Teachers

A place to talk about your experience of living with Dyspraxia

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Yossarian
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Teachers

Post by Yossarian »

Did anyone have any particularly positive or negative experiences with their teachers at school? I wonder if teachers today are better trained to recognise learning differences such as dyspraxia.

I was born in the early 80s and, as a child, I experienced difficulties with sports (still do :P ), handwriting and keeping up with the working place of the class.

I was thinking back to school recently and I can remember one teacher calling me "the tortoise". This was used in front of the class, especially when I had fallen behind. I have also been called lazy and slobbish by teachers.

My high school Classics teacher was much more understanding. I was shocked when I was complemented on the quality of my work and told not to worry about how fast I was.

I bring these teachers up because it strikes me that incidents like these had a pronounced effect on my confidence at the time. I hope that teachers nowadays are more aware and better trained.
Tom fod
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Re: Teachers

Post by Tom fod »

Interesting topic. Thank you for introducing it I think there is better awareness, but is there sufficient resource (of time/money) and the knowledge-base to make a positive impact?

Back in the late 80s /early 90s I had some special needs assistance but didn't like the fact this marked me out though I guess extra time in examinations probably did have some positive influence on my overall results. I do suspect the word Dyspraxia likely did appear in my notes but I always understood I was in the visually impaired camp. Little was said about learning difference and they didn't try too hard to change the way held my pen/pencil.

I'm must say I would have little if any respect for a teacher who sought to publicly humiliate pupils in front to their classmates. I appreciate they may be saying such things to try to spur the pupil on but there's a real risk it will have the opposite effect.in my opinion teachers need to be able be impartial and inspire a broad range of differently abled pupils but I appreciate human nature and education policy makes this all the more difficult

Where I liked both the subject and the teacher(s) I believe I generally did better. I'm quite good at Geography in quizzes though I will defiantly say that has nothing to do with the Geography Teacher I had. I believe a good teacher is invaluable as I really hated my first yr of A Level Chemistry but a change of lecturer helped me a lot in the second year so I managed a C at AS.
Tom
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DanAu96
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Re: Teachers

Post by DanAu96 »

ok, so i will give my contribution from a more recent prospective.

I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia at aged 7 in 2003, my state primary school didn't really know how to deal with me, they didn't treat me badly as such (although i can think back now to a few negative experiences that may have been due to my problems). soon after my diagnoses i was taken out of the state primary school and sent to a dyslexia specialist school (they also had a lot of experience with dyspraxia). I didn't like it much but i can now see that they did me a lot of good. I then when't to a comprehensive secondary school where i got on very well, i was given a lot of support. i do remember having one special needs coordinator who who really lacked any understanding. I did well and completed A levels with lots of support.
Yossarian
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Re: Teachers

Post by Yossarian »

Thanks for the feedback. Tom, I agree that a good teacher can make a huge difference to a student's success. This is, of course, true for all pupils regardless of any learning differences. That said, I think that it can be particularly important for pupils who exhibit such differences.

Dan, I found it interesting to hear from someone who went through the education system more recently than I did. I'm glad that you found success with your A Levels.
Ram
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Re: Teachers

Post by Ram »

I can give you the perspective of someone who was in secondary school in the late 70s and early 80s, as yet undiagnosed with dyspraxia.

I was in a relatively genteel school compared to many, so I probably had a much better experience than most people at that time.

Most of the teachers at that school genuinely did their best. Even if my dyspraxic tendencies may have exasperated them, they were able to effectively disguise this.

I do have a couple of negative experiences that would probably lead to a teacher being in serious trouble these days.

At the age of 11, a woodwork teacher once harped on for several minutes at me after getting something wrong. His words were to the effect that I was at the back of the common sense queue, so God didn't have much left to give out when it was my turn. Fortunately, he wasn't someone that was respected very much by any of the pupils.

Five years on just before O-Levels, an idiot of a science teacher publicly harangued me for about five or ten minutes because he didn't think I was concentrating hard enough. But this teacher who was such a control freak in the classroom would be the type who would right past three big boys kicking or pushing a smaller kid.

I always wanted to meet these two cretins as an adult and let them know what worthless vermin they really were, but it never happened.

Having said that, I'm probably lucky compared to most people (esp dyspraxics) since my two bad experiences were nearly five years apart!
Ram
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Re: Teachers

Post by Ram »

I can give you the perspective of someone who was in secondary school in the late 70s and early 80s, as yet undiagnosed with dyspraxia.

I was in a relatively genteel school compared, so I probably had a much better experience than most people at that time.

Most of the teachers at that school genuinely did their best. Even if my dyspraxic tendencies may have exasperated them, they were able to effectively disguise this.

I do have a couple of negative experiences that would probably be sackable offences these days.

At the age of 11, a woodwork teacher once harped on for several minutes at me after getting something wrong. His words were to the effect that "You were at the back of the common sense queue, so God didn't have much left to give out when it was your turn." Fortunately, he wasn't someone that was respected very much by any of the pupils.

Five years on just before O-Levels, an idiot of a science teacher publicly harangued me for about five or ten minutes because he didn't think I was concentrating hard enough. But this teacher who was such a control freak in the classroom would be the type who would right past three big boys kicking or pushing a smaller kid. Unfortunately, this teacher did have a certain amount of charisma, so he was somewhat respected.

I always wanted to meet these two cretins as an adult and let them know what worthless vermin they really were, but it never happened.

Having said that, I'm probably lucky compared to most people (esp dyspraxics) since my two bad experiences were nearly five years apart!
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