Capelo Ismael

I was excited to take this course this semester because it was one step closer to my teacher certification. I was even more excited when he told us that he used to be a principle at a school and he is going to teach us things he wanted teachers he hired to know. However, I was both disappointed and offended by this professors words. Since Covid-19 is having us stay home our class was conducted through Zoom all semester. He began the lesson by talking about students with ADHD and he mentioned that "Students with ADHD often ruin lesson plans" and (because he used to be a principle) teachers would come to his classroom to rant about how horrible these students are. I actually have a little brother with ADHD so I was both offended and confused, because this is a Special Education class and he is right off the bat cutting down these students. Then he started giving his opinion about medicating students and his words were, "I fully support medication" and "You can't TELL parents to medicate their kids, but you can defiantly send them some key words that their child needs it. " I thought this was widely inappropriate and unnecessary to try to persuade us or even scare us about students having a learning disability such as ADHD. Then he began talking about IQ levels in students. He first said that students with ADHD often have low IQ levels (Which is completely false). "Physically unattractive" students, and students who have diabetes are all over weight and have low IQs. Along with having a little brother with ADHD, I also have an older brother with Type 1 Diabetes. So everything that this teacher has said in this lesson is both ignorantly false and very offensive. The final piece of information that was stated during this time was about CPS and calling child services. As teachers we are put in a position that makes us one of the main people that see these students on a daily basis, and when we are concerned about something like abuse we must act accordingly for the students safety. This professor told us the first thig we must do when we think a child is being abused is to go straight to the student and discuss what is happening at home and where their bruises (or anything that indicates abuse) came from. This not only is not what I have been taught in any other course, but also could be very dangerous for the student. What if the child goes home and tells their parents that the school was asking about their marks? This could create a huge issue with the school, the teacher in question, and the home life of that student. He also stated that if a teacher were to call CPS then the parents would know the school called them, and if they asked we could say, "Yeah and I'll do it again if you don't stop doing these things to your kid. " I wish I could say he was joking when he said this, but after everything else he has said it was not unlikely that this is how he truly ran his school. At the end of that lesson I raised my hand and asked him about different things he said, especially about ADHD and Diabetes. I let him know that I had two bothers with both of these and that I didn't think the information he was giving us was completely true or fair to these students. At that it seemed he was trying to backtrack everything he said and explain why he said it, which was completely contradicting what he first said. Since that class I decided to take this professor's words with a grain of salt because I did not know what was true and what was based on opinion.