In an earlier post, I suggested that kids should not freak out. Now, I give the same advice to teachers (and I will give the same advice to parents, too).
So, you’re teaching. Good for you. Teachers are wonderful; the vast majority work very hard and care a lot about the kids they work with. But no one is perfect and ….
There’s this kid in your class who is driving you CRAAAAZY!
Maybe this kid has an IEP, maybe not. Maybe she has an official diagnosis, maybe not. If this kid was in your school last year, maybe you’ve heard about him, maybe not. But whatever, the kid is driving you nuts. He seems to care about school – at least sometime. She doesn’t seem like a “bad” kid but somehow she’s always getting in trouble. Maybe he says he has a learning disability, but he doesn’t seem bad at math or reading – or maybe she seems bad at math but that isn’t the problem that’s making you nuts – you know how to help kids with math. But something is just … off about the kid.
Quite possibly the child has nonverbal learning disorder. Quite possibly she is not picking up the nonverbal cues that you a re giving subconsciously (or maybe consciously) – things like body language, tone of voice, facial expression, volume and so on. Everyone gives out these cues all the time. And people expect those cue to be read properly; usually they are. But just like there are some kids who don’t learn to read the usual way (we call these kids dyslexic) or who don’t learn to do math the usual way (we can them dyscalculic) or who can’t sit still for as long as most kids (ADHD), there are some who don’t learn to read these cues – and they are said to have nonverbal learning disorder.
My site is full of articles about this disorder and these kids. Browse around. If you’ve got questions, I will try to answer. There are ways to reach these kids.
Don’t freak out!
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