Great post! I’m a CO public school teacher of 20+ years. Post pandemic, teaching has felt increasingly more challenging than I ever remember it being before. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I would like to see schools become hard targets to reduce the possibility of deranged mass shootings. Armed guards in schools would surely have an impact on behavior too. There were a group of men, fathers of students, as I recall, that just walked the halls in groups of four or five, and the rate of violence dropped dramatically. Too many children and raised without fathers in the home. A masculine presence works wonders.
It is tough, in my day (1967 to 1980) and now. I had the additional crippling factor of being an Aspergian. My brother had Crohn's...nobody knew what it was.
I urge teachers these:
1. Don't "jib and jab" with students who are clearly troubled, Aspergian, or suffer other issues. They are kids. They might not be able to handle it the "right" way. Remember that as you bend the twig, you may break the branch.
2. Don't teach "to the test." Aspergians can solve math problems by methods that do not "Show All Work." Ask them how they did it. If they can show that they have alternate but successful means to solve the problem, give the credit. Life is not about writing "Q.E.D." on a math test.
3. If a disabled kid suffers from an unusual illness, he or she is NOT FAKING IT. Find out what it is. The doctor won't tell you -- Doctor-Patient Confidentiality. The Internet will. My brother was frequently absent due to horrific steroids. His math teacher called him a "part-time student." My mother stormed in and threatened him with a lawsuit. I threatened the teacher with a violent death. He apologized to him, Mom, and me, saying that he was "also disabled."
"Yeah, in the head," I said.
4. Whatever you do, DO NOT brandish the PERMANENT RECORD CARD or a transfer to a horrible school in the face of students like a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. I was so upset and frightened by these threats that I tried to kill myself. Three decades later, I met the modern version of teachers at the same school at an event, and they thought those threats were funny, asking me "Did it frighten you?"
Yeah. It did. I believed it when teachers said that marks on those cards would define my life and prevent me from doing anything but cleaning sludge out of boilers or cleaning toilets. For life.
Just before my retirement from my career in mental health i worked with a family with aspergers. They made the correct decision to home school him. Plain, simple fact, he's brilliant with skills that are awesome. You and your family didn't have someone like me to be a guide. You really have been through a lot. I'm glad you are here and that we can interact.
I would have done horribly with home-schooling. Read my three-part Sub Stack essa "Mathematics and Me" about my 12-year war with my mother when she tried to teach me mathematics.
If I had an outside teacher, I would have aced the subject. I needed a special one-on-one teaching program.
Asperger's is an endless misery. You go through life in bubble-wrap. You cannot relate to people. You have ZERO social skills. You take every conversation as if it was a script on the printed page. You cannot do nuance. You have very little empathy. You cannot cope with changes to routine. A guy makes a standard joke or crack about you, you explode as if it was a massive personal assault. You have no self-esteem. As you get older, you realize that you're a freak, because you have this vast knowledge of narrow subjects. You cannot hold a conversation. You find yourself alone or with "kooky friends." You don't get dates or lovers. You have trouble holding a job. You feel increasingly worthless, unable to connect with your fellow human beings. Suicide becomes a better alternative than going on. That's Asperger's.
The good sides: your adherence to routine leads to a strong work ethic. If you don't have my mother teaching you math, you ace the subject and can work in mathematical, scientific, and technical fields. Your fear of change and adherence to rules means that you'll never do drugs or booze, let alone commit crimes. Your teachers will be puzzled by you, but very pleased that you turn in work to perfection. You show up on time and have an immense work ethic, often being more interested in work than the office party. And you memorize stuff that may seem useless, but is actually important: where the car was parked in Dodger Stadium lot at the ballgame, where to stand on the downtown East Side IRT 14th Street station so that when you get off at Fulton Street, you are facing the exit that leads directly to the PATH train that takes you home to Newark.
Otherwise, it's a horrible misery.
My wife has had it with me...on my 60th birthday, I messed up the party, and she said to me, "I have to decide whether I want to spend the next 30 years of my life with an autistic eight-year-old."
In the past year-and-a-half, she has not said "I love you" or even kissed me.
I am entirely alone in the world, and my father's prediction when I was a teenager has come true: "David, if you continue on this course you're on, one very cold morning, you will wake up and realize that nobody in the entire world gives a damn whether you live or die."
Great post! I’m a CO public school teacher of 20+ years. Post pandemic, teaching has felt increasingly more challenging than I ever remember it being before. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
And I live in Colorado and my grandson goes to High School here so I am fully aware.
When the teachers get fed up and are gone, then what?
good question
I would like to see schools become hard targets to reduce the possibility of deranged mass shootings. Armed guards in schools would surely have an impact on behavior too. There were a group of men, fathers of students, as I recall, that just walked the halls in groups of four or five, and the rate of violence dropped dramatically. Too many children and raised without fathers in the home. A masculine presence works wonders.
I totally agree
It is tough, in my day (1967 to 1980) and now. I had the additional crippling factor of being an Aspergian. My brother had Crohn's...nobody knew what it was.
I urge teachers these:
1. Don't "jib and jab" with students who are clearly troubled, Aspergian, or suffer other issues. They are kids. They might not be able to handle it the "right" way. Remember that as you bend the twig, you may break the branch.
2. Don't teach "to the test." Aspergians can solve math problems by methods that do not "Show All Work." Ask them how they did it. If they can show that they have alternate but successful means to solve the problem, give the credit. Life is not about writing "Q.E.D." on a math test.
3. If a disabled kid suffers from an unusual illness, he or she is NOT FAKING IT. Find out what it is. The doctor won't tell you -- Doctor-Patient Confidentiality. The Internet will. My brother was frequently absent due to horrific steroids. His math teacher called him a "part-time student." My mother stormed in and threatened him with a lawsuit. I threatened the teacher with a violent death. He apologized to him, Mom, and me, saying that he was "also disabled."
"Yeah, in the head," I said.
4. Whatever you do, DO NOT brandish the PERMANENT RECORD CARD or a transfer to a horrible school in the face of students like a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. I was so upset and frightened by these threats that I tried to kill myself. Three decades later, I met the modern version of teachers at the same school at an event, and they thought those threats were funny, asking me "Did it frighten you?"
Yeah. It did. I believed it when teachers said that marks on those cards would define my life and prevent me from doing anything but cleaning sludge out of boilers or cleaning toilets. For life.
Not funny.
Don't do it.
Just before my retirement from my career in mental health i worked with a family with aspergers. They made the correct decision to home school him. Plain, simple fact, he's brilliant with skills that are awesome. You and your family didn't have someone like me to be a guide. You really have been through a lot. I'm glad you are here and that we can interact.
I would have done horribly with home-schooling. Read my three-part Sub Stack essa "Mathematics and Me" about my 12-year war with my mother when she tried to teach me mathematics.
If I had an outside teacher, I would have aced the subject. I needed a special one-on-one teaching program.
Asperger's is an endless misery. You go through life in bubble-wrap. You cannot relate to people. You have ZERO social skills. You take every conversation as if it was a script on the printed page. You cannot do nuance. You have very little empathy. You cannot cope with changes to routine. A guy makes a standard joke or crack about you, you explode as if it was a massive personal assault. You have no self-esteem. As you get older, you realize that you're a freak, because you have this vast knowledge of narrow subjects. You cannot hold a conversation. You find yourself alone or with "kooky friends." You don't get dates or lovers. You have trouble holding a job. You feel increasingly worthless, unable to connect with your fellow human beings. Suicide becomes a better alternative than going on. That's Asperger's.
The good sides: your adherence to routine leads to a strong work ethic. If you don't have my mother teaching you math, you ace the subject and can work in mathematical, scientific, and technical fields. Your fear of change and adherence to rules means that you'll never do drugs or booze, let alone commit crimes. Your teachers will be puzzled by you, but very pleased that you turn in work to perfection. You show up on time and have an immense work ethic, often being more interested in work than the office party. And you memorize stuff that may seem useless, but is actually important: where the car was parked in Dodger Stadium lot at the ballgame, where to stand on the downtown East Side IRT 14th Street station so that when you get off at Fulton Street, you are facing the exit that leads directly to the PATH train that takes you home to Newark.
Otherwise, it's a horrible misery.
My wife has had it with me...on my 60th birthday, I messed up the party, and she said to me, "I have to decide whether I want to spend the next 30 years of my life with an autistic eight-year-old."
In the past year-and-a-half, she has not said "I love you" or even kissed me.
I am entirely alone in the world, and my father's prediction when I was a teenager has come true: "David, if you continue on this course you're on, one very cold morning, you will wake up and realize that nobody in the entire world gives a damn whether you live or die."
He was my biggest fan.