11 May 2018

My son's teacher.

The following was posted by my wife. It rather neatly encapsulates some of the issues our son is having with school/teacher:

"My son is autistic
Autism causes Stimming
Frodo stims by headbanging .
Instead of headbanging people we taught him to rap his forehead
His ME teacher thinks rapping his head is Self injurious - though I told her he doesn’t hurt himself , but rapping his own head bothered her so she went about to stop it
Now he is back to headbanging people and things.


 Great just great.


 She wants me to see the BT again - there is a report in his OSR - I sent her another copy
I also said I will speak the the Autism teacher on Frodo’s team and work with her to better help the ME teacher


She finds Frodo’s stimming socially unacceptable- understand that my son’s stimming - an expression of his autism, she considers socially unacceptable."


I would like to add that this is the teacher who replaced his really, really good teacher when that teacher was transferred. One of her many - peculiarities- is that she will not allow us to talk to Frodo's Educational Assistants. Keep in mind that it is the educational assistants that have the most contact with him and spend the most time with him. They are the ones closest to him and see his behaviour and the issues he confronts the most, and she will not let them speak to us, and will interrupt us any time we try and speak to them, and send them away and remind us that we are to speak to her.

A second peculiarity we learned from one of the few times we managed to have some words together with an EA: she also will not let them talk to each other. She interrupts them, or will corner them separately after she has spotted them speaking and demand to know what they were talking about. In particular, she wants to know if they were gossiping about her.

Meanwhile, my son flounders.

4 comments:

Patience said...

Complain to the board; this is wrong in so many ways. Do you have a specialist who can write you notes about what is best for Frodo? Are there other ME classes that Frodo could attend? (I'm thinking he's bused to the one he's in and it's not necessarily your local school?) Finally, find a way to get the EA's contact info and talk to them by text. This whole situation sounds like a power struggle and isn't clearly not child centred. But I know it's hard to work with the system and people can be very "you're just a parent and we know best".
Feel free to PM me privately.

Bear said...

If we shift him to another school, it will be his third school. At this school and his previous one he started out with very good teachers, who then get transferred and are replaced with teachers who are sub optimal. I don't know if it's a power struggle or if the teacher is somewhat paranoid. He needs a routine and regularity, so moving him around is something that should be done with great care, but it is getting to that point. And even then, so we move him to anther school where the ME teacher is half decent, how long before they get transferred and replaced with another?

Patience said...

Yes it's true. Also many teachers are really on LTO's and then move on. I was in one class where the regular permanent teacher seemed to come in every 2-3 years and stay for a few months to maintain her permanency and meanwhile LTO's filled in. The year I was there; it started with an LTO who was given permanent at another school, then a week long supply teacher and then finally another LTO....until Christmas when the regular teacher was returning... for a while... poor kids.

I guess another suggestion is to ask for a team meeting and discuss your concerns.

Bear said...

The last team meeting was a waste of time. Long story. Very long story. An they didn't really want us to speak.