N0tYetDeadFred wrote:
A little background: I work in the same school system that I graduated from, and I'm on the leadership/school improvement team at my school. As an exercise, we're having to write a "Who I Am" story about the experiences, individuals, (negative and positive) and beliefs that got us into the education field in the first place.
Problem: My experiences in school were total crap, until my senior year when I was able to enter college early. I plan to write about that as well as the teachers who tried to make my life miserable, because my belief that teachers are often the enemy made we want to change the school.
If you were in my position, would you reveal to your colleagues that you're autistic when presenting this paper, or not? What are your thoughts?
Thanks for your help,
Fred
I think you can write the story in all honesty, including your bad experiences with other kids and your former teachers. I think that it is very useful to let teachers know how important it is to show understanding and interest in their pupils and to be less judgmental when the behaviour ofa pupil is a bit different. Instead of punishing or ignoring certain pupils (good) teachers are obliged to find out why that boy or girl acts in a certain way.
I don´t know if you should reveal to your collegues that you are autistic. If your autism doesn´t affect your work it's none of their business. They probably don't tell you everything about their private lives so why should tell them intimate details? It's different if your autism prevents you from funcioning well at a certain point, but as long as that's not the case why tell them something?
25 Oct 2011, 11:51 am
