continued to show exceptional academic progress.
Although the “new” video is a repackaging of the “old” video, people haven’t seen it in two years (Some will not have seen it at all), and the updates make it current and relevant. We look forward to the time when we can again visit Rawson Saunders school to learn more about their remarkable learning community.
Meet the wonderful teachers and learners of Rawson Saunders School:
