Hello, I am current an elementary school teacher and have been lucky enough to have my same class for a second year now. I have a student who has been diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder and has shown GREAT improvement over the last year in my class. They were diagnosed at a young age and have been in gen ed classes their whole school career thus far.
I am on this forum to ask if any of you were diagnosed at a young age and if so, how did it affect your schooling?
Were there any strategies that worked really well for you? Did you wish your teacher would have done something/something different? When this student first entered my class I had zero knowledge of the disorder and spent some time trying to find resources about children and their eduction but came up with nothing. So I ended up coming up with some teaching methods that have helped this student grow both academically and emotionally this past year, but would love some more insight. Any advice would help.
Thank you so much for your time,
-teacher
Attention issues are a serious problem, at least they were for me. Something that helped me in college (it took a long time for me to get diagnosed…parents don’t like mental health care system so I had to be old enough to seek help myself) was when my school’s disability service provided notes for me for my classes, it improved my grades drastically, because what would happen was I couldn’t focus in lecture so I couldn’t take good notes, then I couldn’t study effectively, so I’d do poorly on tests…so maybe you could translate that to an elementary student by seeing if providing a summary or outline of what you went over in class that day would help, so if they couldn’t pay attention or didn’t remember later they would have that to look at.
Thank you so much Anna, this does sound like something that would support this student. It’s actually one if the things they struggle with most and that is a great idea. Thank you so much for replying!
Teachers heavy workloads preparing lesson plans and marking made it very difficult to spend quality time coaching pupils with a MI (mental illness). At least that was true in my case.
What would have made a difference to me would have been for the teacher to take me aside after class finished every once in a while to ask me how I was coping, and if I was I needed to chat about something. Those kinds of things. Being inquisitive about my wellbeing.
Yes, that’s why I left the thread unlocked. I do think that it would also be helpful for @teacher to contact parents on the family side of the forum to see if any of them have experience with young (elementary school aged) children diagnosed with sz/sza.
Thank you so much for your input thedeepestdream. Last year I had a much smaller class size and was able to have these conversations. I’ll be sure to make time this year to continue this. Thanks!
The schizophrenia didn’t hit me until I was a young adult, but I struggled with autism as a youngster (I’m diagnosed with both now, although the autism diagnosis came belatedly). As an adult, I have been unable to pursue formal education in a classroom setting – the more people in the room, the more my positive symptoms (voices/delusions) are aggravated. You may need to get your student away from the other students if there are signs he is becoming overwhelmed by positive symptoms.
Most schools and parents assume that more medication will ‘fix’ problems with positive symptoms (I’m married to a teacher). Yes, but at the cost of higher cognitive function. Too many antipsychotics shut down higher functioning and you’ll be left with a quiet student who is incapable of learning. You are better off adjusting your student’s environment before you try to adjust medication. Too much stimulus and crowding is a trigger for many of us.
It’s very touching to see that you are going above and beyond your responsibilities as a teacher to make this student succeed. And I think that is probably the essence of how best to approach this issue. Be understanding, ask your student what they need and what they struggle with, and try to accomodate for them in a fair way that doesn’t single them out too much or negatively affect the rest of the students. Schizophrenia and schizoaffective are very heterogenous disorders, affecting each person differently, so getting to know your student a little is so important. You sound like a great teacher!