teacher rant ahead!

[goddess40]

I just got home from picking my kid up at school, seems he had a meltdown thanks to his math teacher who seems to also be a neuropsycologist. He insisted that my kid do an art project that requires the use of a compass (the math type not the directional type) and coloring it in - two things my kid can't do without great frustration. On top of that he added another project that required asking 100 kids a question that would be graphed later - but they had to ask the kids during passing time - hello my kid has sensory issues and has asperger's passing time is a nightmare without adding stress like this. The final straw was that the class bully was sitting right behind my kid making smart ass remarks.

My kid has the three day suspension and the teacher and bully get nothing but the feeling of triumph.

I can't understand why I have a headache!

[hunter]

1. Often the school was afraid to call my mom.

So I'd sit in the office quietly by myself, doing my work, and pick up trash during recess. That was okay by me, and better than my mom coming to school and making a scene.

What happened? I was the kind of kid who would have stuck the point of the compass into the bully behind me (especially if he touched me!) and that was back in the days when compasses were very very pointy. I nailed a kid who was bullying me with a sharpened pencil once and he was so shocked he didn't tell anyone. Later he knocked me down and rubbed horse manure into my hair.

Is your kid the kind who gets frustrated because he can't color it in just right? I was like that. If I went over the lines I wanted to start all over again, new piece of paper, and all that. And staying past the bell would make me crazy fidgety.

Oh man, my poor mom!

[liberalhistorian]

2. I'm the mother of an Asperger's teenager,

he was diagnosed eight years ago in first grade. I've had to deal with this kind of shit many, many times, more than I even care to remember. DO NOT ALLOW this ridiculous suspension to be implemented, PERIOD. You must be your child's advocate and voice, and you have to stand firm and be absolutely insistent.

Have your child removed from that ignorant teacher's class if you must. Such children should never be subjected to teachers who cannot or will not understand them. And parents must NOT put up with it. I cannot emphasize that enough.

[goddess40]

3. There's even more to the story

with all the issues going on with the uncaring teacher the classroom bully made a snide remark from the back of the room, which the teacher "didn't hear" which was what served as the final straw.

[hunter]

4. I was a target because I was so reactive.

How do you guys deal with that?

I had a lot of coaching and support from people who helped me reach a place of security where verbal taunts pretty much rolled off of me, but I was still extremely sensitive to being touched. I really didn't stop lashing out at people until I was maybe sixteen or seventeen.

I remember when I was fifteen I tripped a kid down the stairs after he swatted me in the head from behind just to taunt me, and we both ended up bloody and bruised. But the attitude was "boys will be boys."

In class I was either the teacher's pet, sitting in the front where I stayed out of trouble, or a kid teachers dreaded. There were quite a few teachers I didn't get along with at all, and I probably shouldn't have been in their classes. I think my parents were pretty fair to the teachers most of the time, but there were a few times I knew my mom was taking my side of the story, even though I knew it was wrong.

But I was wrong about being wrong sometimes too.

I have my own teenagers now, but they are not the kind of trouble I was.

[Kajsa]

5. Insist on another teacher!

That teacher obviously has iron clad tenure so the best for
your son is get him out of that class, ASAP.

By law, (ADA) the teacher has to make reasonable accommodations
for your son in his class.
He's not doing that, at all!

"didn't hear the snide comment"
-Right, sure thing! :sarcasm:

This teacher is a jerk.

I know, I've met a few of them
as I substitute teach ( secondary schools)
in my school district.

[bleedingheart]

6. one of my son's Asperger assignments from his speech teacher

is to say hello to 5 kids in the hall in a one month period...this is exceptionally hard for him to do...(they however are doing this to help him and there is no stress involved)...

So asking an Aspie to randomly sample 100 people and ask a question is like asking someone to climb Everest on a whim...

[Deja Q]

7. Fight the fuckers.

Kids with PDDs are not a problem, though we can be a challenge. Bullies who go out to trip up others deliberately ARE.

Have the bully enlist. Chances are, it will have dropped out by 11th grade anyway.

[hunter]

8. The most wonderful thing about college was that the bullies were gone!

Most of them, anyways.

Nobody shoving me in the hallways saying, "Get out of my way, faggot!"

Nobody sneaking up behind me and flicking my ears.

Nobody shoving me into the mud.

Nobody shooting paperclips at me.

But there is no doubt I was a challenging kid to have in the classroom. Some teachers rose to that challenge, others shirked their responsibility.

The best teachers had some kind of intuition for what I was about, and worked with that. The worst teachers blamed me for instigating classroom disruptions or claimed that school was a place where you learned to be a man, whatever the hell that meant.

[goddess40]

9. Thanks, it's so nice to have the support

I just wish none of us had to go through that crap.

I'm not done fighting yet, I've written a letter with the facts of the incident spelled out, what I felt was done incorrectly and what should have been done and that the suspension should be expunged from his record.

I'm currently running for school board and bullying is my main focus but not just for my kid, it truly disgusts me what little effort goes into helping this kids that are tormented day after day.
On the discussion page there a post about the cops being called on a 12 year old girl. (Girl, 12, charged by police for wetting pants) and there are DU people defending the schools actions. Sorry but no "normal" kid is going to wet their pants to get someone it trouble.

- I also see a change in the NCLB garbage that has been dragging our educational system back to the dark ages since it's implementation.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. Most troubling is that the people defending the school in that case...

... are special ed teachers. :(

Good luck on your run for school board!

[liberalhistorian]

11. Special ed teachers can often be

even worse than administration and "regular" teachers as far as understanding of disabilities is concerned, too many are far more concerned with maintaining the status quo and not rocking the boat. And I'm speaking as one who was raised by teachers and who couldn't be more supportive of public education.

For my part, I'm tired. Tired, tired, tired, tired. A lifetime of dealing with the effects and consequences of my severe learning disability, made much worse by being hard-of-hearing and bipolar, and then dealing with ignorant teachers, family, friends and the general public in explaining and advocating for my teenage son with Aspergers's, will do that. I'm in my forties and have had no end of trouble with almost every single employment situation I've ever been in because of it, despite my intelligence and my college degree (that took me a long time to get, due to my problem with science, math and languages).

And I ache to think of my son having to go through the same shit. I'm to the point where I don't give a damn anymore. I am who I am and there's really not a whole helluva lot I can do about it, I cannot change my neurological wiring. I've done all I can to minimize and compensate for the effects, but that only goes so far; same with my son. Even a lot of family members have difficulty understanding me and I'm goddamned sick and tired of having to deal with it. They have even more trouble understanding my son, and simply will not even try to understand any of my or the scientific and educational explanations. And that goes for the public at large as well. Well, I'M DONE. I know many adults with learning disabilities as well, and we all have the same difficulties with employment and family and social interactions and we're all damned tired of it because there really isn't much to be done. Every day is exhausting just getting through it, and to have to continually worry about what people think about what you've said and done and the "way you are" as people have put it, is simply too much anymore.

That 12-year-old who got in trouble for the "sin" of wetting her pants when she couldn't help it had better damn well get used to a lifetime of that shit, because it never, ever ends. There was once a movement a few years ago pioneered by some idiot psychologist who believed that learning disabilities and the like were really the fault of the person and under their total control, and he had a process whereby he would have the student's classmates leave the room and then he'd have the student sign a "promise" that he/she wouldn't do things "differently" anymore and would be more "normal", so the teachers and classmates wouldn't have to deal with it. I was so angry when I read that that I couldn't begin to see straight, and nightmares of my school years started coming back big-time.

The thing is, though, it never ends, since such disabilities have to do with the way the brain receives and processes sensory and other information. That's why employment and social situations remain so difficult all through adulthood. Well, I'M DONE. DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE. People can either take me as I am, and my son as he is, or they can promptly go fuck themselves. I'm too exhausted to care anymore.

[idgiehkt]

12. I really hear where you are coming from.

"Well, I'M DONE. I know many adults with learning disabilities as well, and we all have the same difficulties with employment and family and social interactions and we're all damned tired of it because there really isn't much to be done. Every day is exhausting just getting through it, and to have to continually worry about what people think about what you've said and done and the "way you are" as people have put it, is simply too much anymore."

"The thing is, though, it never ends, since such disabilities have to do with the way the brain receives and processes sensory and other information. That's why employment and social situations remain so difficult all through adulthood. Well, I'M DONE. DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE. People can either take me as I am, and my son as he is, or they can promptly go fuck themselves."

Wow. I know those things you said come from a lot of pain but it is really great to hear them expressed so bluntly. I wish there was a way I could help, and I really do hear you. I hope that it gets better. I too am tired of the problems with employment and family and social interactions. I feel exhausted by my life and actually feel like there is little hope for improvement. But it does feel like a release to hear someone else express what I am feeling.

[hunter]

13. I think as you get older it gets harder to maintain appearences.

You see people around you getting more comfortable and experienced with social interactions, and here you are working just as hard as you ever did not to screw up because people expect you to be in that place too.

My own social abilities are hard won, and a constant chore to maintain. But no matter what I do, no matter how hard I'm trying to compensate, I'm going to make some people uncomfortable because they'll have the feeling that there's something not quite right with me. I'll look away too soon and they'll think I'm hiding something, or they'll get upset because they think I'm ignoring something I don't even see.

But I am done. I'll bend to get along with people, but I'm not going to break myself for them.

[BlueStorm]

14. I had to deal with that shit growing up as well

I've had my share of nightmare teachers and good teachers. I was the quiet type of kid who would much rather curl up in the corner of the room than deal with what was going on around me. I often buried myself in my drawings or my books which would often irk some teachers. In middle and high school there were times that I demanded that I have my classes changed because I couldn't a)deal with the other kids b)the teachers couldn't handle me.

Blue

[ThatsMyBarack]

15. All through K-12, I had to deal with:

Kids picking on me, and adults (including my mom) telling me, "You bring it on yourself when you react." On the other hand, I dared never pick on other kids because *I* would get in trouble like *that!* :grr:

[LWolf]

16. My experience

as a public school teacher with Aspie students:

Too many teachers don't take Asperger's seriously. They don't educate themselves about it, and tend to think that an Aspie is "just weird." While I didn't experience colleagues that bullied the "wierd" kids, they did pretty uniformly dislike them and didn't want to work with them.

When we worked a year-round calendar, off-track teachers would come back as "subs" to make extra money. None would sub in my room, because of the presence of even one Aspie. In a school of 34 teachers, there were exactly 3 that learned to work with Aspies.

Does your son have an IEP? Is there anything in it that would address the survey? Obviously, surveying 100 kids is something an Aspie would need some support or differentiation with. I'm concerned that the support system that should be in place either isn't there, or isn't working properly.

[liberalhistorian]

17. That's a large part of the trouble right there,

that there's no uniformity in school systems when it comes to things like this. Some school systems and their teachers, administrators and support staff are great and are excellent environments for Aspies, and/or special ed kids in general, some are okay, and others are miserable. There needs to be a much more uniform system all across the board.

And parents really need to be strong advocates for their children and not take any shit from the school system or any teacher. My son's school district has been generally great so far, but there have been some teachers who've really made us tear some hair out and who made an already-difficult situation for my son even more difficult the whole year through. That should be unacceptable to parents and to principals as well. Older teachers, frankly, are the worst, and my parents, now in their sixties and retired, will be the first to admit this.

Most older teachers are from the old school, where special ed, if it existed at all, was reserved for the most severe disabilities, kids with any kind of disabilities were separated in their own classes with little or no contact with the "regular" children and most learning disabilities and other problems weren't even recognized. So, when they have a kid with any kind of a problem, it's automatically the kid's fault and THEY are the cause of everything. That kind of mentality is almost impossible to get through, and when you have teachers like that it makes for a very, very long school year.