problems with teachers after diagnosis?

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Hello!
This is my first topic (not counting the one in the getting-to-know-each-other section).
I have a question to the Aspies who have been diagnozed in a young age and are at school or have fresh memories from that period. Did the diagnosis help you much? I mean, were the teachers more lenient and understanding when they knew what the source of your problems is? Or were there still problems in spite of the document? Did some of them who used to bully you still do that, or perhaps treated the diagnosis as a mere excuse for your alleged misbehaviour and laziness? I would love to hear your stories, especially those where the teachers were not as tolerant as you had expected.

I would like to hear some stories as well. My third-period teacher is the biggest jerk. He is constantly putting me down and says that I won't ever get a job because I don't make eye-contact and I don't like to work with others. It's gotten to the point that others in the class make fun of me as well. He doesn't do anything about it. I would hope that telling him would help him understand but who knows, it could make it worse and just give him something else to annoy me for...

Last edited by DogGirlSaydee on 16 Mar 2012, 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

so your school does not know about your diagnosis?

I had problems with teachers after I was diagnose.

My I.E.P. plan stated that I'm allowed to wear hoodies with the hood up at all times. But the teacher refuse to believe me when I told her. She thought I was lying to her, and I was put in the timeout room and I started having a meltdown.

I later found out that she never read my I.E.P. plan.

i got thrown out of a shop by security for having a hood up. idiots.

I agree, some places have stupid rules reguarding hoodies. The funny thing is that these rules don't make places any safer. They are just a waste of time.

This so-called teacher is being a bully. By negative example, he is communicating to other students that it's okay to make fun of you.

And factually, he's as wrong as he can be. Take the example of a blind person who has developed skills of good hearing. It's about playing to strength and being matter-of-fact about deficiencies. And same for us on the Aspergers-Autism Spectrum. It's all about playing to strength and being matter-of-fact about deficiencies. It's about experimenting with different ways of engaging the world and different ways of engaging with other people, and getting a healthy interchange going between theory and practice. This instead of mindlessly conforming as we are sometimes advised to do.

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As far as what you can do about this situation, you might want to take a series of medium steps and be pretty strategic about it, almost as if you were an NFL head coach. For example in the book You Can Negotiate Anything by Herb Cohen and from other sources, often it precisely is good negotiation to appoint someone else to negotiate on your behalf. I mean, presidents do this. So, consider asking your parents to help out, with the proviso if they tend to be good at these kinds of things. Or, maybe someone at the school can be your advocate. And when the case is presented to a school official, consider the strategic understatement, "Beginning to be a problem . . . " This is of course way untrue, it is a substantial problem, and it has been a problem for some time. Rather, you are giving the school official a chance to chance up and in fact to jump in and argue on your behalf.

Good luck however you choose to play the hand.

To whom are you speaking to?

He is a bully... But he is the coach of the wrestling, basketball and a football coach so I have no stance. They would take his side.

For me it was 95% positive I’m not hard to get along with and never found my self feeling bullied (by teachers that is) our school had a uniform which was probably a good thing as I never had to think about what to wear till I was 20ish at tafe I found it good because teachers understood me more and partucilery in the last 2 years understood that I would not always get things in on time they knew crashes and melt downs would put me out sometimes so yeah for me a found it to be really good it also meant the school could get some funding to give me an aide at times to help with note taken and to go behind my back and assure teachers I was doing my best the only problem was with some less then discrete teachers who made it little harder to fit in but this was rare.

Not necessarily. With the understated approach, they might anticipate further complaints and move to head this off. They might volunteer and ask your parent if you'd like to change classes.

So that's the potential upside. That you might get the months of April and May in a more positive classroom.

Of course, they're likely to say "teaching style" or something like that. And that's fine, let them have their official fiction.

Now, there is risk. Of course, there is. You know that, I know that. This sorry individual may escalate. In which case, you'd have to record every critical comment he says and every critical comment said by a student to you that he doesn't respond to when he has an opportunity to. And a parent would have to present this to a school official once or twice a week. That's the potential downside. But I really think an opening move of "Beginning to be a problem . . . " might sidestep all of this. That might be your percentage play.

There is another potential problem. The new teacher you get might believe the negative reports and try and squelch you down or be harsh. In which case, you might say something like: 'Please judge me by what you see and not what a bunch of other people say.' Or have an advocate say something like this.

An advocate changes the dynamic in positive ways. The teacher and school official are likely to be on better behavior and that's likely to carry. They know they're being watched.

I don't see why you can't wear a hoodie and hood up when you need to. That teacher also had a lot of nerve not to read your I.E.P. plan. It looks as though she just doesn't care.

That was to you, because when you wrote that your teacher "does not know anything about it", I understood that he might not know about your diagnosis. (BTW, is such a situation possible? Student's parents bring the paper, the dx., to school and particular teachers do not even know it is there?) But now from the context it seems that he does not know that your classmates make fun of you. Am I thinking correctly now?