“Rex Doesn’t Do Any Work!”

Although I taught a mainstream classroom, I had quite a few diagnosed and undiagnosed special ed students thrown into the mix.  One of my most memorable students was a third-grader I’ll call Rex, because he had an endearing love of dinosaurs.

My grade partners happened to have taught that class in first and second grade, so they went over my class list with me and gave me the scoop on my kids.  “Oh, you have Rex,” they said.  “He doesn’t do any work.”  They went on to explain that there was something very off about Rex.  ADHD, they wondered?

On the first day of school, my students said the same thing to me.  “Rex did two assignments last year.” “Rex doesn’t do any work!”  And I could see why!  He spent all of his time fussing over his pencils, which seemed to break the second he tried to write with them.  When I went over to talk to him, he was incredibly busy looking at the wall.  So I said “Rex, please look at me.”  He did his best, which meant looking in my general direction but off by a few inches.  Ah, we were in familiar territory now.

Oh, This Looks Familiar

Over the next few months I found that Rex’s behaviors resembled Aspergers symptoms, but since none of the other teachers understood autism he’d gone all this time without getting any help.  He had a tendency to invade others’ personal space during carpet time, so I gave everyone a clearly marked-off square to sit in.  When my back was turned, he would pull out a dinosaur or animal book he’d been hoarding, so I got a giant animal encyclopedia and let him read it in a quiet spot when he finished his work.  He had a tendency to cram everything into his desk and forget about it, so I had him clean his desk at regular intervals and sat him next to a little girl with an organizing compulsion.  I also made him aware of our classroom’s visual schedule, which I caught him looking at every chance he got.

Other teachers told me how amazed they were at his growth in my classroom.  Before he came to me, he was the kid who hid under the table and had daily meltdowns.  Finally he was able to work on grade level and interact with his peers, even if he was still a bit awkward.

I noticed that Rex had a speech issue that no one had paid much attention to, and begged the speech teacher to see him because it was unfairly bringing down his reading levels.  The tests prescribed by the district placed a strong emphasis on fluency, and Rex had a way of speaking that caused him to leave out or whisper certain words.

(After several months of getting stonewalled by the school, the parents finally got an outside diagnosis of Aspergers.)

Schools Should Work With Autism, Not Run From The Dollar Signs

We need more teachers with special needs, because sometimes it takes one to know one.  All of this, the way Rex and I just got each other, was because of who I am.  The school had special autism classes on the same floor, yet no one noticed Rex.  They were content to let him slip through the cracks as just another weird kid who didn’t get it.

This is also why running schools should never be about the bottom line.  I wasn’t allowed to talk to Rex’s parents (or anyone’s parents) about the possibility of testing or special needs, so we had to hide and speak in whispers.  It was cheaper for the school to say these children were just incapable.  What I did is something any parent would hope their child’s teacher would do for them, but should it have to involve putting my job on the line?  And would a parent want a teacher not to do it because job security comes first?  Think about it.