Sensory sensitivity vs head-on-a-swivel
A small treatise on the importance of safety in urban environments
I’m in the process of earning the next level of teaching credential here in California. It’s a two year programme at my local university, Mount St. Mary’s Univ. Part of the process, called Induction, involves the system questioning what we teachers know about our students, their families, and the area around the school. There are forms that I must fill out and submit to anonymous reviewers who judge if I’m informed and introspective enough to progress in my new career.
In thinking about my students, I commented that since arriving at LAUSD schools, I noticed a trend that worried me greatly. Every single student, from kindergarten through the twelfth grade, wears head phones / ear buds with music blasting whilst they doom-scroll on their phones. They do it on the playground. They attempt to do it in class. They do it whilst waiting for the bus or (yikes) walking home.
Last year at my school, one student was stabbed near to death on his walk home and one student was abducted from a football game and later killed. The neighbourhood that I work in is rough.
Even as I drive in, I see people at the bus stop down the road doing the same thing, headphones on and doom-scrolling their phones.
I get it.
As an autistic person with sensory sensitivities, I get it. I use Loops in meetings. I have nice Bose noise-cancelling headphones for airplane flights. I use tactical EarPro on the range, and in complex noise environments like school assemblies. With my autistic sensory-system under a daily assault, I come home exhausted. By the end of the week, I’m fatigued. But …
As I’ve shared, my life really has two phases, pre-literacy and post-literacy. As a gestalt processor (aka non-verbal), I graduated from high school functionally illiterate. The types of jobs that I had pre-literacy required only that I use my very large and imposing body. I played semi-pro football. I was a amateur, then briefly a professional athlete in the Scottish Highland Games. I did private security work and personal protection / body guarding (armed and unarmed). And, I was a ghillie to a wealthy Scottish-American man - a uniquely Scottish vocation that, in modern times, is equal parts fixer and body guard. As I write in my upcoming book, Holistic Language Instruction, it was this relationship that bridged the two halves of my life. It was my employer that brought me to the Masonic Lodge and to eventual literacy.
Pre-literacy, life was rough. Adopted into a family who’s culture I did not share, and endlessly and mercilessly bullied and abused as a youngling, I did what most young people do in such situations - I fought.
My elementary school experiences were quite violent. I was suspended from school a few times, though my family’s relationship with the school prevented many more suspensions. In middle school, I was encouraged to channel my anger and rage into wrestling, where I excelled. I share in my book, No Place for Autism?, how my autistic urge to wander supported my wrestling career in high school as I biked to the local community college after basketball practice.
From that point forward until today, I’ve trained in just about every martial art that involves some form of wrestling: Greco-Roman, Freestyle / Collegiate, Scottish Backhold, Catch, Judo, Jui Jitsu, Qi Gong(气功) Shuai Jiao (摔跤), Tai Chi Chuan (太极拳), Chin Na (擒拿), Самбо (САМозащита Без Оружия), Система (Systema), and several forms of Krav Maga (עגמ ברק).
I continue to train to this day. I’ve even built a training area in my back yard where I’ve trained everyone from my own kids to up and coming MMA fighters.
Head on a swivel.
All of that martial arts experience and experience in protecting people gets baked into you. There’s a hyper-vigilance that you simply don’t forget. I’ve pulled my protectees out of some serious situations. But mostly, I’ve used my training to help them avoid trouble.
Thus, when I see the people fixated on their devices, it just makes me nervous. I worry about them, especially my students and co-workers.
When bad things happen to good people
As I mentioned previously, one of my former students was stabbed on his way home last year. He almost died in the street. Whilst I don’t know the exact circumstances, I do know the boy. He is always wearing his headphones. He is always on his phone. These likely let his attacker slip up undetected to commit that heinous act.
Thankfully, there was someone close by that could stabilize the wound and call for emergency services. Thankfully, the ER wasn’t too far away.
This type of situation happens all too frequently here. YTD, there have been 578 violent crimes in the area around my school (source).
As the economy continues to decline, and people get more and more desperate, crime will only get worse.
Plus, it’s not just crime we have to worry about. We now hear about elite athletes collapsing during practice. As my school’s track coach, I know that I can’t be everywhere at once. In an emergency, seconds count.
Putting it all together
As I get rolling in a new school year, all of these things are weighing on my mind. I want my family, friends, students, and co-workers to be safe and healthy. I want there to be someone, someone with the necessary skills, to be there when they need it the most.
I would love to host deep-dive professional development trainings and leverage my autistic brain, my special interests, and my skills from my decades as a practitioner to help everyone on my campus and the local community. But, quite frankly, they wouldn’t attend. Folks around here are barely making it. They’re struggling, often just getting by. They work multiple jobs. They don’t have time to come to the school during the time that I’m here.
I want to help them, but I can’t be everywhere at once. I want to help them, so I must meet them where they are … in their phones, on their own time.
Years ago, in my martial arts journey, I met an Australian Krav Maga black belt and instructor. I trained with him for the brief time he was teaching classes in Los Angeles. I really clicked with his style. He comes from a military family and gets the hyper-vigilance, head on a swivel mentality. He also gets frustrated seeing people distracted by their devices.
A little bit ago, Duncan announced his new venture, bringing quality training to the small screen. His company, iSurvive365, was / is just what I was looking for.
His Tactical Medicine course is the perfect next-step to the CPR / First Aid / AED certification. It covers things that your basic class for teachers and coaches doesn’t: how to dress a bullet wound, what to do if someone gets knocked “the F out,” how to dress large chest wounds, and how to apply a tourniquet effectively - to name a few modules. But it’s also a perfect first step for beginners, like my colleagues and students, in building that awareness that life is quite dangerous around here - and what to do when bad things happen.
To help prevent those bad things from happening, he put his version of introductory Krav Maga into a course titled Effective Krav Maga: Self-Defense for Beginners. Whilst watching a video is no substitute for hands-on training, learners do get practical advice on how to act in the moment and what items / objects can be used as weapons. All of the scenarios in the videos can be practiced at home or in the park. For me, the goal is building enhanced situational awareness and vigilance, then letting the viewer choose how / when to incorporate the hands on.
The training modules are available in the app for either Apple or Android devices. Again, this is huge. You can doom-scroll cat videos on TikTok, or you can spend a few minutes a day and learn something that can save a life, perhaps your own life.
Wrapping it up
I get it. We autistics are much like our neurotypical peers. We love our devices. But, these devices are distractions. In today’s dangerous world, they can be a liability. When bad things happen, you need to know how to handle yourself. The Survive365 app is a very good first step. Learning self-defense and first aid skills are very important. Now, you can have amazingly effective professional advice from a reputable source … anywhere in the world.