ASD in mainstream secondary

Well thank you so much for calling me ignorant. I was describing a system that I know is in place - and works, in a local secondary school. (Which happens to be the one with the best results in the county) It is also used at the secondary my best friend teaches at in another county, so clearly not impossible to manage at all. Just because the system around the smartboard is a problem in your school, doesn't mean that's the only way to do it - which comes back to what I said about money - budget constraints make it impossible for many schools to put in the electronic infrastructure they need to make this sort of system possible. The problem isn't teachers, it's enormous schools, lack of funding and teachers being stretched too thin.

I also agree with Verbena about objectives by the way. Teachers should be left alone to teach and without all the excessive red-tape and paper-pushing they now have to do, they would have more time to get to know their pupils and understand their needs.

I am not anti-teacher, several of my closest friends are secondary teachers, a couple in schools that are well equipped and get things right, others in dreadfully underfunded schools where they are stretched to breaking point (both staff and pupils).

I hate the way this always ends up being a parents vs teacher fight when at grass roots, they are both, along with many pupils, both SEN and non-SEN, are victims of a system that sets them up to fail.

My dcs have had some amazing teachers and some truly awful ones, I don't see teachers as a single homogenous being that is the cause of all their problems, nor do I blame teachers for the system not being fit for purpose.

Verbana37 - why did you ever send him in with such a precious possession? I would keep the special ruler for home, and let him take cheap ones for school. Things do happen to things in school, through no fault of the child. I gave my youngest DD some colouring pencils that we keep for home, and we use odd ones from old sets for school.
DD actually now takes excess stationary just so she has extra for when she is asked if someone can borrow from her.

I am pleased the culprit is being dealt with.

willitbe - thanks for you damming of my knowledge of ASD - so helpful!
It may be a personal possession, but if the child is unable to borrow a ruler either: a) The child should have far more support to remain in Mainstream (1:1 TA) or should be in a special school; and b) the incident of "hiding a ruler" should have instantly been escalated as bullying.

Detention is a fact of school life - my children never see detention as being caused by their SNs, but do see it as detention=having got behaviour wrong. However being reassured that there is no punishment outside of school, and that it is not a big thing has helped them cope.
Admittedly I cannot imagine my DCs school giving a detention the "next day" for leaving the classroom with permission to find something. Did the teacher know the full story?

Oh and willitbe - remember if you have met one person with ASD that is all, you have met one person with ASD.

mummytime For a ruler, there was no need for him to leave class - he could have borrowed one. However "detention" can often just mean: the teacher wants a chat. These two statements alone show a complete lack of understanding of the disability of ASD.

1. The ruler to him is a personal possession, to have it removed was not just a case of borrow another one, it is a "change", and any change causes stress..... a basic concept in understanding ASD. My son cannot cope with anyone touching any of his possessions, to touch his pencil case would cause him an immediate stress (think fight or flight reaction). It is not intentional, and trying to refocus on just borrow another ruler is not a solution. Whilst the teacher does not have time to deal with these "little" issues, the stress they are inflicting on the child is huge, and it is the lack of recognition of this that is distressing to parents.

2. Detention ---- so give a child a punishment for being autistic, as that is how the literal mind of a child with autism will take it. The black and white thinking means that they don't get the idea of it being just a little chat, for them it is a punishment and they won't necessarily understand why they are being given the punishment in the first place.

So if you take nothing else from this, remember two basic things with autism:
Change is difficult
Literal thinking (black and white thinking) cannot see a detention as anything other than a punishment.

Longlost10 can I ask what you do to help remind yourself of the hidden disabilities in your classroom? What do you recommend as as teaching strategies for helping these children? What would advice would you give to other teachers? I hope you can share how to help.

actually, I know of a (grammar) school where all the students in several year groups went on "objective strike" downing pens and refusing to cooperate if a teacher put objectives on the board. They considered them demeaning and a waste of time. Teachers soon went along with this, and apart from the odd supply teacher, and NQT, no one ever imposed learning objectives on those students ever again.

As a cohort they have just achieved the best ever GCSE grades for that school....

I completely agree with you Verbena, if only teachers were just left alone to teach.....

In many secondary schools each class has an electronic register and any specific needs or requirements for individual pupils are flagged up on there. This is a quick, simple reminder for every single teacher at the start of every lesson. (They don't take a register, just have a quick glance for flags.)

this is just ignorance

you don't understand anything about education.

you don't have any idea how lessons are organised

You have no conception of the enormous difficulties face by teachers trying to get on with the lesson, using registers with confidential information displayed.

You have to turn off the smart board to take the register. You then have to turn it on again, this can take 5 mins out of a 50 min lesson. 10% of teaching time

so you have to plan around this, and rearrange your lesson so that the first 5 mins is separate from the rest. This can mean writing up the objectives on the board by hand, this can mean cutting 10 mins out of your break to do it, effectively this means leaving the lesson before early, or risk getting into trouble for a. not having objectives displayed, or b. displaying confidential information

I used to get round this by having a tall student block the projector with a plank of wood while I took the register, but I was caught, and got into trouble. That student wasn't working, and could see the confidential information on the register.....

This is an interesting thread, to hear the expectations and "solutions" from some parents. Obviously I want to do my best for every pupil, but some of these suggestions are just so wildly unrealistic, it makes me despair.

Could you write a letter to each of his teachers? Same letter but outlining things you've mentioned here? An email perhaps?

For a ruler, there was no need for him to leave class - he could have borrowed one. However "detention" can often just mean: the teacher wants a chat.
For real detentions at least one of mine had a really good time in all of his. But in my experience children with ASD can get over anxious about them, my DC all had one quite quickly and learnt they weren't that bad.

However the key thing is if your son is being bullied, then you need to complain about that, and it needs to be clamped down on quickly. For my DC things like having your stuff taken an hidden was tolerated at Primary but not at all at secondary - Primary school had far more bullying as a result.

This all makes me glad I got mine out of mainstream while he was struggling in a lovely mainstream primary

I had 350 kids a week at my peak. Hellish, but I tried to get the lowdown on those with the most obvious needs. The class of 28, most of home had some sort of AEN was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. We had some great lessons and the TA who occasionally joined us thought I was either brave or foolish for what I got them to do, and enjoy, but separating 2 boys fighting over scissors, while pregnant, pukey and very sore was the final straw for me. Having my own high needs baby - DS1 - sealed the deal and I haven't been back. I really couldn't stretch myself that thin.

Verbena, it is a very long time since I have taught your son's age group (I am happily in my element teaching 16+) but I would have thought that in Y7 he would have a form teacher who he sees for registration at the start of the school day and immediately after lunch. This person is the one to get to know and to ask to make sure that he goes to the loo and has his stuff for the next few lessons.

Please don't think that teachers are only interested in delivering lessons and going home. It is far from the case. Over the years I have dealt with the fall out at school of children living with violent marital breakdowns, losing parents, feeling suicidal, having anxiety because they are perfectionists or because their parents have expectations they fear they can't meet... I have modified lesson plans to accommodate children with every SEN diagnosis I can think of at varying degrees of severity, as well as G&T children. Almost every teacher I know does a vast amount more than is contractually required of them for little thanks and with no thought to personal cost.

This thread has made me really

I'm a secondary teacher and I too teach in the region of 200 pupils per week - 120 of whom I see only once per week. That's a lot of individuals to try and get to know in the space of a term; assuming an average class size of 25 and a 50 minute lesson time that would be 2 minutes per week of undivided attention for each child - assuming I did no whole class teaching or discussion in the lesson. I'm not trying to excuse myself for not knowing every child's name at this point in the term; I'm just trying to spell out the massive difference between primary and secondary. I will read the profile for every student but often they are not specific enough - so I may see that your son is asd but that does not necessarily equate to needing to be allowed out of class to the toilet just after lunch!

I feel there have been a number of good suggestions - the toilet pass and marking toilet breaks on the timetable in particular - but please OP I beg you - don't take the attitude that most teachers don't care or won't try into meetings with the school. The vast majority of my colleagues will make every effort (which may include offering some of their free time - again this should not be an expectation as you hinted at earlier) but you need to be willing to help your DS too. That might be to encourage him to accept support for example - if a key worker has been identified and he doesn't want to engage then it's harsh to say the school aren't trying - perhaps a compromise would be for him to meet privately with the key worker to ask them to arrange toilet pass for example? Students are removed from class for all sorts of reasons not just asn by the way so it would not mean much to his peers.
That might not be the ideal solution but it might be a compromise that could work?

The school have missed out a bit. They should be giving him a strategy = ie you cannot leave class now, but I will discuss this with you after class, and whatever is missing, there will be no repercussions (if it was homework or something he needed there and then) If they just shut him down when he is desperately trying to explain why he needs to get something without giving him an alternative solution, no wonder he was disruptive. However, they DO need to remind him that there is another way to tackle the problem without being disruptive.

A similar situation might be if someone hits him, he has to have another strategy rather than hitting them back. It is "social story" stuff.

Just punishing him isn't going to work, as you rightly say. However, within the classroom, they do need to find a compromise so that he isn't disruptive/runs out of the lesson.

I would be tempted to not let him to go to school tomorrow, whilst you sort this out, if it is making him very upset. My son would take this very much to heart, and I would never hear the last of it, unless it was in some way talked through and a new strategy defined, and agreed with teacher.

It's good to hear that your dc are well supported in a big school moosemama. I think dd's school benefits from being very small, with only 80 in dd's year, and in a very small community, so teachers do tend to know every student - and very often all the rest of the family, too.

The problem in dd's school tends to be the occasional teacher who just doesn't 'get it' - they think that because dd is baseline very able, she 'ought to be able' to do X, Y or Z. Unfortunately that tends to lead to dd panicking and freezing, when if left and not pushed, she'd manage a perfectly acceptable outcome. On the whole I'd say it's the nervous / anxious / stressed teachers where this happens.

minifingerz I totally agree and I do understand how stretched teachers are, but it's the responsibility of the school to set up systems that make it easy for them to identify and support pupils that need it. They don't need to read every child's file. They need the most important, salient points about their SEN and what accommodations they need in class (be it an electronic flag or a paragraph on a sheet) and then, if they struggle with how best to handle or support a particular pupil, they can approach the SENCO for more information and advice.

We don't actually need them to be specialists in ASD, just to be given the right, concise information about each SEN pupil, in such a way that they can actually make use of it, without having to read reams of paperwork. An understanding of ASD is a fantastic bonus, but given the numbers of pupils and variety of disabilities/SEN, that is an unrealistic expectation. They don't need a comprehensive understanding of each disability, just enough information to support each individual child. In my experience ASD training courses for school staff are often far too generic anyway and set staff up to fail, by expecting every child they meet who has ASD to be the same, when quite obviously each child who has ASD will be just as much an individual as any other child.

I tend to agree with TheFlyingFauxPas unfortunately. Realistically, there are no proper provisions that can be made, the kids have to fit in.

What absolute, disablist, insensitive, rubbish. There are schools out there that are getting this right and pupils in those schools that thrive and achieve - so it can be done. What I have found, over and over again is that the reason it isn't done is nearly always down to money.

Also, what sort of person honestly thinks that a child who has ASD can just choose to 'fit in', ffs? Being Autistic is not a choice! As insanity said, The Equalities Act is there for a reason and applies to schools, just as it does in wider society. Unfortunately, our present society seems to be losing all sense of empathy, compassion and the desire to help and support those that need it. I have sat through so many parents evenings listening to various teachers essentially telling us he needs to 'stop being so autistic' or worse - 'he could be so much more and do so well, if he wasn't so autistic'. Where on earth do teachers get off saying things like that about about a child. It's heartbreaking and soul destroying for both the child and their parents.

Often it's simple/small things that make all the difference. A card for my ds to be able to leave the room when his anxiety levels are too high, he needs help or is uncomfortable - be that for physical (such as needing the toilet) or emotional reasons - was the single biggest thing that helped him. That and them finally dealing with his bullies properly.

A weekly meeting with a mentor can help with organisation which, contrary to some opinions on this thread, doesn't always get better with time, you can't just learn to be organised by osmosis. For some people, no matter how many times you show/teach/demonstrate/support they simply do not have the necessary Executive Function for 'being organised' to become a habit. My ds is now in Y9 and both his school and us have tried literally every method we can think of, including those that have worked for pupils with a similar SEN profile, but he just cannot

Joining this thread to add my misgivings about how secondary works out for children with ASD.

My experience so far this term with ds2, who has a diagnosis of ASD, no EHCP, and in mainstream secondary - not great.

His primary SENCO last year apparently visited his secondary to liaise with the SENCO there so that things could be put in place for him starting in September.

I heard nothing from SENCO at new school at all since registering ds.

Three weeks into term DS gets his first detention for arguing with his class tutor. Tutor phones DH sounding seriously pissed off that DS was difficult. DH says 'by way of explanation of some of his challenging behaviour, you are aware that he has autism aren't you?', to which the tutor responded 'Umm, no, I haven't looked at his file'.

So this is the tutor who he sees daily, who is responsible for communicating with the staff who are teaching DS. I'm now assuming none of the other people who teach him are aware of his diagnosis.

DS has been getting more and more anxious as the term has continued. After a fortnight he was sobbing every morning, begging not to go in, unable to eat his breakfast, complaining of stomach pain. Three boys started picking on him in his class, and one threatened to smash his face in with a rock. Another boy told him in PE that his breath stank (it doesn't - I ask him to breathe in my face to make sure he's brushed his teeth before he goes) and then got all his friends to join in laughing at him. So the bullying begins. He's never been picked on in this way before, and had plenty of friends in primary (which was a big fairly rough inner London primary).

Anyway, I contacted the HOL for year 7 and she asked us to come in and talk to her. He is now on the radar of the KS2 learning mentor, knows where to go if he's overwhelmed, and the bullies have been spoken to. He came back from school on Thursday and Friday much happier.

But as far as his needs go, I have no confidence that his teachers will really understand him or be able to properly accommodate him because they simply DON'T HAVE TIME to do all the research and preparation they would need to do to really put all the necessary things in place, and he has no allocated, paid for one to one support. There are 360 children in his year group this year, which is a bulge year, and I feel like his teachers are working at the limits of their capabilities. There are a good number of quite disruptive children at the school and it's also an environment where there are many children from academically ambitious families. This puts huge amounts of pressure on teachers and I just feel, being realistic, it's going to be very hard for them to give him the one to one support he needs.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm going to write a letter for each and every teacher on his timetable setting out the basic things they need to know about him and his diagnosis and what strategies have worked for him in the past to help him in the classroom. I'm going to hand deliver them to the school. I'm also asking for copies of everything which is in his file at schooland will deliver my own file of information (containing things like copies of his old IEP's, the EP report and the CAMHS report) to the SENCO to fill in any gaps. The school isn't a terrible one, but they are a bit crap with paperwork and organisation so I think it's useful for me to step up on this front as soon as possible.

If DS continues unhappy, and there are bullying issues that aren't resolved, or he's not making progress, I'll pull him out and home ed him.