Re: School – Verbal Abuse by Teachers!

[Anonymous]

As a teacher, I can tell you that a lot of us really do try to help our kids develop a deeper understanding. I certainly do, and describing things in different ways is part of that.

But we are constrained by things:

1) The kid’s actual motivation levels. You can offer a child the world, but if they refuse your help then you can’t force them to learn. We can recommend them to wellbeing programs and that sort of thing, but ultimately if they refuse it then we can’t do much about it.

2) Inadequate training and resources. Most teachers are not <i>trained</i> to recognise and deal with learning disabilities. Some of the kids we have with LD would qualify for special schools, but are in mainstream because the parents think it’ll bring shame on their families if their kid isn’t in with the “normal” kids.

3) The requirements of the system itself. We need to get through a certain amount of content. We can’t spend the entire year on one topic, because there are about a dozen we’re expected to cover. This means that we have to move with the curriculum and when most students achieve an acceptable level of competence.

4) The number of students we have to deal with. When you’ve got an hour per day and 25 students, that’s less than 2.5mins per student per day. Unless we have prior knowledge of the kid’s exact level and needs, it can take a long time to pick up on special requirements.

5) Over-all workload. As a secondary teacher, I have 150 students to teach. That’s 150 kids whose needs I need to take into account, whose work I need to assess, whose reports I need to write.

It isn’t always easy for the teachers. It can be hard to pick up on what every kid needs. A learning disability needs to be highly obvious for a teacher to pick it up on their own, with no prior knowledge at all of the child. Or the teacher needs to be highly trained to pick it up, which is also unlikely as it is not part of standard teacher training.

The problem is a real one, a deep one, and a complicated one. We can do our best to learn and help, but please show some patience with teachers. It’s the ones who make no effort even after they know a kid has special needs that you can be angry at, but not the ones who don’t pick up on it.

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