Short version: you seem to be well on top of any problems and fully aware that defining something as a problem is often what makes it a problem in the firsts place. If I was to offer any advice (criticism, encouragement, pick you poison if you know what I mean) it would be this, from personal experience: don't be too hard on yourself. Gn…
Short version: you seem to be well on top of any problems and fully aware that defining something as a problem is often what makes it a problem in the firsts place. If I was to offer any advice (criticism, encouragement, pick you poison if you know what I mean) it would be this, from personal experience: don't be too hard on yourself. Gnothi seauton, as they said back then, and you clearly do.
Rant about teching, education and attitudes of same re: disabilities and whatnots:
Main thing what we have done wrong (we meaning me and other teachers as a collective) is rather than apporaching disabilities and whatnot as something to overcome as far as possible (a "be all you can be"-attitude so to speak), our school systems have instead opted for lowering of bars, expectations and hurdles.
The reasons are as many as there are systems for education (and especially the financing thereof) but I think that having as a teacher an attitude of not lowering the bar, not easing the way but instead as you call it mentoring (I'd say "same strategy as when leading a pig" but people today are to urban to know what that means) and encouraging the "if at first you don't succeed, try and try again" paired with "do or do not", meaning go for it for real, or choose not to but don't make excuses.
I can actually use myself as an example here: currently my left arm (me being a redheaded freckled southpaw meant I had to sit at the back of the classroom, our teacher in the junior grades sorting us according to her own arbitrary standards - it's actually an experience I'd rather have than miss, really, since it taught me the difference between discriminating as in making rational choices and discriminating on emotional irrational grounds) is suffering from a nerve in my neck/shoulder being damaged. This means I have to chop firewood with my "wrong hand", not something you' do by choice if you like having fingers and intact legs.
But the firewood must be chopped and stacked before Midsummer, otherwise it won't finish drying out and if it doesn't then I can't use it to heat the house in winter (soggy wood cakes the chimney with soot and tar, making it a fire hazard extra-ordinaire). So, am I going to sit on my ass and demand someone else does it for me, me being disabled (virtually half-blind, partially deaf, tinnitus, busted back, busted knee and now the arm on top) or am I going to man up, igure out a way t do it and get it done?
That's the attitude a teacher must import to all students, but especially those being indoctrinated with "Oh you have such-and-such a diagnosis, that means you can't/have trouble to...". Honestly? F*ck that attitude! You can! I can! Let's do it! is the right attitude. So your scholiosis is a pain in the neck, literally? Adapt and overcome. Work around it. Overpower it.
Doesn't mean it is easy. Dropping from 105 kilos to 90 kilos in one year wasn't easy either. Being 50+ and putting in 4 hour passes of gym lifting more than 70tons total each pass, 4 days per week wasn't easy. Giving up is easy. Blaming someone else is easy.
Accepting that learning means repetition 'til the brain seeps out the nose is hard, but repetition is the only eay the brain learns anything - guess what a brain what can get the same rewards for less and less effort learns? How to manipulate it's surroundings into making everything easier for it. Until the brain graduates and takes the body out into the real world beyond the insitution and controlled environment of the school system, and discovers that nopers, reality does not have to conform one iota to anyone's -isms, creeds or diagnoses.
Evolution and nature plays no favourites, and competing means some of us must lose. Aternative is a system without competition and therefore no evolution, adaptation or improvement.
Rant over, thanks for setting the old noggin' a-buzz!
Short version: you seem to be well on top of any problems and fully aware that defining something as a problem is often what makes it a problem in the firsts place. If I was to offer any advice (criticism, encouragement, pick you poison if you know what I mean) it would be this, from personal experience: don't be too hard on yourself. Gnothi seauton, as they said back then, and you clearly do.
Rant about teching, education and attitudes of same re: disabilities and whatnots:
Main thing what we have done wrong (we meaning me and other teachers as a collective) is rather than apporaching disabilities and whatnot as something to overcome as far as possible (a "be all you can be"-attitude so to speak), our school systems have instead opted for lowering of bars, expectations and hurdles.
The reasons are as many as there are systems for education (and especially the financing thereof) but I think that having as a teacher an attitude of not lowering the bar, not easing the way but instead as you call it mentoring (I'd say "same strategy as when leading a pig" but people today are to urban to know what that means) and encouraging the "if at first you don't succeed, try and try again" paired with "do or do not", meaning go for it for real, or choose not to but don't make excuses.
I can actually use myself as an example here: currently my left arm (me being a redheaded freckled southpaw meant I had to sit at the back of the classroom, our teacher in the junior grades sorting us according to her own arbitrary standards - it's actually an experience I'd rather have than miss, really, since it taught me the difference between discriminating as in making rational choices and discriminating on emotional irrational grounds) is suffering from a nerve in my neck/shoulder being damaged. This means I have to chop firewood with my "wrong hand", not something you' do by choice if you like having fingers and intact legs.
But the firewood must be chopped and stacked before Midsummer, otherwise it won't finish drying out and if it doesn't then I can't use it to heat the house in winter (soggy wood cakes the chimney with soot and tar, making it a fire hazard extra-ordinaire). So, am I going to sit on my ass and demand someone else does it for me, me being disabled (virtually half-blind, partially deaf, tinnitus, busted back, busted knee and now the arm on top) or am I going to man up, igure out a way t do it and get it done?
That's the attitude a teacher must import to all students, but especially those being indoctrinated with "Oh you have such-and-such a diagnosis, that means you can't/have trouble to...". Honestly? F*ck that attitude! You can! I can! Let's do it! is the right attitude. So your scholiosis is a pain in the neck, literally? Adapt and overcome. Work around it. Overpower it.
Doesn't mean it is easy. Dropping from 105 kilos to 90 kilos in one year wasn't easy either. Being 50+ and putting in 4 hour passes of gym lifting more than 70tons total each pass, 4 days per week wasn't easy. Giving up is easy. Blaming someone else is easy.
Accepting that learning means repetition 'til the brain seeps out the nose is hard, but repetition is the only eay the brain learns anything - guess what a brain what can get the same rewards for less and less effort learns? How to manipulate it's surroundings into making everything easier for it. Until the brain graduates and takes the body out into the real world beyond the insitution and controlled environment of the school system, and discovers that nopers, reality does not have to conform one iota to anyone's -isms, creeds or diagnoses.
Evolution and nature plays no favourites, and competing means some of us must lose. Aternative is a system without competition and therefore no evolution, adaptation or improvement.
Rant over, thanks for setting the old noggin' a-buzz!