{"id":2258,"date":"2016-03-05T16:52:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T21:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/?p=2258"},"modified":"2016-09-27T14:05:23","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T18:05:23","slug":"in-focus-wesley-spectrum-art-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/2016\/03\/05\/in-focus-wesley-spectrum-art-class\/","title":{"rendered":"In Focus: Wesley Spectrum Art Class"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wesley Spectrum High School (WSHS) in Whitehall, in partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum, has developed an art program that helps students on the autism spectrum and\/\u200bor with behavioral health issues identify facial expressions, body language and social cues. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt helped me mature and better express my emotions,\u201d said Ryan, 15, a sophomore with autism spectrum disorder who has been in the once- or twice-weekly class at the school for several years. By using various modalities in art, techniques and references to contemporary artists students enhance the learning of social skills. The ability to recognize emotional expressions is invaluable for successful social interaction and effective interpersonal communication. <\/p>\n<p>The program is implemented by art teacher Lynda Abraham-Braff and speech and language therapist Janice Kustron of WSHS, along with artist educators from The Andy Warhol Museum. <\/p>\n<p>From the very first year of Wesley\u2019s art program in 2009, \u201cWe noticed all of the sudden these kids didn\u2019t have tunnel vision; they weren\u2019t isolated in their own world,\u201d Ms. Abraham-Braff said.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width:500px;height:350px;\" data-ps-embed-type=\"slideshow\" data-ps-embed-gid=\"G0000zG9I9BpJNqY\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wesley Spectrum High School (WSHS) in Whitehall, in partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum, has developed an art program that helps students on the autism spectrum and\/\u200bor with behavioral health issues identify facial expressions, body language and social cues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":2259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15,187],"tags":[],"coauthors":[60],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2016\/06\/SS_20151210lf-Autism05-4.jpg?fit=2400%2C1602&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2260,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions\/2260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/photos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}