Strategies for Teaching Based on Autism Research
Initiatives in Progress
Mission StatementInitiatives in ProgressLong-Term Initiatives
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee
- Established a DEI Committee that all STAR Autism Support employees are encouraged to participate in; meetings are held monthly, during which team members present and analyze research, brainstorm, and conduct action planning on an ongoing basis
- Created subcommittees in the following areas for focused action planning:
- Organizational Growth
- Curriculum and Materials
- Workshops and Consultation
- Marking and Reach
- Green Team (Sustainability)
- Adopted the use of Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Benchmarks (GDEIB) from the Centre for Global Inclusionto assess our organization, create goals, and monitor progress on how we are meeting our DEI initiatives in the following areas:
- Foundational (organization structure and leadership)
- Internal (recruitment, development, and learning)
- Bridging (communication and sustainability)
- External (social responsibility and products/services)
- Personal Learning and Professional Development
- Participated in professional development from Autism in Black to increase our knowledge of systemic racism, intersectionality of disability and race, and ableism in order to challenge our personal biases
- Created an internal resource to share ideas related to DEI and resources for personal growth
- Invited all employees to commit to and sign the “Do. Do More. Do Better” pledge to better our organization through individual commitment to social justice work
- Carved out time during recurring meetings for ongoing discussions about inclusive language, cultural responsiveness, advocacy, social justice, and representation
- Hiring, Recruitment, and Retention
- Updated our company values to include DEI goals and initiatives
- Created a more inclusive hiring process as one small step toward building a more diverse team, including rewriting our job descriptions and career page to be more inclusive and creating a structured, objective hiring process to combat implicit bias
- Evaluating Curriculum and Materials
- Dedicated time for our illustration team to increase diversity and representation in characters and themes used in visual supports and graphics
- Creating a style guide for use throughout the content creation/development process to ensure ample diversity and representation
- Updating our marketing materials to be more inclusive and representative of diverse populations, including videos and social media
- Increasing Access
- Established a section of our website dedicated to providing free resources to families and educators
- Created a dedicated team for adding captions to videos
- Created a dedicated team for Spanish translation