La crisis de los euromisiles y el Movimiento Pacifista, 1980-

During interviews and observations I gathered information on the experiences of teachers and their assistants in the classroom.

4.4.1 Teachers’ and assistants’ experiences of working with FASD learners, insight, knowledge and description of FASD diagnoses

The teachers and assistants seem to have gained much knowledge and insight on how to work with FASD learners. They gained experience from working with FASD learners and attending short training sessions. They mentioned the importance of being able to identify traits of the diagnoses to be able to effectively support learners.

Participant 3: If you keep on doing something that doesn’t correspond to

the brain functioning of the FASD child you will not get the learner to work. It’s not their fault.

Participant 3: It is important that you know the kids, so you can see when

someone is really struggling with something.

Participant 2: As much as we plan, we don’t always follow that plan because

it depends on the child, because that child changes every day, or five times in one day.

Participant 3: We don’t always get to all the work in a day but we eventually

Participant 1: Training for teachers is important, we attend short training

sessions. You can’t just have planning; it needs to be structured around the learners’ strengths.

Participant 2: The learners should constantly be reminded of what’s

happening in the classroom. You need to inform them of your plan.

Participant 3: As soon as they feel uncomfortable, they will not always be

able to tell you that they have a problem, but if you explain to them what they might be feeling, they seem to understand.

Participant 2: As long as justice is served, they are happy.

Participant 3: Each group knows what they need to do and that’s how they

are able to function in the bigger classrooms.

Participant 4: Like if you had to change that routine, you would watch the

wheels fall off. You should not say “Don’t do something!”. You should rather tell them what you want them to do.

Participant 1: So I’ll mark as they write. So they can correct their answers

straight away, because if they forget, they will have forgotten by tomorrow what they’ve done. As they get older, they do develop some form of memory, but the young ones especially struggle with that.

Participant 1: When learners forget, we tend to ask for an example. If I see

you holding your jersey in your hands, where are you going to put it? So we all kind of know where to look for it when the learner forgets where he/she has put it.

O: Learners don’t always like change but they need to be prepared for

change.

Participant 1: We don’t have a school bell because it would be too much of

a distraction. If you would ring a bell at the beginning of break they will start packing up to go home. So we would only have it when break ends so they know that they should stop playing and get back to the classroom.

Participant 4: It’s very difficult and expensive to get a FASD diagnosis. Not

all of our learners are formally diagnosed in the school. I think we had two that are officially diagnosed. Learners referred to our school are mostly because the mother admitted to drinking during pregnancy and the psychologist’s report that reports on the learners’ behaviour and scholastic performance.

4.4.2 Attitudes and emotional experiences of teaching staff

What I gathered from the data collected, is that working with FASD learners can be emotionally challenging as it is extremely demanding of the teacher. A very specific attitude is required when teaching FASD learners.

Participant 3: The most important thing to know about teaching a learner

living with FASD is just to have patience and know their brain functioning.

Participant 3: You get used to learners not being able to do things for

themselves.

Participant 4: You need to be flexible and understand FASD learners. You

also need to be able to create a little bit of extra resources and to think outside the box a bit.

Participant 3: So just because they got something wrong doesn’t mean that

they’ll never get it right.

Participant 3: It doesn’t matter if you are patient or not because if you keep

doing something the same way and they don’t get it, you are going to get frustrated with the learner and yourself.

Participant 4: It can cause frustration if you know what the learner wants or

they can’t do things for themselves.

Participant 4: We prepare work for the learners every day. It is frustrating

and it is very annoying, to prepare extra work, but if you don’t, you are wasting time in the classroom.

Participant 3: You know how to eat an elephant; you need to take one bit at

a time, that’s what we do. It is all worth it at the end of the day because it makes life easier for the teacher and the learner and it makes your life just a little bit easier, but it’s not always easy.

Participant 4: It takes so much time to prepare for one or two children in the

classroom, but if you don’t, you will struggle every single day. Where if you could spend an hour to prep for those four children, your day would run much more successfully because you are going to fight through every day if you don’t. This was the hardest lesson for us to learn.

Participant 3: You can’t force them. Doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t

force them.