SPED teacher-need advice on "being wrong"
I'm hoping that I am posting this in the right place. I am an elementary SPED teacher and I have a HF Autistic student who is brilliant and wonderful, but has great difficulty seeing and accepting other perspectives. Understanding that this is often a characteristic of ASD we work consistently on social skills and role play to aid with this, but what we have the most trouble understanding is the idea of "being wrong". There have been numerous times when the teacher, who is very accommodating, has been unable to help the student understand that they are incorrect about a certain academic topic. The student will become entrenched and argues with the teacher (teacher does not argue back, tries to explain using various methods-visual etc), when it is clear to everyone else in the room that the student is incorrect. We have discussions about perspectives, that its ok to be wrong and provided alternative ways to communicate that the student disagrees, but the situation continues to arrise. We would like for this student to be able to "trust" his teachers to know the right answer, because it is beginning to effect his ability to receive instruction and learn. We have good communication with parents and teachers and everyone is very accommodating, positive and loving towards this student. I hope that this doesn't sound insensitive, but sometimes it is difficult to understand what behaviors are a result of the ASD and what could also be normal elementary age misbehaviors (especially since this behavior seems to have increased significantly since working with the student last year). I wanted to ask for suggestions from this community as to how to more effectively help the student to grow in this area.
I remember feeling like I couldn't be wrong about anything in school, since being wrong, in my mind, equaled being dumb. And for this boy, it seems, as long as you keep arguing the point you're not officially 'wrong'. When you know you're smarter than your peers (or at least think you are), it becomes part of your identity that you're 'smart', so you can NOT, under any circumstances, ever not know the answer to anything, even if nobody would ever think or say less about it if you did. I suppose the answer is never actually SAYING "No, that's wrong" but making it seem like it was the answer of a smart boy and working your way around to the right one, like, "That wasn't what I had in mind, but it's a very intuitive answer and I can see why it logically seems that way, but the book says that...." Yeah, it's a lot of trouble to go to to assure the ego of one know-it-all, but hopefully he'll grow out of it in time.
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conundrum
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I felt like this too. Being "smart" was all that I had, so getting stuff wrong = a major catastrophe for me. This became a bit of a problem when I started having trouble with math--I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. This may be what this boy is dealing with also, but doesn't want to/can't voice it.
Perhaps it would help to bring this up with his teachers and parents. No one is ever right all of the time, and as he progresses in school he is going to face that more and more frequently, so it should be dealt with sooner rather than later.
Hope that helps.
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He acts without unnecessary speech,
so that the people say,
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I'd say that he's arguing because he's still convinced that he's right, or he thinks he's not being listened to, or that he thinks the teacher isn't understanding his point. I do the same thing.
The teacher might deal with it by saying something like "I hear what you're saying, but..." and present the correction as new information that he may have been unaware of.
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Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
Deceptive cadence: V- ANYTHING BUT I ! !! !
Beethoven cadence: V-I-V-I-V-V-V-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I! I! I! I I I
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