It is the kind of concept that is sometimes difficult to grasp for people with autism. It is a concept that teachers such as Cynthia Armon and Tina Meier-Nowell work to clarify for their students.

Teaching autistic students is a specialty among special-education educators, because the range of skills and abilities of autistic children is wide and varied.

Administrators, teachers and parents of autistic children say there is a common misconception by the general public that all autistic children behave like the famous character Raymond Babbitt in the 1988 movie Rain Man.

"People automatically label without having accurate information," says Netta Anderson. "I have two grandchildren with autism. My grandson is very high functioning. My granddaughter is not."

Armon teaches Anderson's grandson, John Cousino, and five other autistic children at Guadalupe Elementary School, and Meier-Nowell teaches autistic teens at Branham High School. Their classrooms, run by Santa Clara County Office of Education, are held in various school district buildings and are part of a growing trend in the county and across the nation.

The number of children diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, and experts see alarming growth rates of more than 170 percent during the 1990s, according to the Autism Society of America.

The county has expanded simultaneously the number of classrooms for autistics, swelling from three in 1995 to 38 in 2003, according to Janice Yamamoto, the special-education principal for the county.

The autistic students are integrated with the general-education kids at all the schools for at least part of each day. At Guadalupe, Armon says, the integration is especially welcoming and credits the staff and students with a "wonderful and unique" attitude.

"Our kids and families are participating in all programs at Guadalupe," Yamamoto said. "That doesn't necessarily happen at all our schools."

It is an attitude that starts at the top, says Armon. Alice Lopez, Guadalupe's principal, isn't required to include Armon's class in all the school's activities, but she does, Armon says, and Lopez passes the praise on to the parents and teachers at the school.

"The parents asked to include Cynthia's class in the Art Vista program," Lopez says. "And the teachers are wonderful at recognizing the differences and strengths of the kids."

Armon and Yamamoto agree that integrating autistic children with general-education boys and girls provides an opportunity for autistic kids to find age-appropriate role models through frequent social and educational activities.

"One of the things about Guadalupe is that the general-education kids are very interested in our students, and the teachers have been very supportive," Yamamoto says. "They have included our students and made that class a part of their school. [The autistic children] have the opportunity to make the kinds of connections that are important in good role modeling."

Meier-Nowell, who has eight autistic teens in her classroom, has used peer tutors at Branham for three years. The tutors are students from a classroom where students emotional disturbances are taught. They came in shy and unsure, she says, and have now both graduated from their special classroom and joined the general-education population. Meier-Nowell said she believes the peer tutors got as much from their experiences in her room as her students got from them.

"I saw a real positive change in [the peer tutors]," she says.

Autism, a complex disorder, is a type of developmental disability that typically affects social and language development. Symptoms often first appear in children between the ages of 1 and 3 years of age. There is a wide spectrum of disability, ranging from mild to severe, with about 10 percent who are savants—those who are particularly gifted in areas such as math, art, or music—and boys are four times as likely as girls to be diagnosed with autism.

Yamamoto said that wide range of disability requires a wide range of teaching methods and doctrines, and each person has unique needs and goals. Some autistic kids go on to college, she said, so the program blends academics with functional life skills.

"The range of academic abilities is very, very broad," says Maryanne Bosward, director of special education for the county. "We gear the program with the [individual education plan] so it meets the needs of the students."

Preparing the students for greater independence is a focus that begins in primary classrooms and expands in middle and high schools.

"We start to do community trips at the elementary school level, but the bigger part of that program comes at middle school," Yamamoto said.

"During high school, we begin to look at job skills, vocational skills, and daily living skills, and teach them how to access recreation activities such as horseback riding, golf or exercising in a gym."

"Everything is a push for independence," Armon said.

Armon takes her students out on field trips to see live theater, movies, or anywhere she can introduce them to an atmosphere where they can develop and practice their social-interaction skills.

"Anything that presents itself for a social skill, we run with it," she said.

She finds a way to mix the social skills while challenging other limitations. Anderson's grandson, John, ate nothing but strained baby food when he first joined Armon's class three years ago. Now, Anderson says, he'll eat just about anything. She credits Armon's teaching and dedication with John's progress.

Armon coordinated with the cafeteria to allow John and her other students to help serve lunch.

"She started by letting him work in the cafeteria to see the other kids eating a different variety of food," Anderson says. "Then she would get him to try different foods. It started with a little nibble, and it went from there."

One characteristic of autism is that most prefer a level of sameness and routine in their days, so when Meier-Nowell's white board indicates, for example, that her students James and Tina will be going to Safeway to work the next day, she lets the whole class know in advance.

"We talk about schedule changes because it reduces anxiety," she says.

Armon says she begins each day in the same manner, and plays a wide variety of activity-appropriate mood-setting music, but says the students seem to prefer when she plays more upbeat, lively music.

"They're supposed to like classical music like Mozart," she says of another misconception. "But when I put it on, they'll say 'Oh no, Miss Cynthia, play something else.' "

The room has decorations—some are icons to help the nonverbal kids communicate—but they appear minimal in comparison with the rooms on either side of Armon's, where brightly colored turkeys from Thanksgiving hang from the ceiling and other artwork and images are splashed across the walls.

Too much visual stimuli is distracting to her students, she says.

Her students, as well as Meier-Nowell's, have daily or weekly chores—listed on the white boards—such as watering the plants in the classroom. But none of the assignments are more important to Armon than one she says that is for their safety.

"They write their name and phone number on the board every day," she said. "You can protect them here, but you never know what could happen when they leave this room. At the very least they will be able to tell someone their name and telephone number."

It is practices like this that helped Armon gain recognition for her work by the San Andreas Regional Center in October as one of two teachers of the year. Francisco Valenzuela, spokesman for the center—which is a state-funded organization serving the developmentally disabled—said Armon was nominated by parents of students in her classroom. Board members of the center who reviewed the nomination letters were overwhelmed with what the parents had to say about her, he said.

"The biggest piece about Cynthia is that she has the only class with total academics. Every one of them, she meets the need of academic levels," said Anderson, who was one of the nominators. "I looked at 27 different classrooms before I picked one—Cynthia's. Most of them are just caregivers, they are not educators."

Valenzuela said it takes a lot of compassion, skill and dedication to teach special education.

Armon said she always knew she would teach in special education and it was a dream and purpose she is now realizing in a second career. Retired in 1995 from Pacific Bell, where she worked while attending school for her degree, she says the work she does with her "little guys" in the autistic program is the most rewarding.

"These parents trust you with their children for six hours a day," Armon says. "It is my privilege to work with them."

She cradles a small, opaque globe mounted atop a base—an award presented to her by a former student—with an inscription reading, "You opened my mind to the world—Chase."

Eyes sparkling and with an ear-to-ear grin, Armon says, "You can't put a price on it."