Rosalie Byrd '00: Analyze This!

Byrd serves as Clinical Supervisor and Director of Training at the Emerge School in Colorado, a therapeutic care program geared toward children with autism. While one-on-one conversations certainly form a part of her counseling methods, her experiences in the field have often also involved seemingly unrelated pursuits like painting, board games, and even horseback riding. “It’s so rewarding to see a child make progress and actually have fun during therapy,” she says. “A lot of activities are hard for [autistic people], so doing things like these really help to build confidence.”

 

Her interest in melding therapy with recreation was spurred at the age of 12, when she started volunteering for a “therapeutic riding” program in Wellesley called Boot Straps, which teaches life skills to special-needs children via games and activities on horseback. Byrd graduated in 2004 from the University of Northern Colorado, where she created her own Art Therapy major that included classes in art, psychology, special education, and human rehabilitative services.

At Emerge since 2005, Byrd currently manages a caseload of about 20 kids and their families, working directly with 2- to 6-year-olds and providing supervisory services. As Director of Training, she's also in charge of creating programming based on patients’ learning objectives, and making sure that her other therapists are implementing that training.

Byrd commends Emerge’s innovative counseling techniques, which include “incidental learning” (teaching through situations that already exist in the environment) and “play-based learning” (engaging in games and activities that children already enjoy). “It’s shared control,” she says. “While you might be playing a game that they already like, you’re also interspersing opportunities for them to learn.”

Thanks to Emerge's efforts with a therapy treatment called Applied Behavior Analysis, several children in the program have partially or fully recovered from their autism – an achievement that Byrd cites as perhaps the most meaningful aspect of her profession. “They can learn all the skills that they’re missing, like how to reciprocate in social situations and communicate effectively,” she says. “It just takes time.”