How do I deal with ambivalence from librarian tutor?

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At our library there is a service that librarians are supposed to help teach you the language.

One librarian like teaching and seems friendly to me sharing stories about her life etc.
I asked if we can organise group language classes, but she seems to stop it with bureaucratic ambivalence
which is really annoying.

First she said "it is very hard to get approval", then she said "ok lets do it but in 2 weeks", then she said "oh there are teacher strikes",
and today she brags about how she taught a lesson last week, and another one today.

Clearly the teacher strikes are over, and it is easy to get approval for some people but not me.

This is really hurtful.

I guess I will organise my own classes with someone else, and accept that she is just being pretty weird.

Just because someone works in a job doesn't mean they can do everything expected of them.
This is just like autism. Many of us can do some things but not others.

You have missed the point. The fact that she is giving lessons to others but not me indicates she can easily do the task and is making excuses.

She seems like an ableist nutcase to me. Tell her that you're just as capable as the rest of her students. Is there any way that you can talk to her manager? That's just plain wrong.

Teaching often requires social interaction. The pandemic proved this. Some students did terribly in forced to learn remotely without in person social interaction. It may be hard for some people to interact with people on the spectrum.

I dunno... it's a pretty bitchy library, some librarians complain a lot about management. I do coding there and I think they all think I'm a bit of a weird child-man and would rather teach the others.

It's ok, I will organise it myself with someone else.

Most likely she is being friendly out of fear of confrontation and would rather I didn't speak with her, but doesn't want to set boundaries explicitly, even though I have tried to politely clarify this... just annoying.

If the tutor feels uncomfortable talking to autistic people, I think she should get over herself, because she's going to see a lot of autistic people over her career.

Well... I get the impression she won't be working there much longer as she doesn't like the library anyway.

TBH, years before I had any idea that I was likely AS, I worked with autistic students and it really ranges in terms of difficulty and I'd genuinely be curious about what the other side of this is. Without being there, I"d rather not judge anybody, but even just basic things like insufficient reciprocal communication can make it a lot harder to teach.

In other words, she's trying to get herself fired.

Getting fired typically allows one to collect unemployment benefits if it is for poor job performance rather than misconduct like theft.

I didn't think of this. Not sure about it in this instance but his is definitely a game that is played at this library among staff and management. I remember some gossip about it.
Apparently the strategy is to repeatedly ask if the workplace is "a good fit", and give meaningless annoying jobs to try get people to leave of their own accord to avoid paying severance.

Again, really horrible workplace seems like.

Last edited by __Elijahahahaho on 20 Jan 2024, 8:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

In many places you have to be very lucky to find a good teacher.
Or wealthy. The wealthy with hire private tutors for their kids. They will send them to good schools.
Private schools can pay less than nearby public schools as the teaching experience between student and teacher is better.

It could also be a lack of training and support to offer the service. Whether we like it or not, teaching autistic people does often is different, otherwise so many of us wouldn't have had crappy experiences in school or needed support.

I think it is far easier to learn how to teach kids with Down's syndrome.
They are really quite similar and can often be identified just by appearance.

With autism if you know one person with autism you know one person with autism.

Sort of like the difference between playing Tic Tac Toe and golf.
It is impossible to play golf the same way twice!

Sadly, employees in various businesses often discriminate against people with autism or other disabilities for no good reason.

Sometimes their thoughts on disabled or autistic folk are "they are too much trouble" or "I am not qualified to deal with them" and such things like that.

It is sad.