Report card time in our house.
This is always looked at with a bit of a jaundiced eye by some autistic parents because not every student is equal and not every teacher looks at them appropriately.
Last year we had trouble with our son’s teacher. He was diagnosed autistic and had a full time TA as well as a well founded special education plan based on his abilities and needs that would bring him fairly close to inline with his peers. he was basically nonverbal and yet he was based as needs improvement on communication and while he was capable of reading all of the “sight words” for the next grade level up but she didn’t even bother testing him or consider it worth mentioning to his next years teacher at the end of year conference (fortunately the new teacher had sharp eyes and questioned her on it)
Now I have personal knowledge of how much damage a poor teacher can cause. In grade nine my English teacher chose to refuse to allow me to do a book report on Gene Stratton Porter’s “Freckles” a 19th Century novel calling it to infantile while instead approving Franklin W Dixon’s “Hardy Boys” as a more acceptable level. Now I can only assume he did not bother reading the book (or was unable too as it was written in “Old English”)
This is the same teacher who as my school’s guidance counsellor blocked my original intended course selection, damaging my high school transcript with low end courses (instead of the higher “advanced” courses i had selected) this ended up overturned the next year on almost all courses and the final course was redone as an extra course on my extra year to great success. However it took an extra year of high school to correct the damage he had done to my course selection and I was never able to recover as I lost my scholarship eligibility due to a 4 year high school career. So yes a poor teacher can seriously damage a student’s ability to achieve to the best of their potential.
This year our son’s teacher looked at his SEP as well as his progress and marked him accordingly, marking his progress as it reflected on his SEP and those courses and behaviours that were not covered were marked as applicable at the time.
We were initially concerned about this teacher when we first realized who his first year teacher would be, however we have been pleasantly shocked by the results that we were given and feel that based on where he started and what he has to deal with on a daily basis that he is being marked fairly.
These reports are kept in his permanent file and so they affect the judgement of every subsequent teacher and TA or support worker who has access to his file in preparation for dealing with him for the year. To have him appropriately marked and his progress accurately measured actually does matter because it gives the next years instructors and TA’s an accurate measure of his ability instead of falsely holding down his progress simply because the teacher may not be interested in understanding his progress or his abilities and limitations.
So to my son’s teacher thank you for making the effort to actually realize what his limitations are, what his progress is and what his SEP sets as his goals and using this information to accurately measure his progress for the school year so far.
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