Dave Nelson is a licensed counselor in Georgia and founder and executive director of The Community School(http://www.thecommunityschool.net/) – an alternative junior high and high school for individuals on the autism spectrum. A few years back, The Community School was featured in The New York Times for its innovative approach to working with individuals on the autism spectrum. I was lucky enough to visit this school several years ago as a graduate student and was amazed by the learning environment Dave and his inspiring staff had created.
The following post illustrates wonderfully well the intervention of Storyboarding as well as providing a great visual example of the technique.
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Dave Nelson: “Individuals who have challenges in relating and communicating often experience fragmented, confusing thinking.
Storyboarding is a technique that allows an individual to illustrate actions, statements, thoughts and feelings by reflecting on and sequencing an order of events. A therapist, parent, teacher or other helping partner can help a participant to retell his experience of a situation by drawing images that portray the participant’s perspective. Ultimately, these images should be depicted in sequence, from the beginning of an event to some logical end. Storyboarding is intended to capture specific moments when an individual might be struggling not only to comprehend the actual events but also to link the events to feelings, ideas, and an awareness of the emotions of others.
When beginning a storyboard, it is important to first create a blank template. This can be drawn as a series of connected blank boxes, like a comic strip. The facilitator should allow the participant to retell his interpretation of events, drawing out characters and objects in each box. The goal is to be playful and inquisitive in the interaction to support the individual’s ability to sequence his thinking, describe his emotional experience, and clarify confusing moments. It is not important to correct the individual’s retelling, at least not in a “right/wrong” sort of way. What typically works better is for the facilitator to ask elaborating questions and make expanding comments (e.g., “I wonder when the teacher came in the room”, or “Were you smiling in this picture?”).
As the pictures depicting the sequence of events evolve, spoken words and thoughts can be added. Spoken words are usually represented by a bubble with a line drawn to the character’s mouth; thoughts are represented by thought bubbles. Emotions can be represented by facial expressions.
How much content the facilitator adds is a function of the ability of the individual to relate his own experience. In some cases, it may make more sense for the facilitator to draw most of the story, relying on the individual only to correct or enhance details. In other cases, the individual can take the lead in generating the story, and the role of the facilitator may be primarily in asking elaborating questions.
In the following example, I was working with an adolescent female who had recently “gotten in trouble” at school. She was having a hard time explaining why she had gotten in trouble, or what had even happened. I knew it was something about a red jacket, but the young woman (I’ll call her Jerry) was not able to easily explain what had happened. Starting with a blank whiteboard, I drew out a blank panel and asked Jerry, “Where was the jacket?”
She responded that it was in Chorus class, and this provided the starting point for our story. Gradually, the story that evolved is that Jerry had seen a jacket left behind at the end of Chorus class, the teacher had asked her to leave it, and Jerry became fixated on having the jacket. In the moment, Jerry was not able to describe her feelings to the teacher, only able to repeatedly state, “Can I have it? Can I have it?”
As I drew more of the story for Jerry, she was able to attach specific feelings to the pictures (e.g., “anxious”) and to describe much more complex aspects of her experience (e.g., “I couldn’t stop thinking about the jacket and I feel bad that I wasn’t able to listen to the angry teacher.”)
The result of this activity, which took about thirty minutes, was that Jerry now had a much more organized memory of what had happened, and she had an experience of being able to reflect on her own personality traits and tendencies. She also got the chance to relive some of the desire and anxiety in a supported, reflective way. Over time, this kind of activity should result in Jerry being able to compare and contrast emotional experiences more effectively, which will lead to increased emotional regulation and mood management. This activity will also strengthen Jerry’s ability to visualize events and describe them, which will in turn lead to improved reading comprehension and stronger inferential thinking.”

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