ASD in mainstream secondary

[Verbena37]

Hi,
DS yr 7 diagnosed HFASD last winter and has started at secondary two weeks ago.
On a positive note, I think he prefers having lots of new subjects to learn but from a pastoral side of things, I'm just not sure what to expect, and at what level, from staff.

I already met with the SENCo last term so they know his issues and needs yet since he started, and I realise it's only early days, I've been having to email school to point out issues that I would think staff would be more thoughtful about. Stuff like organising his time and not being able to remember noting down homework and not remembering to go to the loo before lessons start etc.

To the staff, I'm pretty sure they think me overprotective but for DS, who has had late night meltdowns for the past two weeks, it's not trivial but things that would enable him to feel less anxious.

Am I hoping for too much? I almost feel apologetic that I have to raise things with them.

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.

longlost reading your post has actually made me realise just the sheer amount of lunacy that teachers get from govt.
Bring back the days when the students didn't need to know the objectives.....and strangely enough, we all still got 8 fab GCSEs, 3 high grade A levels and 1st or 2:1 degrees.
How we managed it without learning objectives I will never know !!

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

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 do also think that the stance that some schools take of not setting the children until half term, is bananas and the main contribution, certainly at DS' school, to poor behaviour.

With totally mixed sets for English, science and maths, those children who were previosly comfortable with their learning ability, are now struggling to keep up and those who were in high sets, are now bored with the teacher having to tackle behaviour issues throughout classes.

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.

willitbe that's exactly how it was with the ruler. I've screen shot what you wrote there because it might come in useful in explaining what it's like for someone to take his possessions. I'm currently looking out onto our patio at the piles of sticks sat there which belong to DS. He will know if anybody moves them or takes them (although dh and me keep trying to reduced the piles) and sees them almost as friends.

The same goes for the piles of soft toys he collects in his room. They're mostly hidden away in his cupboard but he sees them as people and whilst he knows they went really, he would be devastated if I were to throw them away. He saves nuts and bolts, stickers and hair bobbles he finds on the playground....all sorts of rubbish that I have to then discreetly get rid of so you're right.....the ruler was totally a massive deal. Plus, it was actually my school ruler and he loved the fact I had given it to him. Others might laugh but to a child with ASD, the research shows how over possessive they can be compare to NT children.

On a positive note, the keyworker has emailed me this morning and the other child is being dealt with so that's one less worry.

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.

I don't think willitbe was trying to be anything other than helpful. And whilst you say "if you've net one child with ASD....." etc, she actually nailed it sport on for my ASD child about possession.

I found out today that the detention was actually the little chat yesterday after class. I had misunderstood and thought it was a whole breaktime one today.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have detentions and certainly not giving ASD as the reason for not having them.....just saying that I didn't agree with a detention when he had done nothing wrong.

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.

He is so high functioning, he wouldn't get funded for a 1:1 TA and certainly isn't needing to go to a specialist ASD school.

If we could afford, we may have considered private school years ago but we can't so that isn't an option. Smaller classes in his original village primary school did really help though....although then, he hadn't been diagnosed and we didn't even think about him having ASD.

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.

I didn't think that a) it might be taken out of his bag that he carries with him all day long and b) that it was going to be precious. I did say to him, oh it's only a ruler (like I do for lots of his stuff in order to try and ddestress him) but he was obviously more attached to it than I thought..

You're totally right moosemama.
I think earlier on in the thread I was sounding a bit anti-teacher and to be fair I'm not at all.

It's just that the teacher is the only face/email you get to have contact with. It is the system that has changed so much that the personal touch has gone because there obviously just isn't time to do anything but teach totally to plan.

Sadly, I don't often hear anymore my kids tell me about a time in their school day when the teachers have told them a funny story or had a discussion about anything other than what they're being taught.

When I was at school, if we had been good all week, our cool geography teacher would give us a quiz or do a slide show of his travel photos. These extras had nothing to do with what we had been learning.....they were a way of going off plan and getting to know us as people. We really respected them and had fun. Sadly, it doesn't seem like there is time to do anything other than the lesson plan nowadays and too much come back for teachers if they don't follow it to the T.

Verbena ds2 often comes home with funny stories/anecdotes some of his teachers have told him and he knows things like which teachers have the same (rather obscure) taste in music as him. They often recommend bands to each other. Unsurprisingly, those are the subjects he does the best in.

I think the difference is that his school is a very well funded academy that has invested a lot of money in the school systems and is very good at supporting staff. There's a very low staff turnover, which speaks volumes. They have very high expectations of their pupils have very strict rules and get great results, but ultimately their success is down to making sure staff are properly supported and enabled to actually get on and do the job they're there to do.

Dd wouldn't get a detention for anything,she doesn't even get a strike (note in planner)because they recognise just how stressful school is for her. The school do have a list of "alternative consequences" for children who won't manage detentions etc alongside, from what I remember one of them is writing out the expectations at home which dd thinks is probably worse than a detention.
Dd's SENCo emails her lesson teachers at the beginning of the year regarding dd's needs which means at least they are aware of the basics and her TA's would intervene if necessary but for me it is definitely preferable that her teachers are told beforehand. Not sure whether SENCo does it for all students though or more because HT oversees dd's support and so she is on her best behaviour.

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)

Now would that be the one with the highest attainment on entry of any comprehensive in the country, and one of the lowest numbers of SEND??? The one where virtually every student speaks english already, before arriving?

It is also used at the secondary my best friend teaches at in another county, so clearly not impossible to manage at all

No of course it is not impossible to manage, it is like all these fucking ridiculous systems, you manage it because you have to, at great detriment to teaching, pupil progress, teacher welfare etc etc etc

Verbena ds2 often comes home with funny stories/anecdotes some of his teachers have told him and he knows things like which teachers have the same (rather obscure) taste in music as him. They often recommend bands to each other. Unsurprisingly, those are the subjects he does the best in.

very nice, but banned, and automatically disciplinary behaviour in many schools, for teachers to have such conversations with students.

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

firstly, would like to point out that I am no longer a teacher, I left when my working hours had been around 90+ per week in term time, and I didn't have time to eat a meal with my childen from one month to the next. The volume of paperwork I was carrying around with me, running from lesson to lesson was beyond what a nurse is allowed to lift, and

I am still in and out of lessons in a variety of schools, although I don't want to say in what capacity.

As to how I would remember which children have which disability and the main points for keeping each one happy, well it all comes down to planning properly, planning a lesson for a class, and then looking through the SEND information for that class and rewriting parts of the lesson for each SEN in the class and naming their worksheets, etc ( because you cannot have confidential information out in the lesson)

This takes hours, it takes far longer to plan a lesson than to teach it. Of course the idea of having the time to do it properly is fantasy, but there are things that help.

Small numbers of classes. This is the main one. If a child has 5 English lessons in one week, why not have them all with the same teacher? I was in a school last week where in one subject not one single year 7 class had the same teacher throughout their time table, and teachers had 20+ classes on their register, some of which they saw once a fortnight. No one is ever going to get to know anyone.

Keeping the same teacher year on year, obviously this doesn't happen even where schools want it to, because staff turn over is incredibly high. Most secondary departments I visit rely on long term supply. Good, often brilliant teachers, who won't take permanent roles, because they are "incompatible with family life" and only do supply so they can walk out as and when the job becomes unreasonable.

Fewer teaching hours. if a teacher has 23 hours a week teaching, for example, then that is going to be say 23 hours a week planning, and 23 hours a week assessing....we are up to 69 hours a week then and there, without any of the other tasks, and please be clear, teaching/planning/assessing is no longer the MAIN JOB of teachers. It is now target setting, recording ( the detail required to record is unbelievable) statistical analysis, "mapping" whatever onto the scheme of work, (British values, ecm, this isn't planning, this is just forcing a whole lot of bollox into a format it won't fit into, it is a job which can take the whole summer holidays, easily) meetings, strategies, performance management targets, evidence, I could go on.

Get rid of the crap, and cut teaching hours per teacher....( it isn't going to happen, but it should)

discipline in schools
£85 billion per year is spent on state schools. More than half of that is wasted because children sitting in class rooms refuse to work. What is the point in this system? It is just properly insane, it wouldn't be allowed if the waste was actually tangible, for example if £85 billion per year was spent on building houses every year, then half of them immediately knocked down again.

proper discipline, real sanctions that can be upheld, forcing parents to be held responsible for their children's amount of work.... just think if all that £85 billion was actually used, rather than just being thrown down the toilet.

Every single day I see pupils who are not being given the opportunity to learn because of the behaviour of other classmates, slow working and too much chat is all it takes,

Nope. Not highest in the country, just in our county.

They used to have very low levels of SEND. In fact they flatly refused to take my elder ds, stating educating him would be 'detrimental to the education of other pupils' (the only legal reason, other than 'unable to meet need' that they can use to refuse statemented pupils). Mind you, they refused every single statemented pupil that year for the same reason, regardless of what their SEND was. Some people fought them all the way, others like me chose not to put their dc in a school that clearly didn't want them and therefore wouldn't support them. As a result of those that fought the school had their backsides legally kicked and have done a total turnaround, which has turned out to be really successful.

I am not disputing that teachers in many schools will find it difficult to manage or that you find you can only manage such a system at your school to the detriment of yourself, pupils and progress. I have friends who don't find working with that particular system problematic, which is why I think, very often, it's down to school funding and things like electronic infrastructure.

Why on earth would it be banned to have class discussions about the pupils' interests outside of school. He's not sneaking off for 1:1 chats with these teachers, it's part of wider class discussion, which is how the teachers get to know their pupils a bit better. If that is banned and a matter for disciplinary action, then I will concede that things are worse than I thought.

I am now bowing out and hiding this thread, as I don't think there is any middle ground here, especially if you think it's 'fucking ridiculous' for schools to implement systems that help support their more vulnerable pupils. (I do recognise that you deal with a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy/systems, I just don't agree that in this particular case it is actually unnecessary.) Far easier to just shove our dcs out of mainstream education than have to actually consider how to ensure their needs are properly met. Just because the system your school in place is not fit for purpose, doesn't mean other schools can't/haven't come up with alternatives that do.

another thing to keep in mind is the conflicting needs of many students. There was a "ruler" incident last week, as it happens, but the class contains several students who can't stand having their rulers touched ( ASD) and two who cannot resist touching them or control the urge to do so ( tourettes). Another class last week contained several students who couldn't stand sudden loud noises ( ASD) and a student who didn't even know he was making them ( deaf) as well as a teacher having to tackle one student to the ground ( ADHD) because he was being too boisterous around a child with brittle bones. ( and yes, the ADHD mum was up in arms, flouncing around the school, demanding sackings, training all staff on management of ADHD, claiming her child was assaulted, etc, of course we can't tell her about the brittle bones, that is a breach of confidentiality, )

Longlost exactly the same sort of things happens in dd's school and it happened in Primary too. I think it's a way of letting the children know their teachers are human. It has happened for years and years, I knew some of my teachers' preferences, my older children knew some of their teachers' preferences and dd knows some of her teachers' preferences, not least one of them has a dog with the same odd name as dd's dog.

'fucking ridiculous' for schools to implement systems that help support their more vulnerable pupils sorry, but it is fucking ridiculous, and it prevents education, which is what we are supposed to be there for

Longlost exactly the same sort of things happens in dd's school and it happened in Primary too

I'm not saying I disagree with it, I don't . I'm jut saying in the current climate it is classed as "arena of unsafe practice" (ie grooming) and is often banned. It is the climate that is wrong, not the teachers. I'm just telling you what the reality is. A teacher could be disciplined for this, and I have known it.

I'm joining Moose too as it seems some people are on a mission to point out how unreasonable parents are to want their children's needs met and what saits teachers are for even having them in the class.
Verbena come on over to SN Chat it's far more welcoming and there are nowhere near as may loons post on there either