Teachers: "I'd rather you did" and "I'd rather you didn't"

I have finished my first semester of my senior year of high school! Yay! With that said, I’d like to point out a few things I really wish my teachers would or would not have done so much. I’ll tell you why doing or not doing these things are important to me. I hope you can take this back to your classroom or if you are a parent, your child’s teacher! That would be the goal anyways.
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Let’s start with the “I’d rather my teacher didn’t do this” one.
When a teacher Assumes that I "didn’t pay attention":

- When teachers abruptly say to my face... “Well it’s because you weren’t paying attention” inside I feel like I could scream at them. But I can’t do that because they are “above me” and “authority”, so I have to praise and obey them. “Yes, I understand.” “Yes you are right, I am wrong...” It drives me crazy. I could cry if I wanted to. A teacher said this to me today, and this is exactly what happened and how I responded:

Me - “I don’t know how to answer this Warm Up journal question?”
Teacher - “Well obviously you weren’t paying attention yesterday in class”
Me - ** These feelings started battling with me in this order: Not understood. Forgotten. Frustrated. Angry. Sad. Frustrated. Angry. Angry.

Not understood: “They don’t get my Auditory Processing Disorder do they?”
Forgotten: “Once again, they totally forgot they are talking to their student with APD”
Frustrated: “Why can’t my teachers just remember I have a learning disability? And anyways, my teacher is totally not helping me understand the question by assuming this and trying to blame it all on me.”
Anger: “This is what I’m talking about.. teachers always forgetting about my invisible learning disability, APD. Geez!”
Sad: “I’m just going to sit here now not knowing how to answer this question because my teacher “forgot” (because they are really good at that) to ask me what I don’t understand about the question... I’m not good enough. Ugh...”
Frustrated, angry and more: I think you get the point.

Then, quietly out loud with a “are you serious”, sarcastic tone I responded “Umm... Okay?” And In my head I thought “Clearly by you assuming that I wasn’t paying attention is not helping me understand how to answer the question..... Don’t know how else to respond to that”

Alright, I was paying attention the whole time..... Okay I confess, in the beginning of class before the teacher even said “Hello” I checked my Tumblr account. But I payed attention to my teacher’s instruction the whole time. Of course I am a teenager and don’t have a 100% accurate attention span, but overall I was alert...

When teachers quickly make that assumption, it just really makes me feel bad about myself. Especially because I was paying attention, so they are basically reminding me how I don’t understand things as quickly as a majority of their students do. Thanks.. What they should say instead is, “Well, why don’t you understand the notes from yesterday?” Some honest kids would say “I wasn’t paying attention”. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, in most of my experiences most kids will just flat out tell the teacher that is why. In my case, I normally will answer “Well I didn’t understand what you were saying..” That’s when the teacher is sort of forced to say or should say, “Well, let me try to help ya understand it better...” WOW, what a MUCH better way not to jump to the assumption that I’m a lazy student and wasn’t paying attention.

One thing teachers need to understand about me: I work my ass off. May seem like I’m not paying attention because it takes me longer than an average student to process all the information I’ve been processing throughout the school day. May take me the next class period or two for my brain to click the information in right, and sometimes that’s not even enough. So that’s one thing that really gets to me.


Okay, next for the “I’d rather my teachers did do this”.

Use/Wear your microphone please!

I am constantly reminding my teachers to wear their microphone even though it is printed in black ink in my 504 plan that they legally have to wear it. “Oh! I forgot! Sorry!” That’s the usual response. I can understand that, but me being the student it is frustrating. I got so frustrated at the end of this year that I just stopped reminding them, because I was tired of reminding them. Clearly it was too hard of a task or something.

Sadly, I feel like if there was a student who was deaf and their teachers had to wear their microphones for that student, they would remember to wear it for that student instantly. Because my learning disability is invisible and is often forgotten about and assumed that it is not a huge deal or whatever, I feel as if teachers are more inclined to forget. If a student was deaf, and a student like me with APD both have it written on a 504 plan that teachers need to use a microphone, I think it would be only fair to treat both of those students equally the same. That makes sense to me at least!
When my teachers do wear their microphone, it helps me out a lot! This is why:

1. The teachers voice is the dominant voice in the room, so other students’ side conversations don’t get in my way of processing what I need to process.
2. A teachers voice through a microphone is amazingly a lot clearer than teachers not using one. Mainly because the sound is getting projected through like 10 or 12 speakers instead of their one solo mouth.
3. Enhances the teachers volume. Everybody speaks at all different volumes, and in general speak all differently. Accents, soft talkers, fast talkers, mumblers, and other speaking habits of these types are hard. With the microphone it helps me to understand them better.
4. When teachers do remember to use their microphone, I feel like I am remembered, and I have not been forgotten which is a big part that helps me.

Another big thing I’d like my teachers to do is to remember my name with my learning disability. My first and last initials are A.P and Auditory Processing Disorders abbreviation is obviously APD.
A.P and A.P << easy peasy lemon squeezy!

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Hopefully teachers and parents everywhere find this helpful, and will take this back to the classroom where the child or and teen with APD is and remember these things. I’d love to answer any of your lovely questions. Just a message away!