I can pinpoint the exact moment when Sarah became my favorite student. We were in the midst of our second swim lesson together, taking a breather after a lap of strenuous kicking, and I asked Sarah what she loved to do most of all. This was not just conversational filler, but rather a less-than-subtle attempt on my part to discern whether she had any Rainman-esque talents.
Like Dustin Hoffman’s character, Sarah is autistic, and at the time, my only frame of reference for understanding her came from the Rainman Hollywood dramatization of the disorder. At 14 years old, she is on the cusp of a generation marked by an alarmingly dramatic spike in the rate of autism. There are currently 1.5 million Americans with autism, and the number is increasing by a rate of 10 to 17 percent per year. Sarah is not severely autistic, but she still has to cope with the chasm that exists between her perception of the world and the way society functions; the chief results of the neurological disorder manifest themselves in difficulty with communication and social interaction. For Sarah, this means that she speaks very quickly and often in an expressionless tone. She rarely made eye contact with me as I tried to explain and demonstrate freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke. I could never be sure what would intrigue her; sometimes she would suddenly break out in a loud, contagious belly laugh for no apparent reason. At other times, just when I thought things were going well, she would let loose a moan of displeasure.
At first, I was at a loss. I didn’t know how to teach in a way that would resonate with Sarah-neither the technical speeches I use with adult beginners nor the cutesy simplifications that win over water-shy four year olds were appropriate. And then I realized that this was what made Sarah moan with that indescribable lament. I was frustrated with being unable to communicate with just one person, but she experienced such a disconnect with a whole world full of people.
I don’t pretend that I ever cracked the code of how to get through to Sarah, but together we gradually figured out ways to let each other know what to do. Some lessons were better than others, and she would often make exponential improvements one day, only to regress the next. Repetition is the best way for anyone to learn, and this was certainly true for Sarah. We would recite aloud the description of breaststroke kick with every stroke she took-”Up, out, together”-and talk about the best way to float before every lap of backstroke (imagine your back is a rainbow). Some metaphors took and some didn’t, but by the end of the summer, she was pre-empting my technique reminders with precise recitations of what to do. Sarah will never be an Olympic swimmer, but she loves the water as much as I do. I spent years on a swim team grumbling almost every time I had to get in the water, but no matter how rainy or cold it was, Sarah jumped in the water with an enormous splash and the enthusiasm to match. There were some activities she loved more than others-one day I taught her dolphin dives, an easy, smoothly arcing motion akin to the butterfly. From then on, whenever I told her to do freestyle, which she hated, she substituted dolphin dives and innocently pretended not to have understood.
I never found out if Sarah had a particular extraordinary talent, and it became unimportant to me. When I asked her that day what she loved to do, she looked straight into my eyes-unusual for her-and said, ” Swim. With you.” That’s when she ceased to become a puzzling, mysterious challenge and became my favorite student.
Even now, I don’t fully understand autism or even Sarah. After countless lessons with her, I have no idea what it might be like to have all the problems of adolescence heaped on top of the unfathomable problems of autism. What I do understand is friendship and enthusiasm, which is what Sarah gave to me, and I hope I gave to her.
