Teacher Bullying ASD in the news

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I read a sad story with a feel-good ending about a teacher who bullied a special needs student (they don't specifically say "Aspergers", but it's speculated) - the kid is 15 years old, in New Jersey, and after his parents refused to believe him about the torment that a teacher was dishing out to him, he surreptitiously recorded an episode of abuse on his phone camera.

http://news.sympatico.ca/oped/coffee-ta ... t/383a222b

In short, this "teacher" swore and yelled at, belittled, and threatened Julio Artuz, making him feel like trash.

Unfortunately, from what I have read (and experienced in middle school in the 1980s), teacher bullying of spectrum students is fairly rampant. One can guess that it might stem from a desire to promote their own popularity at the victim's expense, or it might just be from exasperation. Either way it is not justified or acceptable.

Maybe these so-called teachers also sense that it's easier to get away with bullying an autistic student, because if they are ever called to account for their bullying, they can just say that their target "misinterpreted" the teacher's behaviour due to the symptoms of their mental condition.

Or, maybe it's frustration that this is not what they "signed up for" when they chose to become a teacher, as if they have some divine right to be insulated from any special students who are being integrated into the mainstream. I've often wondered why school admins don't take steps to crack down on teacher bullying of special needs with a zero tolerance policy, and maybe it's due to threat of union action that their working conditions are being made more demanding so they will strike for more pay as a consequence. I sense it's like that here in Ontario, Canada, but maybe elsewhere it's different. If one of the teachers had an autistic son/daughter, and especially if the principal did, it's less likely this would persist!

The teacher is on paid leave following investigation...hope they fire the scumbag.

It's about time. My third grade teacher was a phycopath and I was the oppisote of the "teacher's pet". I was the class scape goat. She always singled me out and went out of her way to prove I was a bad student. She fit all the traits of a "bully boss".

Brings to mind the part in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo where Lisabeth films her guardian raping her, then uses it to blackmail him. Quite clever.

OMG they have my dad on video! - jk... but sounds exactly like him.

and mine =) hey Kail ^^

Damn right. That is why parents should listen to their kids and ask them questions about how is the teacher picking on them and why did the teacher do that, what was the child doing for the teacher to do that to them. Then go to the school and talk to the teacher about it. If that doesn't work, demand to have a camcorder in the classroom to videotape the child. That is what my mother did when I was a kid when teachers kept complaining about me saying how I keep misbehaving and me saying other kids are allowed to misbehave and I am not and that I am not doing anything wrong. Turns out my views were right.


It's cool the student found proof and it's a shame lot of parents aren't smart as mine.

I thought Julio had ADHD - not that this means he can't be AS also.

I thought this was about the story I saw recently where a special ed student was bullied by her aide and the head teacher and when nobody believed the parents, they sent a secret recorder to school with her. But this is aNOTHER story! It is hard to find anything encouraging in these stories except that now it is easy to find buttoncams online and perhaps the true bullies will be exposed instead of the victims not believed...

oh, and there is more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKWDXgCL ... re=related
a third student had the same teacher/aide

The truly depressing thing about this story is that after you suffer through it in school and then at the hands of a step-parent, you then get to suffer through it at work. I have a boss who pulls this stuff and the assistant goes along with it, including the denial that anything ever happened (it's all in my head, I'm manipulative you know)

"adults" who act this way are disgusting. There is never an excuse.

There's going to be a new organization soon...

Called "When Aspergians Fight back"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-DeI3ohVbY&feature=fvsr

I think you have to have a certain personality to become a special ed teacher and a familiarity of the type of students you are dealing with.....seems like most don't. Also, I think part of the problem is that they just get frustrated and have no clue how to handle the issues except through force and yelling (obviously that never solves anything).

I get a lot of crap at work....i cant handle things, dont remember directions, fragile yet arrogant.

From my own observation and actions, people with aspergers can sometimes be real difficult because of how "smart ass-y?" we can be...

and Nietzsche once stated something similar to this "We begin to mistrust clever people, when they become embarrassed"

Perhaps so, but that's still no excuse for staff to behave like that teacher did. That was clearly bullying, and it's especially heinous of the teacher to accuse him of threatening violence when he was not.

..That's not what I meant, sorry.

NT's get threatened easily.

My comment about the alleged threats was an aside. Just an observation from the video,