Teaching is a caring profession from the start and one that allows you to grow and develop your own personal and professional skills along with your students.
Teaching kids with Additional Support Needs (ASN) can be more demanding but it also brings greater rewards.
So what extra skillsets and support is needed for this role in education?
Who better to ask than a parent? We met Shona Mackintosh whose son Michael has Attachment Disorder and Sensory Disorder.
She has some great advice not just for ASN teachers but for anyone thinking of a new career in education or considering a move into a specialism with one of the many roles currently on s1jobs.
What are the qualities you look for in an ASN teacher?
I want to see patience and a very calm manner, even when things are going wrong. It’s vital for a professional to be able to recognise the difference between a behaviour and a personality trait.
Children with ASN are even more vulnerable, because poor behaviour can be very easy to dismiss as part of their condition.
But it’s so vital for a teacher to be able to recognise slipping or new behaviours as perhaps a sign of an underlying problem.
How can a teacher prepare to teach a class with ASN?
It really takes an understanding of the child’s or children’s needs. Each child can have a very different disorder and needs – and so will require specific techniques to get the most out of the lessons.
For instance, Michael understands pressure and touch differently, because of the Sensory Disorder, so he can come across as rough when he’s playing. Something as simple as using BluTak rather than PlayDoh will give him the resistance he needs to play safely.
How would you like the teacher to treat you?
It’s very easy for parents to be dismissed as interfering by teachers, since they are professionals, and parents have, naturally, a vested interest in their child more than any other.
But, with ASN, the parent or guardian is the person who knows that child’s needs better than anyone else.
I don’t want to be in a position of telling teachers how to teach, but if they can take advice, and make it a partnership, Michael will get the best of it.
No child exists in a vacuum and, if I am in regular contact with the teacher, I can tell them how Michael has been over the weekend, for example, and they can fit in what’s been learned, and reinforce positive behaviours.
It’s trying to get a holistic approach, mostly.