Something that does concern me about teaching is the way that "special needs" children are classified. I'm not sure if this kind of thing is a rule, or whether it's just something that happens in my school, so perhaps if you have any different experiences, you could let me know here.
Pupils with special needs have usually been classified as such from their primary school, or when they enter secondary schools and take tests at the beginning of Year 7. Special needs (SN or SEN) pupils broadly fall into two categories - those with behavioural difficulties, and those with learning difficulties. I'm going to concentrate on the latter category here.
Learning difficulties can be specific, such as dyslexia, or general, where a child struggles
with basic literacy, for example. What annoys me is the assumption by many staff that because a
pupil has poor literacy skills, they are not capable of following a full curriculum. Many
subjects are set according to exam results, but special needs kids are in a set of their own.
Fair enough, you might think, but our schemes of work dictate that we should be delivering a
very basic scheme to the SEN classes, assuming that because they can't write very well, then
they won't be able to grasp anything else that is thrown at them.
Time and time again I have found that the SEN classes I teach are lively, inquisitive and
enthusiastic kids. They are being marked down because of their inability to construct
grammatically correct sentences, but their subject knowledge can be absolutely amazing. In
fact, it can outstrip the knowledge and understanding of lower and middle sets. Should a
pupil be denied access to develop a full range of skills because they can't write without an assistant
to help them?
This particularly becomes an issue for me, as I seem to have more than my fair share of lower to middle sets. With lower sets, the pupils are generally there because either their behaviour is so bad that they never bother trying to achieve good marks, or they do try hard but their brain power is limited. Of course, I realise that bad behaviour often arises when a pupil is disaffected because they don't understand what's going on, but the wily ones are those with a spark of intelligence, because they work out the ways to really wind up their teachers.
I recently had a lesson with a bottom set of kids, whose brains move at snail pace. Trying to
encourage them to draw conclusions about anything, or remember a few key facts from lesson to lesson,
is excruciating. You can see the pain in their scrunched up faces, and you start to wish that there
was an easy access starter motor for their brains.
Their thought processes are all over the place. They can't concentrate. Whilst immersed in a lesson, a hand might suddenly wave in the air. I rush over, thinking they may need help with phrasing an answer, or understanding the question. "Did you hear about that Chinese thing?" is the question I'm asked. "Chinese thing..." I reply, my brain flipping through its index cards of what we've just covered, what we have ever done, or anything I might have said that was misunderstood. "Chinese thing...?"
"No, not Chinese, curry," is the much deliberated reply. My index cards come to an abrupt halt.
"Oh, you mean about the food colourings!" I blurt out, relieved I can stop this conversation right now. I'd been listening to the radio on the way to work, where there was a news item about some dish served in Indian restaurants which was found to contain excessive amounts of food dye. "Yeah, I did," I reply with earnest. "Terrible isn't it. Now let's concentrate on question two...". Try as I might, I can't find any connection between the lesson and this sudden concern with a topical current affair.
I think I might give this symptom a name like "Random Brainwave Bullshit", because there just aren't
enough TLA (Three Letter Acronyms) in the world already, are there?! But my point is, if I put
the kids from the SEN class head to head in a panel quiz with a lower set group, the SEN class
would whip their butts. And yet which group gets the constant wordsearches
(grrr) and colouring in
projects? You guessed it, that's a SEN speciality. As for the special needs kids with behaviour
"issues"... well, I'm leaving that for another day when my blood is not prone to bubbling over...!
added 12/4/04
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