School reports - how were yours?

Thank goodness some of that wording would not be acceptable now and it shouldn’t have been then. If a pupil has difficulties in some areas but is trying then a teacher should never be so critical. Sadly that’s often how they were back then.

If only all your classes were full of students willing to learn like you and your old school had teachers like the one teacher who believed in you. What a much better place it would have been. Teachers should never allow the fact they don’t understand a student to effect how much success they allow that student to achieve, that’s terrible to prevent a student from achieving their potential.

Thanks to my little mask which I had practically glued to my face (hypothetically speaking) I actually did extremely well at school. I mixed with some of the girls, studied hard and got mostly good grades and teachers were pleased except for my PE teacher who disliked me straight away. It led to (issues) in my final years at school depression and anxiety crept in, almost overnight but I still managed to finish schooling before it really got to me. So my school years and results were untarnished and to the untrained eye, more less, perfect.

This was all accidental really, as due to a long term condition I discovered later in life, I found myself running a helpline from home,intending to just answer routine calls and send out information packs.  In fact I got people calling me in floods of tears and feeling inadequate and unqualified to deal with this situation.  So I found this entry level interpersonal skills course at my local college, just around the corner and, given that it was just an evening a week for just a few weeks, I thought that I'd give it a go.  I also told myself that I could just leave at any time if I wanted to as it was, at that time, heavily subsidised and didn't cost much at all.  

Then,from the very start, I realised that this was much more like psychology, in which I was already enormously interested, and with the bonus of being experiential and within a very safe environment, which I'd needed all along!  I also got really positive feedback, not just about my work (perfectionist as usual!) but about the personal qualities I was bringing to the skills practice.  And this felt weird but very welcome as I was failing as an accountant at the time and all the "feedback" (for which read soul-destroying criticism) I was getting there was very different.  

So there I was, actively learning about empathy, genuineness and unconditional positive regard, not just through some fun written activities (which included some fairly arty stuff) but also through class interactions on a 1:1, small group and whole group basis, with the group agreeing on their own rules for safe interactions in advance and a "no explanation needed" option to refrain from any particular task.  It seemed to combine the best primary school activities with psychological insights and positive personal guidance.  Where had this been all my life?  

So, although I wouldn't suggest that autistic people specifically need social skills training, I do believe that this is something that is lacking in general education for everyone and, if a similar course can be found that isn't too much of an initial committment, it might be worth giving it a go.  I honestly only started by tentatively dipping my toe in, then I felt so sad when the course was ending that I decided, along with a group of others from the Level 1, to go straight to the Level 2.  And I didn't anticipate doing that at all.           

Shardovan said:

Maths teachers and short tempers seem to go together in my mind.

Agreed! Or your maths teacher went to my school lol.

Maths teachers always seem to be in a bad mood and take it out on the rest of the class. I remember literally everyone in my class hated maths because we all had Mr Daniels and he was bad tempered and well known to make people stand on the spot and fail to answer his maths questions. He did that to me at least four times.

Blimey!  I wonder what he told the parents!

Those sounds really good!  Clay is heavy, yes, but there are some great yarns available.  

I have some very fond memories of going with my mother into wool shops and remnant houses, plus with both parents and my sister to Durham covered in market to look at all the craft materials.  

These add a real richness to life, I think, plus they are a sensory delight.  :)

I threw all mine out when I moved out of home at 19. I have one ‘tutor review’ that was written when I was 15. I don’t seem to be able to upload it, or maybe I’m doing it wrong….

I do in a way. One of them was a giant soft sculpture cactus I sewed. A couple of years ago I crocheted some cacti, so not very different! Some of my crochet projects are fun and eccentric. The clay I do miss, but it would be hard on my arthritic hands now. But yarn does give me a good outlet. I am thinking of crocheting a unicorn hat or hood, that would be fun!

I quite like the unmade bed.  But maybe you could do some small scale eccentric sculptures?  Of course, they'd have the potential to develop into full scale projects later on, space permitting, but it seems a shame for those ideas to be lost.  Maybe there is something in the process of planning and designing that can feed your soul?  There must surely be an outlet for you.  Even if it's in a child-like way.  And yes, I do need to make the child within feel happier, that's true.  

I never had a grumpy maths teacher, and one was a teacher we liked. My A level maths teacher was hopeless though, poor chap. I felt sorry for him but he was not good at teaching at all, especially maths. He only taught maths for that one year, but sadly it was enough to ruin maths for me and I dropped that subject.

I still had 3 sciences, but annoyingly he was my physics teacher too! If I'd had a better maths teacher I wonder if I'd have actually liked it, it's only logic after all. Now I have a bit of a mental block with maths and numbers, though I don't know if I used to have number dyslexia back then or not. But then it tends to be the long strings of numbers which I struggle with, like bank numbers and mobile phone numbers - I could cope when they were mostly 6 digits with the first two being the same!

It's a wonder I passed physics A level using GCSE level maths. Part of it was my fault in a way, in that we had to do algebraic long division and it was so long since we had done long division at all that I had forgotten how to do it, since that was junior school and in 5 years of senior school we used calculators! But I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn't do this thing we had done in junior school that I just disengaged and stared out the window, doodled and wrote my notes as small as possible. Back then my eyes were sharp! I could squeeze 3 lines of tiny writing to a line of wide spaced and two to narrow spaced!

Sorry (a little bit) for the digression.

Maths, the only subject I truly enjoyed in school.  Eventually I understood it better than the teachers, who often were awful.  A classic case of 'if you can you do, if you can't you teach'.

It was only at university that I met maths teachers who were my equals.

Sounds stressful, and I can relate. Maths was the one subject where I was on the 'keep an eye on these ones' table right at the front. It used to stress me out so much and yet the strangest thing was that that almost created an emeregency cut-out in me where the adrenaline would burn out mid-class and I'd start to fall asleep. Then she'd loudly rap the table and yell 'WAKE UP!' I honestly couldn't help it, and would be fighting to stay awake after a minute or two after that even. I remember at the every end of school she said some minor pleasantry to me in the corridor and it was nice to see her more human side. At least I could tell with her that she didn't want to fail even the most hopeless cases. Whereas my 1st year (or Year 8 as they say in the rest of the British Isles) maths teacher just plainly couldn't stand me. I think I was annoyingly timid as well as numerically challenged and that combination, plus my gormless pre-orthodontist face, was - I had the distinct impression - like nails down a blackboard to her. 

Regarding PE - I detested it too, and it didn't escape my dad's attention that there were times when I'd ask him to write a note to excuse me because I had 'twisted my ankle'... and yet didn't appear to be in any obvious pain.  It was quite a coincidence that my friends often had reasons as to why they needed to be excused from participating in PE too. 

Shardovan said:

Maths teachers and short tempers seem to go together in my mind

I would have to agree. For the final 3 years of secondary school, I had an absolute dragon of a Maths teacher, who caused me many a sleepless night. She had a daughter at the school in the same year as me... A lovely girl, but when I was in her company, I felt I had to refrain from letting off steam about her mum to my inner circle of friends.

Maths teachers and short tempers seem to go together in my mind. Or maybe those are the only ones I ever experienced or heard about and most are lovely. 

I had a PE teacher, who was also a semi-professional rugby player, who broke a lad's arm, a schoolkid, in a rugby game at school.

Maths and foreign languages are always taught in a way that only appeals to people who find them interesting in themselves. Maths seemed to me to be just a series of things, you learned how to do the 'thing' (simultaneous equations, integration etc.) then spent a few weeks doing problems - just the 'thing' over and over again with minor variations. It bored me rigid. It would have made more sense to me if the practical reason for the use of the 'thing' - navigation at sea, how one thing changes as another thing changes, with examples - was explained beforehand.

sn said:

It was too noisy, chaotic, changeable and the increased social and academic demands caused so much additional confusion, isolation and meltdowns at home.

Yes, our secondary schools were like that too.  Primary schools were definitely better with no switching between classes and more stability with just one teacher.  Not perfect at all, but easier to cope with.  

Ah, the Grimleys!  Funny but this bit is too real and actually not too over the top for a 70s PE teacher.