ASDAN dilemnas - can you help?
Categories: Secondary
I help with 2 ASDAN classes in a local high school with young people that are on alternative learning packages and have behavioural and learning difficulties. My role has been to support the teacher and to particularly engage the girls in the groups with challenges that more suit their interests. This worked really well to start with and one of the groups has continued to work well. However the year 10 group has always been a struggle but particularly recently the attitudes and behaviour have deteriorated and the young people aren’t responding to me being there and see me as ‘the bad guy’. Because of their bad behaviour they are now doing challenges that are largley written and they are just getting more and more annoyed and bored. My role is now more of a TA but I often find I’m just sat there particularly as some of the young people don’t want my help.
I’m getting more and more frustrated and sometimes feel like giving up but at the same time don’t want to. I spoke to the teacher but he didn’t really say much and didn’t give the impression that he was going to change anything. I’m running out of steam & ideas.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? Got any ideas of how I can move forward?
Sorry for such a long post.
Anna
Page 1 of 1 pages for this article
Hi Anna,
I used to use the ASDAN curriculum in an ‘inclusion unit’, and it sounds like the problems you’re having are very similar to the ones I experienced. ASDAN can be really tedious sometimes- I think because it has so much choice and so little structure for students who don’t know how to make choices and therefore act out on their frustrations.
Some things I tried to help the students stay interested in the curriculum:
- use photos and videos as evidence when you can- get out of the book as much as possible!
- give them small, measurable targets with rewards(ie. when you complete one unit, you earn ???- it might help to ask them what an appropriate rewards is, subject to approval of course!)
- restructure some of the challenges so that they can do them in teams, and make it a team building exercise. This could also be an opportunity to discuss behaviour and how to successfully work together. Again, a small reward which the students can have a say in before you start the challenge (you can include behaviour in the negotiations) might help.
- make a big ol’ hoopla if they complete a bronze/silver/gold award. it really is an achievement for them.
Some things I had to keep in my head so I didn’t go crazy!:
- the students are probably in this class because they are acting out on issues that they are dealing with at home/ in other lessons/ in the past. Whatever it is they are kicking off about today, it’s probably not your fault! There is most likely a deeper issue going on there.
- remember the big picture. a student might be acting really horrible at the moment, but if you think about him/her in terms of the whole year can you see any progress? sooner or later they will settle- and then another one will start to drive you crazy. the joys!
- you are doing a really valuable work. it is making a difference, even if you can’t see it.
hope this helps.
Rachel