CEDAR FALLS - Taylor Proctor pulls a sheet of notebook paper out of the folder labeled "Job 1."

The 14-year-old autistic boy looks at it for a moment before following printed instructions to write his name and address in a half dozen boxes drawn on the page. "There we go, done. Here," he says, handing the paper to teacher Brooke Gilles, who is sitting next to him.

He repeats this performance on another sheet with the same instructions but no boxes. But he falters on a third page with only a few words across the top instructing him to write his name and address. He doesn't write the city, state and ZIP code, until being reminded by Gilles.

Four teachers are gathered around the cubicle where the pair works, intently watching as the lesson unfolds.

Usually, Proctor is the student when he walks into the classroom at River Hills, a school for mentally disabled children and young adults operated by Area Education Agency 267. But the tables were turned as he worked with the teachers earlier this week.

"We see these students as our teachers," says Paula Goetz, a special education consultant for AEA 267. "The kids are teaching the teachers."

Goetz has been leading a workshop at River Hills on how to deal with autistic students in the classroom. Autism is a developmental disorder affecting physical, social and language skills that results from abnormalities in the brain structure.

When the second weeklong session wraps up Friday, 50 teachers and other school workers will have been trained in techniques for assessing an autistic child's skill level and designing lessons to meet their needs. Along with special education and regular classroom teachers, speech pathologists, paraeducators, psychologists, social workers and consultants enrolled in the workshop this year, the 11th summer it has been offered.

The trainees were divided into groups to observe and work with one of five autistic children each morning ranging from preschool to high school age. Some of the students have verbal skills, like Proctor, while others do not speak and represent various abilities to function independently.

"The biggest focus is the student," says Goetz. "How can we help the student be more independent - and that's home, school and community."

That was evident in the time the teachers working with Proctor spent in coming up with his address-writing lesson.

They observed a workshop trainer reviewing math and language skills with the boy. Then they were given a laundry basket filled with a wide variety of items and told to come up with 10 to 20 ways to assess their student's skills. After watching how the students used each item, the teachers were to decide if they passed, failed or had an "emerging" skill somewhere between the two marks. Then they focused on an emerging skill to create their lesson.

"I think I've seen a lot of it already in the classroom," says Gilles of the techniques she has been picking up at the workshop. "You can adapt it to your grade level. It's a whole bunch of ideas that you can use yourself." The early education teacher will be working in Grundy Center next fall.

"I didn't realize that they required so much vision," says Julie Kuker, a Wapsie Valley Junior Senior High School special education teacher. "I'm so used to telling things."

"They're visual learners," adds Jennifer Witte, a kindergarten teacher at Waterloo's Orange Elementary School. "We can implement (visual approaches to learning) with our other special ed or even regular ed kids."

"There's a whole lot of visual aids that would be helpful in setting up for our kids," says Sue Wallinn, a paraeducator at Dysart-Geneseo Elementary School.

She was assigned to shadow an autistic fourth-grader last fall and could work with him into high school as long as he continues to have a need.

Wallinn says much of what she has learned will make it easier to work with the student next year. One simple technique she mentioned is tapping on the desk to focus his attention when he gets off task. In the past, she has relied more on verbal prompts to redirect him.

"I think I talked too much with the student last year," she said. "That's why I caused my own troubles."