academics and life skills and educators attitude

[Guest guest]

-- I hear this all the time and it is extremely frustrating. I think

society and especially educators totally underestimate our children

and dont even try to challenge them and teach them. All they care is

for them to sit quietly and color or cut all day long and not disrupt

the class. This attitude sickens me. When my son was 3-4 he had some

behaviour issues with running away from class, jumping on tables etc

and I persisted teaching him alphabets numbers etc and today he is 7

year old and can read write and do math at his grade level and

behaviours have gone down and he is able to sit in a regular class

with some support and prompts since he knows what is going on and

actually participate in the class. If I had not taught him anything

and left that for the school, he would still be jumping on tables. I

understand that life skills are important. But it should be done

together with academics. My son has so much more to talk about since

he knows about things.

So if your son doesnt ride a bus, he might be really good at math an

become a professor and have someone drive the car for him. Big deal.

I amsorry this issue really agitates me.

Bharathi

Bharathi

- In Texas-Autism-Advocacy , " Jeff & a Sell "

<jzsell@h...> wrote:

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> >>I had a teacher say to me one time, 'It doesn't do any

> good to teach your child math if he doesn't know how

> to ride a bus.' What???????????<<

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> This reminds me of a statement that Ben's former teacher's

supervisor made to me a couple of years ago. I was talking to her

about including more academics in Ben's program and she said, " First,

let's get him completely toilet trained and then discuss academics. "

If I could have choked her over the phone I would have. I said, " Why

not BOTH?? " I don't understand why some people within our schools

don't see motor deficits and cognition as separate entities! I agree

with you that they act as if you should work on one at the exclusion

of the other. They need to understand that it just takes some

creativity as to how to reach each particular child, just as Soma

does with her technique. I used to teach and I never saw these

false assumptions regarding cognition made with kids who have

Cerebral Palsy--why are these assumptions made regarding our kids who

also have alot of motor skills issues? ie. " Until ny is able to

tie his shoes, go to the bathroom independently, hand me something

that I ask for--then we will discuss academics. " There is a good

ending to my story, however...that particular supervisor that I

mentioned left our district and Ben's present teacher is fabulous--

she actually works on academics AND motor skills/life skills daily!

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