Harassed by Teacher During Meltdown - READ

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They must earn my respect.

Why?

I agree with RainSong.

The teacher was having a hard time as well and he was probably feeling stressed by that situation and probably somehow desperate, now, I don't think this is an easy thing for him or any teacher to handle, is it? so I wouldn't be so hard on him, and as RainSong said, likely you should take some responsability about what happened, and not blaming everything on him.

Teachers are human beings too.

If I was the teacher in that situation I wouldn't know what to do, and I would probably have a meltdown myself as well

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.

I agree with RainSong.

The teacher was having a hard time as well and he was probably feeling stressed by that situation and probably somehow desperate, now, I don't think this is an easy thing for him or any teacher to handle, is it? so I wouldn't be so hard on him, and as RainSong said, likely you should take some responsability about what happened, and not blaming everything on him.

Teachers are human beings too.

If I was the teacher in that situation I wouldn't know what to do, and I would probably have a meltdown myself as well

Is this supposed to excuse him from demeaning me in front of my peers?

Isn't the same logic applied in an opposite fashion?

I am not taking sides here actually. Just trying to see the fair amount of fault here.

And the "respect must be earned" thing is wrong, everybody deserves respect, respect is reciprocal.

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.

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!)

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.

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.