[cheerful music] - First from 1885 to 1889, and then 1889 to 1893 was Benjamin Harrison, but then 1893 to 1897 was Grover Cleveland's second term.

But on his second term, that's when his voice was recorded, not his first term.

I'm homeschooled here.

It's called Highland Classical Academy.

Right now I'm on summer break.

I will start at the beginning of August.

- Well, let's see, if you were reading about... - [Joshua] Paul Revere.

- Paul Revere, and you were gonna be doing like a keyword outline for it, what would you start to do?

- [Joshua] Oh!

- He gets to kind of learn at his own pace.

Areas where he needs more time, we can take more time.

Areas where he's picking things up really quickly, we can just kind of move ahead.

He doesn't have to wait.

- Autism is a way your brain is wired, and it can make you act a little different and also make you think a little different and also make you feel a little different in your emotions.

Makes you a little different from other people.

- Little things, I guess, that for him, that I thought were just him being super bright.

When he was 18 months old, he knew his alphabet, and he could tell you by the time he was two, he could look at any car on the road and tell you, "That's a Honda Civic.

That's a Toyota Camry."

You know, little things that I was just like, "Oh, he's just super bright," which he is.

We just didn't realize some of the things that would be a little bit more difficult for him, until he got a little bit older.

[cheerful music] - Sometimes I just read it a few times, and then my brain just remembers it, and I'm like, whenever I recite it, I recite the whole thing.

- We contacted Teach over at UNC, and went in, and he definitely qualified for a diagnosis.

- Right there is this Nintendo Entertainment System.

It's one of the old classy game systems from the '80s.

- He's just a happy, quick learner.

He loves being around other people.

Kind of all the things that you would want in a kid, he's got them.

Like Joshua said, autism's just a different way of having your brain wired.

It doesn't make you any better or any less than anyone else.

Just means things are a little bit different, right?

- You're the same as other kids or adults.

Just try and find a way to be yourself.

- [Erin] That's right.

- So we define autism as a behavioral syndrome, which means it's a co-occurrence of certain behavioral phenomenon.

There are two key phenomenon.

One are certain kinds of social deficits, deficits in regards to social interaction, and the other domain is a little bit of a messier umbrella term.

We use the term ritualistic repetitive behaviors.

- [Speaker] Could you tell me what is the title of the painting to the camera?

- The face is having a good day because it's with the leaf.

- He said one day I'll be a painter.

So I said, okay, I've never seen you paint really much.

- It's purple.

- Purple.

99 is purple.

Okay.

Just because we think nonverbal doesn't necessarily means that he doesn't have a very powerful message and it's up to us to be able to hear what that message is and be able to communicate with him.

- Just like when you hear really good music, you know, there's a lot of music theory behind it, but you don't know it a lot.

If you're not into music you don't really know it but you feel it.

So the same thing when you see his art.

Sometimes people just come up, they couldn't explain it but they love it.

So I think that's awesome.

- Most of the autistic person has very difficult time articulate their feelings and I think this was a token that he knew that he could express himself through art.

- It's having a fun day.

- [Thomas] If we think about one of his pieces of artwork, a bad day is probably red, probably going to be the number 7, 07.

So many times he may not say a lot of words, but the words that he uses and chooses to say are very profound, very powerful.

- I would think that you would never know what is the disabled can do for able.

How do I say?

- Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

- Could you help me out in the words?

I just.

You gotta find that, you know, what.

- I would say just, you know, allow your child or your person to thrive with what they have passion with and don't limit them just because we think that they don't have an ability or they have a disability, they are overlooking the ability.

- What we've learned over the last 10 or 15 years, particularly from genetics, is that there are multiple autisms.

And as we sort of look under the hood, when we look at the brain or we look at genetics based on defining people as having autism, we find a bunch of different stuff.

And that's essentially a problem in our field, because we find too much.

- It is a school designed to provide the regular school curriculum to students on the autism spectrum.

It was actually when it, it's really strange.

It was actually when I was in grad school, I had all these autistic behaviors and no one picked up on it.

And then I was reading about it, because it relates to emotional behavioral disorders.

I was reading about it and there are so many things I was reading about that like made me shudder, 'cuz it felt so familiar to me.

Isn't there a story where he tricks someone to marry him?

Like a really beautiful?

- [Student] Yeah, he gets married to Africa.

- I heard that on a Neil Gaman, like, Well I've been teaching for a long time.

So there's that.

I actually have had an easier time teaching a group of students with the same disability as I, because we almost have a mind lock.

Like we're at the borg of Star Trek.

Now I'm showing my geekiness.

It's very common.

[students speaking] - We actually have this thing at the school called follow the group plan, which is if a child is doing a behavior which doesn't fit the class, we say follow the group plan.

And we call it not a class as much as a group.

And the purpose is to teach the child to move toward independence and being able to work in a team so they can have successful employment.

Neurotypicals or non-autistics should not have to feel like you have to walk on eggshells.

It's a time and age now where a lot of people are coming out with all sorts of things about themselves.

Like I have anxiety, I have depression, I'm LGBT, I'm this, I'm that.

And trying to figure it out and trying to say, you should accommodate me for this.

But you know what?

Like everybody's got something.

Or she could be like, like a monster of plastic surgery disasters.

I like everybody wanna have a job and have meaningful life.

And I can't walk into a room and be like, y'all stop.

I have autism.

I really believe that humans are social beings and they naturally want other people.

And that's why I believe so many people with autism are depressed and anxious, because we're not getting that social interaction.

We don't know how, we really want to.