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Teoka
Raven
Joined: Sep 23, 2007
Posts: 122
Location: Northern VA
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 Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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| RainSong wrote: | | westernwild wrote: | | People don't automatically "deserve" respect. If they don't act respectfully to others, then they have no right to demand or expect respect themselves. This teachers was totally disrespectful and out of line. |
Beau99, I get that from her original post. She talks about her feelings and needs, but she ignored the rest of the class and how they could have felt. If there is more than one student, regardless of how "normal" or "different" each is, multiple students should be considered. The feelings of one cannot triumph the feelings of the rest. |
Well, it's hard to consider the other people in the room when one already has problems with sympathy, ne?
Unless you were there or happen to know more about my psyche than I do, don't assume that I was being selfish. That certainly wasn't my mindset; I was hopelessly stressed, anxious, and upset.
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Jellybean
Deinonychus
Joined: Apr 21, 2007
Posts: 305
Location: Milton Keynes
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| Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:45 am Post subject: |
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Its easy to tell someone to get out of the situation, howevver teachers need to be more understanding of autistic students and their individual needs. I was once bullied for over 20 minutes and started to cry and my teacher refused to let me leave. When I have a meltdown i don't have the ability to know 'what is best for me' in that situation. If I were you i would want to kick that guy (don't really, just imagine it!)
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Spokane_Girl
I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more
Joined: Jul 17, 2007
Age: 23
Posts: 2836
Location: Benny & Joon town (I wish)
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| Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Jellybean wrote: | | Its easy to tell someone to get out of the situation, howevver teachers need to be more understanding of autistic students and their individual needs. I was once bullied for over 20 minutes and started to cry and my teacher refused to let me leave. When I have a meltdown i don't have the ability to know 'what is best for me' in that situation. If I were you i would want to kick that guy (don't really, just imagine it!) |
He did ask her to leave and she wouldn't leave.
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Aspergers, PDD-NOS, autistic, who cares what diagnoses I have, it's just a label. All on the spectrum. |
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RainSong
The Argumentive Lunatic
Joined: May 02, 2006
Posts: 4170
Location: Ohio
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| Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Teoka wrote: | | Well, it's hard to consider the other people in the room when one already has problems with sympathy, ne? |
One should probably take time to learn then. (Un)Fortunately, the world revolves around the majority, not the individual.
| Teoka wrote: | | Unless you were there or happen to know more about my psyche than I do, don't assume that I was being selfish. That certainly wasn't my mindset; I was hopelessly stressed, anxious, and upset. |
I didn't say you intended to be selfish at that point. You were being selfish, but it was unintentional. However, you still haven't recognized that, and it shows in your original post.
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Speckles
Velociraptor
Joined: May 03, 2008
Posts: 439
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| Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 10:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Teoka wrote: | Well, it's hard to consider the other people in the room when one already has problems with sympathy, ne?
Unless you were there or happen to know more about my psyche than I do, don't assume that I was being selfish. That certainly wasn't my mindset; I was hopelessly stressed, anxious, and upset. |
Hmm, I'm going to restate what I said before. Teoka has admitted that she was very stressed, and perhaps not thinking clearly. I've been there, and done stupid things during a meltdown because I just couldn't process what was going on around me properly. If she was having a self-indulgent temper tantrum, then yes I'd fault her. But if she was having a genuine stress induced meltdown, then she should be given some slack; I've had those too, and they are NOT fun.
I'd be less sympathetic if Teoka hadn't taken any steps to prevent future meltdowns - just because I might be irrational at the time doesn't mean that I can't plan around it when I'm calm. But Teoka has; she's changed teachers so she doesn't have to deal with a person she finds stressful. This is not the most diplomatic way of handling things, but sometimes diplomacy just doesn't work. Either way, she did take steps to help prevent further meltdowns, and that's what really matters.
To those critisizing her reason for being so upset initially, i.e. her friends not sitting with her at lunch, while this isn't all by itself a good reason for Teoka to have been so upset, I sincerely doubt that it was the only thing stressing her out. I found high school very painful; there were some days that I'd have a melt-down before I even left my house because I was so scared. It didn't take much to set me off when I got that wired.
I do feel that being vindictive towards her former teacher would be counter-productive. If he really is an ass, then the next time he discriminates against a kid with learning disabilities the school will probably be less lenient - people will remember that he drove another kid to tears. If he isn't, then he's probably already feeling kind of guilty, and behaving in a forgiving manner will make him feel worse. Being petty would only feed his ego in both cases, and make him feel justified. |
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beau99
B.S. Detector
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Joined: Nov 06, 2007
Age: 21
Posts: 1265
Location: A cruel H*llhole called Earth.
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| Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Spokane_Girl wrote: | | Jellybean wrote: | | Its easy to tell someone to get out of the situation, howevver teachers need to be more understanding of autistic students and their individual needs. I was once bullied for over 20 minutes and started to cry and my teacher refused to let me leave. When I have a meltdown i don't have the ability to know 'what is best for me' in that situation. If I were you i would want to kick that guy (don't really, just imagine it!) |
He did ask her to leave and she wouldn't leave. |
She had an excuse for not leaving.
If it was me, I wouldn't have left the room either.
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My site: Thoughts of an Autistic (updated May 20, 2008)
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greenblue
¸.·´´¯`··.¸.·´
Joined: Mar 26, 2007
Posts: 6993
Location: Home
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| Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:41 am Post subject: |
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| beau99 wrote: | | Spokane_Girl wrote: | | Jellybean wrote: | | Its easy to tell someone to get out of the situation, howevver teachers need to be more understanding of autistic students and their individual needs. I was once bullied for over 20 minutes and started to cry and my teacher refused to let me leave. When I have a meltdown i don't have the ability to know 'what is best for me' in that situation. If I were you i would want to kick that guy (don't really, just imagine it!) |
He did ask her to leave and she wouldn't leave. |
She had an excuse for not leaving.
If it was me, I wouldn't have left the room either. |
Which one, of being an aspie or that she doesn't like her counselor?
If it was me, I wouldn't either, at the time I would not think, but later, I would acknowledge that and try to understand that the world does not revolve around me.
And, I was bullied at school too and some teachers didn't like me as well btw.
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greenblue
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Joined: Mar 26, 2007
Posts: 6993
Location: Home
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| Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:55 am Post subject: |
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| RainSong wrote: | | Beau99, I get that from her original post. She talks about her feelings and needs, but she ignored the rest of the class and how they could have felt. If there is more than one student, regardless of how "normal" or "different" each is, multiple students should be considered. The feelings of one cannot triumph the feelings of the rest. |
Agreed.
| Quote: | | Really, the amount of finger pointing and whining on this thread is absurd. I fail to understand why some people (not including Teoka; since she was there, I can see how she would be emotional about it) seem to feel so strongly about it. |
Me too, because while throwing rants and blame, they really don't know how the situation was exactly to really tell.
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minzrel
Butterfly
Joined: Jun 04, 2008
Posts: 9
Location: Europe
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:59 am Post subject: |
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| nontrivial wrote: | Teoka - I'm going to take what will probably be an unpopular stance here and say that I have to side with your teacher and your school on this one. I'm not saying that you deserved to be humiliated in front of your classmates, or that your teacher handled the situation as well as he possibly could. But if you want to go to a regular school and live among the NTs, you have to be prepared to work with people who don't understand your condition. You can't shut down and stop cooperating when someone is unable to address a situation in the particular way you want it addressed.
As an Aspie who wants to be a teacher (and has taught a few classes with younger students), I can tell you that having a crying student in class makes it impossible for a teacher to conduct class effectively. Whether you think other people care or not (and it sounds like some did in your situation, thank goodness), this creates a distraction for the other students and for the teacher. It sounds to me like Crawford tried to remedy the situation in the most natural way possible, which was to have you go see your counselor. (If I'd known that you didn't like your counselor, I might have simply asked if you wanted to step outside for a few minutes, but teachers in some schools don't have that option - school rules. And I would guess Crawford didn't know that you don't like your counselor.) You weren't doing your work anyway, so he probably wondered what the point was in keeping you in class. And he probably felt he was doing you a favor - a lot of students don't like to be seen crying in class. I know I didn't when I was a kid.
I don't know what you mean by "making an example" of him - for all I know, you could be thinking lawsuit - but I would ask you to try to see things from the school's perspective and the teacher's perspective. A school can have thousands of students (and a teacher hundreds), each of whom has a different neurological/psychological situation. Since we've learned about lots of different mood disorders, learning disabilities, etc. in the last few decades, more and more students are getting diagnosed - and that means more IEPs for the teachers to deal with. We can ask teachers to be sensitive and to use their best judgment, but we can't reasonably expect any teacher to be fully familiar with the entire cornucopia of disorders that are out there - especially AS, which means different things to virtually every person who has it. Similarly, we can ask schools to try to provide safer environments for people with neurological disorders (special classes, alternative campuses), or we can ask them to give us the chance to try to go to school with the general population - but we can't expect them to be "tolerant" of us when we disrupt classes and prevent other students from learning. Again, I know you thought you weren't much of a disruption... but as a teacher who has had students have meltdowns in his class, I've never seen a meltdown that wasn't disruptive.
It sounds like your teacher didn't handle the situation in the most sensitive way possible, and for that he's partly culpable, but I don't think that going to war against this guy is going to help things at all. |
Thank you nontrivial for writing this as early in the thread as you did. It is an adult viewpoint on a pubescent girls' crying in class with a male teacher. Similar scenarios including slamming of doors and girlfriends defending the subject against the school, the adults and the system were common with many NT girls and both male and female teachers in my school when we hit puberty. This has nothing to do with AS, it is used as an excuse, making us all look bad. |
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Pandora
Cat Lady
Joined: Jun 18, 2005
Age: 47
Posts: 4684
Location: Townsville
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| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:37 am Post subject: |
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I must admit to being astounded by the amount of negativity, finger pointing and blame directed towards Teoka. Unfortunately, I have also been in the situation of being pushed into a corner and eventually "losing it".
Are all of you who replied so negatively Aspies yourself? If so, shame on you. If not, the same applies. You can't expect adult behaviour of a young girl who is still learning about life. The way her teacher handled the situation was quite unprofessional.
I do agree Teoka would have been better to leave the classroom but she should have been given a different option to seeing her counsellor - I would suggest being sent to see the school nurse or to lie in the sick room would have been best.
It really annoys me when people who should understand ie. other aspies are even harder on us than the NTs who some of us disdain. Remember the old saying: "united, we stand: divided, we fall".
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Break out you Western girls,
Someday soon you're gonna rule the world.
Break out you Western girls,
Hold your heads up high.
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dongiovanni
Sea Gull
Joined: Aug 29, 2007
Age: 20
Posts: 214
Location: North-east Ohio
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 3:17 am Post subject: |
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| fabshelly wrote: | | Crucify him. |
*ahem*
Lass ihn Kreuzigen.
(Imagine the Torba from St. Matthew here.)
Seriously, the revolutionary in me is getting really charged up. There is no justification to how that teacher reacted. It's just... argh. Well, it's conducive to creating a stratified society, so until said stratification ends, there will be no just treatment of aspies. I definitely agree with Pandora: we need aspie unity. Why is it that autistics seem to be more critical of each other than of society? What end does that serve?
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Kalister1
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 09, 2007
Posts: 2882
Location: California
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:22 am Post subject: |
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| velodog wrote: | | Teoka I'm with nontrivial on this one. You were asked if you wanted to see your Counselor and I can't help but think that things would have gone much smoother if you had. As far as his yelling goes you can't control him, only yourself. You are training for the rest of your life and you will not be able to have a career if you are not willing to take steps to minimize the disruptive effects of your meltdowns. I like your posts because you come across as a thoughtful, intelligent person. I'm sorry this happened but if Aspies want to be looked at as equals in the work force, then Aspies will need to work with the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. |
I agree with you 100%
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Pandora
Cat Lady
Joined: Jun 18, 2005
Age: 47
Posts: 4684
Location: Townsville
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:25 am Post subject: |
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I wonder that too. Maybe it's because we tend to be perfectionists, but I've also seen many examples of being overcritical in the jobs thread. It's unreasonable to expect a child of say 15 to behave like a 30 year old or older. The teacher was the adult in this situation and although I can see he would have been concerned about the whole class, he could have handled the situation much better than he did.
I'm a parent and would have been very angered if a teacher treated any of my children like that and I found out about it. This would be regardless of whether they had Asperger's or not. The fact that this teacher was already told Teoka had AS makes his conduct all the more reprehensible.
Given that his behaviour was influenced by ignorance, I wouldn't think he should be summarily dismissed but a severe caution would have been appropriate.
I also believe there needs to be a plan for dealing with similar incidents in the future: eg. establish a safe area Teoka can retreat to when she is overwhelmed.
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Break out you Western girls,
Someday soon you're gonna rule the world.
Break out you Western girls,
Hold your heads up high.
"Western Girls" - Dragon
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traveller011212
Deinonychus
Joined: May 27, 2008
Age: 28
Posts: 333
Location: Right here!!
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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Not just the teacher or the school is at fault.
We are all told that different is scary and should be either hidden or ignored.
The IEP or whatever its called should have taken into account meltdowns that also included the fact that sometimes you are too far gone to move, or at least move very far. If your teacher wanted you out of the way he should have at least pretended to be your friend and comfort until you were outside the door. If not, assigned you a buddy or two in each room to help you on those days.
Also, you should feel like your councelor is your best friend and biggest advocate. Though you should not depend on him or her, you should always feel not only welcome, but also safe. Even if you had no reason for melting down (ie. you were NT) your teacher and school admin. acted in a VERY inappropriate manor. My wife deals with children as her job, including several with AS, autism, and some who are undiagnosed something. She and her colleagues manage to conduct a normal (as in NT) classroom that is fully integrated where despite disruptions they can still both treat the child with respect and the rest of the class can still learn. |
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traveller011212
Deinonychus
Joined: May 27, 2008
Age: 28
Posts: 333
Location: Right here!!
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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| nontrivial wrote: | Teoka - I'm going to take what will probably be an unpopular stance here and say that I have to side with your teacher and your school on this one. I'm not saying that you deserved to be humiliated in front of your classmates, or that your teacher handled the situation as well as he possibly could. But if you want to go to a regular school and live among the NTs, you have to be prepared to work with people who don't understand your condition. You can't shut down and stop cooperating when someone is unable to address a situation in the particular way you want it addressed.
As an Aspie who wants to be a teacher (and has taught a few classes with younger students), I can tell you that having a crying student in class makes it impossible for a teacher to conduct class effectively. Whether you think other people care or not (and it sounds like some did in your situation, thank goodness), this creates a distraction for the other students and for the teacher. It sounds to me like Crawford tried to remedy the situation in the most natural way possible, which was to have you go see your counselor. (If I'd known that you didn't like your counselor, I might have simply asked if you wanted to step outside for a few minutes, but teachers in some schools don't have that option - school rules. And I would guess Crawford didn't know that you don't like your counselor.) You weren't doing your work anyway, so he probably wondered what the point was in keeping you in class. And he probably felt he was doing you a favor - a lot of students don't like to be seen crying in class. I know I didn't when I was a kid.
I don't know what you mean by "making an example" of him - for all I know, you could be thinking lawsuit - but I would ask you to try to see things from the school's perspective and the teacher's perspective. A school can have thousands of students (and a teacher hundreds), each of whom has a different neurological/psychological situation. Since we've learned about lots of different mood disorders, learning disabilities, etc. in the last few decades, more and more students are getting diagnosed - and that means more IEPs for the teachers to deal with. We can ask teachers to be sensitive and to use their best judgment, but we can't reasonably expect any teacher to be fully familiar with the entire cornucopia of disorders that are out there - especially AS, which means different things to virtually every person who has it. Similarly, we can ask schools to try to provide safer environments for people with neurological disorders (special classes, alternative campuses), or we can ask them to give us the chance to try to go to school with the general population - but we can't expect them to be "tolerant" of us when we disrupt classes and prevent other students from learning. Again, I know you thought you weren't much of a disruption... but as a teacher who has had students have meltdowns in his class, I've never seen a meltdown that wasn't disruptive.
It sounds like your teacher didn't handle the situation in the most sensitive way possible, and for that he's partly culpable, but I don't think that going to war against this guy is going to help things at all. |
A student throwing a fit does not give a teacher the right to do the same |
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