reaming big is never a bad thing.

Just ask Gabe Watterson, a Panther Valley High School student.

The 10th-grader is currently working to create a weekend forecast show for his class with the help of his teachers.

Watterson is autistic, but that isn’t stopping him from achieving his dreams.

Tricia Kanick, autism interventionist at Panther Valley, said that the idea for the minute-long weekend weather update with Gabe came about earlier this year because of his personality.

“Gabe likes to be theatrical and he likes game shows and acting things out so … one day, I had a reading lesson with him and it just wasn’t working,” Kanick said, noting that most times they do Gabe’s math and reading lessons by acting things out. “It wasn’t going well. So I thought we were going to try something new.”

The pair wrote up a weather forecast since Gabe is interested in the weather, and then videotaped it.

“He was awesome,” Kanick said. “He loved it. He did really well.”

Kanick sent it to her boss and got the green light from Gabe’s mom to begin this as a weekly production.

Every week, Gabe changes things up and his classmates get to see the personality he has through his forecast, whether it is through jokes or little interesting facts that he shares.

“Seeing it come to fruition and seeing the awesome videos that he’s been making is very cool for us,” Kanick said. “We definitely see his personality in this.”

Kanick said that this experience with Gabe has been very cool to witness because teachers have been seeing him build in his skills, while also promoting what the multiple disabilities behavioral classroom can offer these children.

“To be able to see Gabe and see what he can do and see this awesome forecast that he’s been bringing us each week, it’s really, really cool to get that out there and, you know, show what autism is and what it can be and what our kids are capable of.”

You can watch a clip of Gabe’s Weekend Forecast on the Carbon-Lehigh Intermediate Unit’s website at cliu.org and scroll down to CLIU Spotlights.