When you have ONE teacher who just doesn't get AS

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We had a team meeting with our teachers this week to head off some problems our son was having starting middle school.

It became incredibly obvious that all the teachers were really GREAT (yeah, we consider ourselves lucky), except for our son's science teacher. Of course, science is his favorite subject. But this teacher gives quizzes verbally (not great for our son), gives information verbally (i.e., what's going to be on the test or quiz, which, or course, our son doesn't pick up on) and doesn't really care about whether or not he conforms to our son's IEP.

I've made a few phone calls, and apparently many parents of special needs kids have dealt with this jerk. He is a few years away from retirement, obviously has his own issues (he's one of those guys that LOVES science, but obviously doesn't LOVE kids), and is notoriously inflexible. Apparently he thinks that these parents of special needs kids are faking it -- that nothing is really wrong with their kids, we're just asking for special favors.

At our team meeting, I seriously thought my husband was going to kill this guy. My husband is generally quiet, but he's a science/engineering guy, so he knows what the science teacher "should" be teaching, and gets really mad when it's not happening. I know that it's frustrating to not have a teacher doing what he should be doing, but I also know that this type of person is not going to change, and when he's feeling bad vibes from the parents, he's a small enough man to take it out on our son.

It occurred to me that I should just calm down about this -- it's just middle school, and we can pretty much write off the grades he gets this year. It's not like it's going to affect him for the rest of his life. He will still learn, because he loves science. He will just get lower grades because he can't figure out this guy's "style" of tests and quizzes. And even spending time trying to figure that out is good practice -- learning that some teachers don't just test you on the subject matter -- they grade you on spelling, on syntax, on anything to catch you in a mistake.

Anyone have any experience with teachers like this, and their AS children?

Kris

My brother had problems with his math teacher when he was in seventh grade. She wouldn't explain the work real well so lot of kids had troubles getting her and my brother hated that class and would skip the school work from that class. She also gave some kids special treatment by giving them better grades even though they had lot of the problems wrong or they didn't deserve good grades. She also discriminated kids too in her class. She had something against Native Americans so she give them less help and not really pay much attention to them. She also would put them on one side of the classroom and all the other kids on the other side and because my brother looks Native American, she treated him different too along with the other Native Americans so she put them with them too and gave him less help. I heard she got fired the next year because of so many complaints about her and from parents. She just didn't want to explain the math problems any different and treat all her students the same.

How is your son coping with this? If he still likes school in general and he's able to understand that the problem is with the teacher, not him, then I'd keep him in the class and just write off his grade in the class. I agree that the practice with dealing with verbal information could be good for him. If your husband is a science enthusiast, he should be able to make sure your son stays on track with his science knowledge.

On the other hand, if this is really ruining your son's confidence in his science skills or intelligence in general, it's a serious problem. It sounds like the teacher isn't going to change, so you may need to find an alternative method for him to get credit for his science education for the year. If your state (or whatever, if you're outside the US) has any kind of cyber-education, maybe you could see if he could complete his science online.

if there are accomodations in your son's IEP that the teacher is not following, bring it up to your son's social worker and/or the principal...........the teacher absolutely must follow the reccomendations within the IEP or they risk violating FAPE ( free appropriate public education)

The vice principal is already aware of what's going on. I think everybody wants to try and work within the system. Nobody really wants to get a teacher fired if there isn't really obvious lack of following the IEP. I don't want to do this, because that reputation for me as the "ugly" parent would follow my son all the way through school. But I also want to have the IEP enforced.

Kris

I had an english teacher for Senior English that was just a general a-hole. He knew I had AS and he took every opportunity to exploit it...

through experiences with my own children, i have, unfortunately, learned that sometimes i have to be the witch to get things done. I try very hard to be accomodating...sometimes too hard. I regret not forcing an issue with my son's 4th grade teacher~ she was HORRID....yelled at the kids all day ( the principal knew)...the teacher had my son write on the board in front of his classmates " i will not ask questions." 100 times.........i complained nothing happened. my hubby said to just let it go. that son would get over it~ well he still hasn't.........this all occured pre-dx~ when we thought perhaps son was exaggerating the incidences. later on we found out differently. there is no excuse for a teacher who will not comply with accomodations for a student.

Ster is right. There is no excuse for any teacher not to follow an IEP. Middle school, and particularly the first year of it is nothing short of hell on earth for many kids and being a kid with Aspergers just makes it all that much more difficult. I have never in all the years and different school districts I've dealt with seen anything like the teachers of the 6th grade at my son's school .He had the unfortunate circumstances of being new to the state, the school and to middle school. If that wasn't hard enough the teachers were completely unsympathetic on any level and often instituted power plays as a teaching tactic. This doesn't really work with Aspies.

What ended up happening was that my son would feel overwhelmed by the lessons and refuse to do his work. The teachers of course would send it home causing 3and 4 hours of "homework" a night. I called three different IEP meetings over this and it never got resolved, so I just started reconstructing the lessons so that my son could do them. For example, letting him draw pictures of his answers or having him do just part of the assignment or recopying the worksheets so that only a couple of questions would be on each page, etc.

My son would then be able to do the lessons and I would send them back to the teacher saying something to the effect of "since you are plainly not following the IEP I've taken the liberty of doing so myself since you are sending your lessons home for me to teach. I trust you'll grade these papers fairly and accurately." Eventually, there were a few changes, not as much as should have been.

However, the good news is, 7th grade is 85% better overall. I did make it plain last year that my child is not to be treated poorly because of any issues the teachers might have with me ensuring that they're following the IEPs. I'm not a reverant IDEA thumper (as it were), however, I do believe that if the schools are going to offer an education to all students, my child deserves to learn just as much as every other child regardless of how he learns.

Schleppenheimer, I really like your attitude. I grew up before anyone understood AS, and I had to learn to put up with jerks like your son's science teacher. Of course, I always assumed that it was totally my fault, and depending on the teacher, I was either "teacher's pet" or "spawn of Satan". You guys sound like such good, aware, parents that if you absolutely have to keep your son in this guy's class, maybe with your guidance, he can gain insight into what he will run into throughout his life. Good luck.

Thanks, bobert, for your kind words. You may find this somewhat interesting -- the other night, I was trying to kind of talk about the situation with my son, but trying to be politically correct about the science teacher. I started to say "ya know, your science teacher . . . well, he's kind of . . ." and my son said "Not a very good teacher? Yeah, I know." I thought that was cool, that he's aware of the problem, and that the problem isn't with HIM.

A couple of thoughts occurred to me later in the week after we had a team meeting with said awful teacher --

1. First of all, yeah, the science teacher was bad, but there were FIVE OTHER TEACHERS there who were AWESOME and totally on our side, and TOTALLY knew about our son's needs, and were willing to do what they could to make his learning possible.

2. This is middle school. If he gets a C in this teacher's class, it doesn't go on his permanent record in terms of getting into college. So what if he doesn't do great in science this year? We'll just deal with it, and he will have learned how to handle a difficult teacher -- a skill he will very much need to deal with in high school, when things ARE on his permanent record!

3. We'll just do the best we can with what we have, and because of this experience, we will be much better prepared to know what to ask for in future IEP meetings.

Kris

OK, have to write an example of a GREAT teacher!

My son has been sick last week, and in and out of school because of a high fever. He missed MULTIPLE quizzes, and I thought he would be making up for all of them today, his first week back to school.

He only took his social studies quiz. He sat in the hall while class was going on, and took the quiz, but he got distracted and only wrote a bit over half of the answers down.

His FANTASTIC teacher almost gave him a 20/30 grade (a C) when he stopped, and asked my son to give him the answers verbally. My son gave all the answers, verbatim, perfectly, and this teacher not only gave him a perfect score, but CALLED me RIGHT THEN, to tell me that my son had something important to tell me, and then put my son on the phone so that he could brag that he got a perfect score.

WHAT KIND OF TEACHER DOES THIS??? I am absolutely amazed at the level of understanding and heart that this man has. Practically brings tears to my eyes.

I hope that ALL of you have an experience like this with at least one teacher who works with your children. And may these teachers have a direct route to heaven when the time comes!

Kris