The Joy of Learning

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for ages – about everything I’ve learnt since joining my new school last autumn.  I’ve learnt so much and there’s so much that I’m still learning that there’s going to be more than enough for one blog. 

One of the best things about the career-pause I took and the unexpected decision I made to take my career in a different direction – into the world of special education – has been the opportunity to learn and broaden my horizons.  As a teacher, I’ve always been a learner too, but the intensity of my learning in this new role has been refreshing and exciting.  Pretty much from day one, it was surprising and shocking to me that I apparently knew so little about autism, Asperger’s, other conditions and what it takes to teach children with SEN well.  Suddenly, there were terms like mind-blindness, the triad of impairments, joint attention, PDA and shoebox task that it seemed ought to have some meaning to me but didn’t.

Like any mainstream teacher, every class I’ve ever taught has included children with special educational needs – often a diagnosis of autism or Asperger’s, sometimes a sense on our part that he or she could well be ‘on the spectrum’.  ‘We’re all teachers of SEN’ is a common mantra of mainstream teachers everywhere, and it’s true.  It’s only now though, after fifteen years of teaching, that I realise how inadequately I have fulfilled that role and how poor my training has been.  There comes a point in most of my days when I think of a child I have known in mainstream teaching and wish I knew then what I know now. 

When I think of two particular young people – one boy, one girl – it saddens me that what characterised them most was frustration, anxiety and anger.  More often than not, they were on edge and frequently their anxiety would grow and they would scream, shout, cry, run, pinch, scratch, hit, kick and throw things.  I dread now to think about the state of their emotional well-being.  We talked about the five-point scale and de-escalating anxiety but we didn’t really have the strategies or the resources to achieve it and too often, our responses were reactive and reflected our own frustration (and, for some people, annoyance) rather than being proactive and taking proper account of the antecedents.

The children I teach now get frustrated, anxious and angry too.  They also get excited and it’s sometimes hard to know the difference!  First and foremost, it’s okay for them to feel that way.  Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we don’t pre-empt whatever it was that made them worried, sometimes things happen beyond our control and sometimes those things happen before they even arrived at school.  Sometimes, we have no option but to pick up the pieces, even if it takes hours, and there’s nothing to be gained from getting frustrated or annoyed ourselves; indeed, it can make matters worse.  All good teachers have patience but teaching children with special needs takes the meaning of patience to a whole new level!  It can mean hours of sitting with a child, doing and saying nothing – just being there for her and usually feeling a little sad too.  It tests your own emotions.  It also takes a special sort of wisdom.  When do you intervene?  When do you say something?  What do you say?  Time it wrong and the child you thought was coming down from that angry, anxious high goes straight back up to it.  I’ve learnt this the hard way: thinking a young man was calm enough to discuss a problem only to find myself pinned against a wall and strangled to the point I couldn’t breathe.

‘Calm down!’  If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard a teacher, teaching assistant or headteacher say that to a child …  (If I had a pound for every time I’ve said it myself …)  Now I realise what nonsense it is to simply ask that of someone over whom a thick red mist has descended.  Even if he could hear me (and he probably can’t), he has no idea what I mean or what to do.  Now I say nothing.  If he needs to go outside and run around, that’s fine.  If he needs to kick a football against a wall, that’s fine.  If he needs to sit in a quiet place on his own, that’s fine.  If he needs to draw and colour, that’s fine.  I have a weighted blanket I can offer him, and a squidgy ball he can hold in his hands, and a peanut ball he can sit on or lie under, and thick putty with marbles in for him to manipulate, and a body-sock he can wrap around himself, and much more besides.  What a difference it would have made to that boy and girl in my mainstream school if I and my colleagues had had that understanding and had been able to give them whatever it was they needed to feel better.  They both had one-to-one support so I can’t think of a reason why, when they needed it, they couldn’t have been supported to run around outside, kick a ball, draw and colour or simply find somewhere to be still and quiet.  They didn’t have access to the sensory objects I’ve described, but they ought to have and buying them would be a sensible, worthwhile and – frankly – necessary investment by any school. 

That’s why these children don’t belong in mainstream schools, I’ve been told – special schools can provide for them better and they would do so much better there.  I’m not sure I agree.  They have the right to inclusion alongside their peers and often, they can benefit from the rich curriculum and the social opportunities mainstream schools offer that special schools can’t.  The issue isn’t always theirs; it’s the school’s and how much it is prepared to accept them for who they are, celebrate their personalities and adapt to the children rather than expect the children to adapt to the school. 

Training is an essential investment schools ought to make.  If we accept the notion of inclusion, it should be seen as the right of SEN children to have properly trained staff.  If we expect school staff to support SEN children and confront the challenges that come with that role, it should be seen as their right to be properly trained.  I have the utmost respect and admiration for teaching assistants, but considering the responsibility they often have for some of the most challenging children in our classrooms, their training is dreadfully inadequate.  So, as I have discovered now, is the training of many teachers, and I doubt my experience is any worse than most.  An hour’s INSET here and there throughout a school year will never suffice, not even if it is delivered by the most dedicated and experienced of SENDCOs, and – like telling an enraged autistic child to calm down – endlessly demanding that teachers differentiate is pointless if they don’t really understand the nature of the children they are teaching.

The biggest issue for SEN children in some mainstream schools is the culture of those schools.  I don’t doubt that there are excellent schools with well-trained headteachers and Governors who are properly committed to inclusion and to providing for the needs of their SEN children.  I know there are also headteachers whose understanding is woeful and who lead a culture where SEN children are somehow expected to adapt to everyone else in order to fit in because it’s apparently too hard for the school to adapt to them.

For the best training, everyone working with SEN children should spend a decent amount of time in a school like mine, and we should start with the headteachers.