Post AyVTaWSbe4BRfqC6SW by leean00@discuss.systems
(DIR) More posts by leean00@discuss.systems
(DIR) Post #AyV0kFhFvi6buJKklM by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T13:33:10Z
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I've been teaching for a long time and I'm pretty good at it, not to brag or anything. Over my career I have watched autism and learning disabilities (which aren't the same thing) become more discussed, in some cases better addressed and in other cases become more of a source of alarm among my colleges, parents, and education press.What I have not seen in nearly two decades is any change at all in "how the children are"1/
(DIR) Post #AyV0z1Y2of0aN04KZs by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T13:35:52Z
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So, I have always thought this was a change in how we choose to support students, how we allocate resources. But, for some people? No. What they see is a rising epidemic. This is not good. It's not good because it's not real. Because while it is true that when I started teaching I didn't have a single student diagnosed with autism it's also true that I had students who probably would be today. And this could have helped them I think. Mostly socially.2/
(DIR) Post #AyV1BcGg7OApjIwzRI by hallvors@oslo.town
2025-09-23T13:38:03Z
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@futurebird a great perspective!
(DIR) Post #AyV1C3Sf0wnk4HlRMe by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T13:38:12Z
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Many schools will have a "resource room" this is staffed by people with education in things like autism but also learning disabilities, and really anything that might making going to school harder.If you want help from the resource room you need a diagnosis. This means families go and get them. That help could mean meeting with someone once a week who helps with planning and organization. That help could mean the resource room give me advice about my teaching. 3/
(DIR) Post #AyV1OZbLLOpfDvnKdM by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T13:40:25Z
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Here is a concrete example. The resource room lets me know I have a student who is sensitive to distracting noise and asks if my room is quiet during tests. I notice it's not. There is traffic noise from the window. I bug the school till they give me a heavy curtain. Now it's more quiet during the tests. For ALL of the students. But, the power to make the purchase and change happens faster because of the resource room.So, naturally I think this great.4/
(DIR) Post #AyV1XC99uvAv5RisTo by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T13:42:01Z
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I'm not as thrilled when I hear parents talking about "something wrong with kids increasingly"And then they look at the number of students using the resource room and freak out about it. But that can also happen. 5/5
(DIR) Post #AyV22iZzNnfYeVItaC by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T13:47:43Z
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I want to add that I think it could be very easy if you are a parent with a child who is struggling and your schools has no resource room, to feel like this is a new crisis. I sometimes wonder about the obvious mismatch between which students have a formal diagnosis and which students are having real difficulties where simple changes could make a big difference. I have bought curtains myself when I thought it would help I don't really care about labels.
(DIR) Post #AyV2ErDh5GFqvPfDsG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T13:49:54Z
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But also I'm not an expert on everything that can interfere with learning. The resource room advice is often very easy to implement and effective. It's almost always something that helps not just one student but many. With budget cuts resources rooms are always the first to go after art and sports. Let's think about THAT a little.
(DIR) Post #AyV3NLPqncYYqaxdWy by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T14:02:35Z
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Let's think about that noisy classroom without the resource room. To even find out there is a problem the student would need to come to me and bring it up, this is scary. "I could have done better but it was just so noisy" I would take that seriously, but many might just think it was an excuse for not studying. But let's say you *do* take it seriously. You ask the school to fix it. They hem and haw, and maybe in a year they do. Terrible.
(DIR) Post #AyV3Vlfr3XWObOSmwq by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T14:04:10Z
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To my shame in my early career I put a student with a similar complaint in the hall for their tests. They did so much better I felt pretty bad about not taking it seriously. Lessoned learned. That was the school with no resource room.
(DIR) Post #AyV3fUW7hT1sHpY1zs by msh@coales.co
2025-09-23T14:05:53Z
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@futurebird teaching as a profession has long suffered a lack of respect overall. I really wish that was not the case because a lot of important perspectives are being ignored.When I was a kid we had kids with ADHD, kids with FAS, kids on the autism spectrum, all of it at pretty much the rates we see today...anecdotally that really hasn't changed in the last half century I think.And though we did have Resource Rooms in schools back then what *has* changed is how we manage such challenges. All those kids would be all handled much more uniformly as "remedial students" and more often sequestered from the regualr classrooms, and almost derisively these kids would be called things like "hyper", "difficult", "emotional", "slow" and worse.If you are in, or know people in teaching or childcare or social work (all tragically undervalued) you know these kids have *always* been there, they just have not really been seen.
(DIR) Post #AyV3lrNFdDdOuhR1VY by twipped@twipped.social
2025-09-23T14:07:00Z
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@futurebird *taps the chart*
(DIR) Post #AyV47d9RByjPAnM3P6 by KatS@chaosfem.tw
2025-09-23T14:10:58Z
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@futurebird Mostly socially.Oh my goodness, yes.If I'd known as a child what it was that made me different from the others, I'd have known what to adapt for.Or even that it was a thing, despite parental gaslighting.It would have helped immensely in my working life, too.Especially for an autistic kid, just knowing why makes an enormous difference.
(DIR) Post #AyV6NCnh8BOVzPjszQ by sarae@ecoevo.social
2025-09-23T14:36:11Z
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@futurebird yes to all of thisI was resistant to formal diagnosis for a long time because I didn't like the idea of labeling my kid as having "a problem"the "accommodations" my kid needed to be successful in school were pretty minor, but we needed the diagnosis to even get in the door with administrators and teachers to have meetings to talk about what those accommodations would look like
(DIR) Post #AyV8ux5aFgoD11KGg4 by Ehay2k@mastodon.social
2025-09-23T15:04:43Z
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@futurebird And this ⬆️⬆️ is a solid indicator of how great a teacher you must be! Making the change and putting the kid in the hall is one thing, having that change YOUR perspective is quite another. Great teachers are first great learners.#teaching #autism #specialneeds #resourcerooms
(DIR) Post #AyVQTtMHoRo4nkNv0K by mattmcirvin@mathstodon.xyz
2025-09-23T18:21:30Z
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@futurebird 'What I have not seen in nearly two decades is any change at all in "how the children are"''Is this concerning autism/learning disability specifically, or more general?Decades of experience with writing about the crisis of today's youth have made me automatically skeptical of "something is horribly wrong with the children!" articles, but it sure seems like I've seen a lot of them in the past several years, especially concerning the consequences of the COVID pandemic and all the responses to it. Sometimes, they're wildly dissonant with my experience of my college-age daughter, who lived through it all, but of course all that can be (and is) dismissed as anecdotal.
(DIR) Post #AyVQuecGjRL8tjcbk8 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T18:26:21Z
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@mattmcirvin I do think there is a little something about lockdown. Students in middle school during those years seem most impacted. They are just a bit behind on some math skills and for the years right after I had to break some of horrendous cheating habits. That is passing through.But this was about LDs and Autism and ADHD ... all this stuff was around before but it was "very quiet" and "trouble maker" and "not good at school"which kind of sucks, right?
(DIR) Post #AyVT3o8ctnCQwbFVlA by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-09-23T18:50:27Z
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@mattmcirvin But also I didn't really expect them to come back without any impact? Remote learning was a compromise. I hope we never have to do that again!
(DIR) Post #AyVTaWSbe4BRfqC6SW by leean00@discuss.systems
2025-09-23T18:56:18Z
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@futurebird Can you please read this book? Nobody helps kids with learning disabilities or autism when they grow up.https://a.co/bpGm64s
(DIR) Post #AyW9CIW81w7DYRyO1I by richardcrawshaw@mastodon.green
2025-09-24T02:42:33Z
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@futurebird to bring it up with the teacher the child needs to know that there is something to bring up. At that age I wouldn't have thought to do that. Many adults in a similar situation wouldn't either.