Poems for Dyspraxia Awareness Week

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Click to find out more about this year’s Dyspraxia Awareness Week from the Dyspraxia Foundation.

My hope to publish this at the start of Dyspraxia Awareness Week was of course an ambitious one… It has been a busy week with a few dyspraxidents for good measure – before you ask, nothing too serious, just broken glasses and a mishap with the hair straighteners resulting in minor burns…! It shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point, since us dyspraxics certainly aren’t known for our spatial awareness and coordination.

And on that note – I really hope that the following poems can be relatable in some way, whether you have dyspraxic traits yourself, or know someone who does. As always, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the ‘Comments’ section.

Take care,

-Misspraxic

1. bruises

the greenish bluish tones of cerulean

mixed with a dash of ochre

create an image – not the impressionist greens

found in Monet’s lush poppy fields

and not the strong blues flowing down the Seine

but the textures of unruly paint dots, erratically

splattered           spilled   stained

they bleed all over my pages

but my legs and mind do try ever so hard

to keep up with a weary world 

where there’s somehow no security

in the greens of a paintbrush

that cannot guarantee my protection,

for I’m the amateur artist who lacks control

like that old car with the dodgy motor 

that nobody trusts enough-

my skin is left tired and tainted 

by these greenish bluish blotches

and risk cycles round me in circles.

i never progress past yesterday’s chapter

of knocking   falling    staining – 

these marks are less      than flawless ceruleans 

and lesser       than crisp impressionist skies

but these are the honest blues beneath my paper’s edges.

more   than the reductive label of the “Clumsy Girl”,

I beam with a creative license

and my bruised and battered bluish greens

make my skin tough enough to take

the hurtful words and leave my legacy

as I knock and fall and always

return to the page     every    single     time.

2. paper crowns of envy

Have you seen her heels,

the ones pulsed with envy studs that shine

as she strides across the office like it’s 

her palace and she’s real estate royalty? 

Have you seen the way she flaunts

her haute-couture laces in a void of pricey premiums,

internally screaming, “Look at me”?

But she only looks at me with a shiny branded fixation

like a Waitrose security guard she subjects me

to scrutiny from head to toe      for tomorrow’s urgent yesterdays,

my last-season eBay dress     my unshaven legs     and the ghastly gap 

that makes my teeth protrude in an ugly unfashion.

I return her glare, for I see through her masking tape glory

and the paper crown she idolises, especially when 

she dares to demand I leave my personality 

outside the door. “And where’s yours?”

3. Do they see what I see?

I’m disconnected

from the false connections that the masses crave to touch,

quick clicks to links that redirect the engine of the heart

back and forth     away from you. A nano-second

is all it takes to churn up a multitude of possible solutions:

Siri, Alexa, I bet you can’t explain – what does it even mean

to be faced day to day with pixels and promises of meaningful

clicking and Likes and Care emojis that never quite fulfil?

Forever in “public” mode, my pain sinks into a certain state of

behind the scenes coping, with Stories and Tweets that seem to be

removed from any authentic storytelling, like the kind you have to sit around for-

I’m disconnected

so tell me this, do the masses see beyond the cyclical games

that re-tweet themselves into an ever-Beta version?

How ridiculous is it to want to click “Undo”

and warp this reality into my Beta version

with a more balanced voice   a stronger smile or a faster Intel Core Processor?

Search me and then you’ll see my pain

persists like a Trojan virus from a Justin Bieber advert on the side of Facebook,

waiting to pounce and then it sprouts

up all over the place, picking away at the scabs    of my

internal wiring and desperate to be seen.

4. Reset my compass

the cogs of my mind spin both slower    and faster than you could ever tell

when you watch me outside the Co-op, looking lost in the weeping wells of time.

magnetically challenged and pulled towards the edge

to navigate the winding lanes with a semi-functioning GPS

is like navigating my differences when a magnetic force

snaps    like a car in  slow-mo, anticipating the crash but too slow   to stop it.

you propel my gross motor, fine motor movements but still I press

the wrong buttons      and stop    then start       all over 

the pavement’s sharp edges and ons and offs rattle me

as a million sparks swelter underneath my cotton sleeves.

the cars and lorries and buses screech in a foreign way

and yet they cross my path daily, like false friends.


National Poetry Day – Choices

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Earlier this week it was National Poetry Day, with the theme for 2021 being ‘Choices’. It felt like a very fitting theme, given all the changes and uncertainty we are having to adjust to. Admittedly, I am two days late (would it really be Misspraxic if I weren’t?!)… I still wanted to mark this day by sharing a few of my poems.

I wrote the first poem this week, on the theme of ‘Choices’ – my poem is about centering yourself as a priority when making difficult choices, which is not always easy to do. I wrote the following poems at various points during my first year in teaching, to try and express the experience of teaching and learning through the pandemic – I hope they can resonate with some of you in some way!

Next week is Dyspraxia Awareness Week – the theme is ‘Primary and Secondary Education’, so I will aim to post about this and share another set of poems about dyspraxia then. In the meantime, have a look at the Foundation’s website for resources and information about how you can get involved in Awareness Week.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments, and do check out other poems and brilliant resources from the National Poetry Day website here.

Until next time, take care everyone.

– Misspraxic

1. the uninvited visitor

she didn’t choose the uninvited visitor

who ‘forgot’ to knock every time

and pushed into the line without a pass

she didn’t choose to press the pause button

when in full flow, targeted by the visitor

who jammed the system into overdrive

and no, she didn’t choose to be chronically

dysfunctional, beating a skip and

skipping a beat, her paper heart in shreds

what was that you just said?

no, she didn’t choose for her wires to fizz and flare,

numbed into discomfort. she didn’t choose to count

the dead ends at this crossroads,

drained, there was now no space left but to

pause                       and listen to the currents

that kept the machine whizzing on and resist its pull

and as she made the decision to ‘re-start’,

she could see a blank canvas sky

graced with stars of connection,

where she could still choose to paint

the warmest smile and still hug the empty corners with her hope.

creased all over, she could still choose to hold on

despite the visitor’s prodding and pricking, she knew

the interference would grow duller and defeated as time went on,

as she could now see it clearly: she must choose herself everyday

2. Freedom Day?

Today’s date is July 19th 2021 and today we are learning about ‘question forms’

and questions form on the page, as forming questions

becomes our Learning Objective that’s etched

onto my pages too. we run in parallel, a mirror lesson from me to you to me again,

from pixellated Chrome lessons in my living room and back

to the pandemic classroom where you are confined

to a jagged danger line, disjointed and perhaps

a warning sign that this safe box got crossed just too    many    times,

as we were pushed to ‘think outside the box’ in our teaching,

a word used loosely now, ‘teaching’ from my living room

on ‘Freedom Day’, pestering students to pop their gum in the bin

and just listen      to the sounds of Miss, “you’re laggin”

and muted tones and shuffled seats,

a futile command to “listen” – but who would?

to a blur of a leader projected onto my future whiteboard

that wouldn’t break down- will it show us what to expect for 2021?

3. Climbing the walls in 2020

in twenty-twenty we were held

only by the silver birches, the beeches,

not those beaches, but in Epping.

we simply missed being sun-kissed

and hugged by the arms that once knew

old grins, gone in a beat, Missing-In-Action

in twenty-twenty-one our vase is still missing

the plot, its cracks let out all the

water, half empty

energies drained on pointless floral yoga,

goodbye clematis, alstromeria, gardenias-

your petals bloomed only last season

and you now pose a risk to our health,

climbing up the trellis in a resistant gang

against the locked-down iron bars of prison cell gardens.

now it’s only us who are climbing

the walls, desperate to grab a hug stuck in time,

stuck in twenty-nineteen.

4. Why?

Even Better If

the retired lines of Chronic Fatigue

scrawled by dud pens

didn’t make it onto the whiteboard,

now grey board- bored like you.

Even Better If

the wavy panic lines didn’t wash out my cheeks

and If the torn-down posters

somehow weren’t on display today,

If they just hid away in the bin.

Even Better If my mask did a Better job

of masking creases on waterlogged sheets

of paper scattered between Year 7 and 10

and if the creases on a bed unmade at 6,

weren’t unseen all day.

Even Better If we could go without

the background groans that yawn around the room

and fidget with fatigued,

unanswerable whys-

“miss, why?”

[For those reading who aren’t familiar with the ‘What Went Well’/’Even Better If’ feedback style that inspired the above poem, Why?, ‘EBI’ this is a common example of ‘Assessment for Learning’ in UK schools and suggesting how students can improve their work.]

A puppet in search of answers and pulled by the strings of Long Covid

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CW: Long Covid, anxiety, medical gaslighting

When I say I will write in a few days, I usually mean a few months. Or several. I had the best intentions for new routines in 2021, hoping to blog every month. It started off well in my first term as a Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT), when I could depend much more on my energy levels. I should know better than to promise you updates, though; my first year of teaching forced me to work on being more realistic with my expectations, both of myself and others. I frequently put off tasks for weeks and months, especially when I am rundown or under pressure. A seemingly simple task like washing up yesterday’s breakfast bowl gets left for longer than is sanitary. And you can add to that list: paying council tax in time to avoid incurring a summons, putting out the bins before collection or even pressing ‘Send‘ on a simple message draft to a friend. I am ashamed to say I put it all off and no amount of to-do lists or post-its seems to work, as I seem unable to prioritise anything other than my job. 

Previously, I had always turned to Google to guide me through the challenges in my life. Google was like a non-judgemental friend, with its comforting guarantee of answers just a click away and always on hand to help me navigate overwhelming new cities abroad, instruct me on how long to roast potatoes for, and talk me through how to change batteries in a smoke detector. Google was a comfort, at least, until I tested positive with Covid-19 in December 2020, on the last day of the school term – just when I thought I had made it through with less drama than some of my unfortunate colleagues. When it comes to the matter of catching a new infectious disease at work, though, there is only so much that Google can really help with. The answers do not exist for anyone – Covid-19 has defied Google and medical science, and disturbingly, its seemingly never-ending supply of symptoms has defied me and my sense of self. I know myself pretty well, I thought, I am mentally strong and consistent. But after nine months of learning what my physical limits are, I am still finding my way on this journey with ‘Long Covid’. 

A puppet in search of answers and pulled by the strings of Long Covid – ink and watercolour

What is ‘Long Covid’?

The broad term refers to long-lasting symptoms that continue to develop more than 12 weeks post-infection. Over 500 symptoms have been recorded and can include – but are not limited to – fatigue, chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, muscle aches, gastro-intestinal issues, and neurological symptoms such as headaches, brain fog and dizziness. The list goes on and the symptoms can change over time. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), approximately 114,000 of the million people living with Long Covid in the UK work in education (2021). In the context of low vaccine take-up among young people aged 18-34 and amid increasing research into the long-term effects, I hope that sharing my experience can raise awareness and provide comfort to others struggling. 

When you find yourself sitting on the floor to clean, or allowing deliveries of shopping bags to congregate at the bottom of the stairs for days, you realise you are well outside of “normality”. You have a problem, and accepting that problem can be difficult. I only realised I hadn’t washed up for three weeks when I had no clean cutlery left – I had completely let myself go; I had lost control and my usual dyspraxic coping mechanisms were just not working. Friends noticed the difference too and told me that I seemed very out of breath on short walks when we met up. One said they didn’t think it was right that I was working full-time in this condition.

Beyond a collection of irritating physical symptoms, the experience has been unnerving due to its unpredictability; it is anxiety-inducing to wake up each day and not know quite how I will feel or how a certain activity will trigger a symptom in the future. My energy levels still seem to fluctuate each day, so while teaching full-time, I find the symptoms distracting and challenging to manage without regular rest breaks. When faced with low-level disruptive behaviour, the pressing sensation in my chest intensifies the lack of physical control, at just the time when I am in most need of reliable energy levels to exert my presence in the classroom and meet the Teaching Standards. There is certainly an uncomfortable tension involved in prioritising what feels good for my body, over what feels right for my students’ education, and vice-versa.

And what about Dyspraxia? 

How Long Covid might interact with pre-existing conditions like Dyspraxia has not yet received much attention by medical professionals, though through support groups I understand that other dyspraxics also notice that their memory and processing has worsened since Long Covid. Whether or not dyspraxia is a “neurological disorder” has been subject to much discussion. Forgetting my best friend’s birthday, for example, was a catalyst for me realising that I was not functioning at “normal” capacity, as I had never forgotten something so important before. So was this ‘brain fog’ – a reportedly common Long Covid symptom, affecting cognitive function and memory and most likely caused by inflammation to the functional nervous system – or just dyspraxia, the coordination disorder I have lived with for years and for which I have found my own coping mechanisms? To what extent is dyspraxia a permanent part of my ‘personality’, or as Occupational Health described it, something I am ‘suffering’ from, like symptoms of a disease? 

It can be hard to explain the impact, though mild, on my daily life. Narratives tend to dominate that such symptoms might be ‘just stress’, when someone looks ordinary on the outside. After all, I am certainly not ‘ill’ in the sense of having a cold or the flu. But I am in a different body, a shell of the person I once was. I can no longer exercise properly without chest tightness, pain, and shortness of breath. Intermittent tremors, headaches, earaches, tingling, crawling, itching, and electric shock pains that pulsate through my body make me question my sanity on a daily basis. How can a new part of my body be zapping; where is the logic in this twitching when I grasp my hair straighteners? Muscle weakness when I struggle to open a jar? In my head and hands deciding to go numb as I try to fall asleep to switch off my body and fall asleep? Why is it that my brain is still wide-awake and now fizzing, like the contents of a bottle of coke left out in the sun? I have felt like a puppet whose strings are tugged at and pulled in all directions, whilst I am determined to throw myself onto the stage and pretend that I can do this and ‘teach as normal’, desperately wanting to be ‘fit for work’.

But this is my stage, I repeat as a mantra borrowed from a close friend whose grounding words helped me get through my first year in teaching. I have tried to ignore the symptoms, meditate through them, exercise despite them, and continue as ‘normal’ (whatever that means) – but however I seem on the outside to my students or colleagues, it is a different story on the inside. Mild as the symptoms are classed as, they are real and they still interfere with my life, worsening when I over-do it. I have to be much more mindful of my ‘spoons’ and how I choose to spend them (click here to read more about Christine Miserandino’s helpful Spoon Theory analogy to explain chronic illness). It took four months of blood tests, ECGs (heart tests) and chest scans coming back as normal before I could be diagnosed by exclusion and referred to a Long Covid clinic, and nine months before I was seen by the clinic. When seen by the clinic, it was disappointing to not be offered any sort of ‘quick fix’ for the discomfort and fatigue, yet I was also grateful to learn that Covid has caused a dysfunctional breathing pattern, known as a ‘breathing pattern disorder’, which could be exacerbating my symptoms. This is apparently common in ‘Long Haulers’ and I learned that I must now retrain my breathing pattern and reduce how much I do, in order to support my recovery from symptoms.

Throughout the past months, though, I have felt a major gratitude for my baseline health. I was never hospitalised, never left bed- or house-bound. I am fortunate to be able to walk and manage to work in a job I love. I can go about my daily life still – even if ‘functioning’ certainly means something different to what it meant in November 2020. These are things that huge numbers of people with Long Covid are not able to do. In its own way, this gratitude has been healing for me, much like painting and writing as an outlet for untangling my body’s warped state. Ultimately, my own Long Covid experience is just that – and can only be that – just one experience. It has heightened my awareness of the experiences of thousands of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) sufferers, whose voices have been gaslit and silenced for decades. The struggles of chronic illness are multiplied when they intersect with race and gender inequalities, where people living under greater oppression struggle for their voices to be heard. I share links to some other voices and advocates below, so please do have a read.

In light of how frequently women and also people in the neurodiverse community are subjected to medical gaslighting, I also feel fortunate to have had a patient and understanding doctor who has listened to my concerns and made me feel heard each time I phoned her about a mysterious new symptom. Even when she didn’t know the answers to my disgruntled whys and hows, she took steps to refer me for further testing and to the Long Covid clinic. The professionals at the clinic were incredibly reassuring as they had heard my symptoms so many times before. “You will recover from this”, they promised me, “it is just going to take time”.

Long Covid Kids

Of course, Long Covid does not only affect adults. As many as one in seven children (14%) who test positive with Covid still have symptoms 15 weeks later (UCL, 2021). Developing Long Covid as a teacher has made me more aware of the long-lasting symptoms in the children I teach. It is concerning that increasing numbers of young people who contract the virus are presenting with an array of long-lasting symptoms after weeks and months post-infection. One of my students came to see me at the end of a lesson back in May: “Miss, my chest feels tight”, he said. “I feel a pressure on my chest and my arms are also tingling. I’ve had blood tests and I’m waiting for the results…” And another student the following week: “Miss, I have virus-induced chest pain, I need to take some time out…” These are just the students who are able to or choose to articulate their symptoms aloud. If my brave students can talk about their experiences then I think I can, and should, too. After all, they are what push me to get up in the morning and drag up my reluctant body into school everyday, so it matters to try and make them feel less alone in their experiences. 

Finally, please feel free to reach out to me if you are affected with lingering post-Covid symptoms and would like to share your story with me. Your experiences are real and valid, and I promise you are not alone. Be kind to you.

This time, I will avoid the rookie error of promising to write again in a few days… But I hope to write again soon.

Take care everyone,

Misspraxic

Links to further reading

Support and information:

Articles:

Instagram accounts to follow:

@longcovidsos

@long_covid_kids

@jasminehayer_

@wearebodypolitic

@_coronadiary

Petitions you can sign:

Please let me know of any others and I will add to my list.

A Misspraxic Christmas update

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Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since my last update…! It is an understatement to tell you that this term has been a challenging one for schools, students, their parents and staff. As you will have already gathered, students and at times whole year groups have been instructed to self-isolate at home, with some students missing more months of their education and losing the structure that being in school provides. I now relate better to how it might have felt/feel for my students to be trapped within the same four walls, or to carry a confusing label with a stigma attached, or to be out of sync socially with their friends and family, especially at an important time of the year. Dyspraxia and other hidden learning differences can certainly exacerbate the anxieties associated with COVID-19, as there is a tendency to overthink situations, process them differently to others, and feel the emotions of overwhelm more intensely than neurotypicals might do.

As ever, poetry and the arts provide a helpful way for many of us dyspraxics to process this overwhelm, ground ourselves, and make sense of challenges, hopes, fears, triumphs, and our favourite word of the year, “unprecedented situations”! I know this is the case for my students, too, whose poems and courage to share them continue to energise me and strengthen my sense of purpose as a new teacher. The following poem might not be the most uplifting one I have written in 2020(!), however I am sharing it in the hope that it might be relatable for some of you, whether you are dyspraxic or not:

It is but it isn’t.
 
If it isn’t the label of disordered fine motor control,
then it’s the loss of control in a train engine
planned to stop at the station three days ago,
back before Saturn collided with Jupiter and gave me a new label.
 
If it isn’t a hot turkey dinner made for six, 
then it’s an empty plate and one absent voice
with only several paranoid ones lingering 
in the background of a laggy Zoom call.
 
If it isn’t Tiers like on last summer’s fancy wedding cake,
then it’s only a second-rate ready meal eaten alone 
and its shredded paper wrappings tossed to the bin,
right where Christmas is now, rotting away
 
in the company of crushed-up carrots that Rudolf missed, 
and chicken past its sell-by date. (Let’s not forget 
my own saliva stuck to tears that fester 
in a camouflage trap that convinces even wild animals of its safety.)
 
If it isn’t squeaky-clean laminate flooring and polished windows,
then it’s the insanity of the ones who sanitised obsessively,
who were negative about being on the positive list, 
all in a split second. 
 
You didn't break me like you broke all the others,
shattering their windows, and like you broke Christmas.
You spared me like you spared the turkey I won’t be eating,
and if it isn't Christmas, then it's a miracle that I am sparing others.
“Next time you feel alone, remember that the season of isolation is when the caterpillar grows its wings.” – Mandy Hale

I wish you all a safe holiday period, whether you celebrate Christmas or otherwise. If you are spending the holiday alone this year, then I hope that you can find little joys and lightness among the darkness. All dyspraxics carry inner strength necessary to overcome struggle, even if it doesn’t seem like it – I hope you can recognise yours and learn something from it.

I will write again in a few days with a more detailed review of my first term as a dyspraxic teacher, including some reflections and advice for managing distance teaching and Google Classroom as a dyspraxic teacher, and managing distance learning as a dyspraxic student (along with some hopefully amusing anecdotes as always!).

Until then, do take care everybody,

– Misspraxic

Long, dark November: Held back but holding up

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During teacher training, I was warned all about the challenges of getting through November as a new teacher. This phenomena was referred to as something along the lines of “long, cold, dark November”, when October half-term is a distant memory and the Christmas holidays are too far away to count down to just yet. And here I am – this is no longer a figure of speech! The “cold” part is definitely exasperated by the current requirement to push all classroom windows wide open…

It feels like a small milestone to have already made it past October half term, though, as living a daily contradiction with the label of “lockdown” leaves education settings stretched and squeezed to the limit. I tried to reflect this absurdity in this week’s poem, and hope that it might be relatable for some, whether you identify with dyspraxic traits or otherwise.

Take care everyone,

-misspraxic 

Held means Hero

they make a bee line
for the C line tube
where we are all squeezed in:
them with their juice cartons from concentrate
and me with my brain cells concentrated
on just getting through the day,
on getting through to them
in an hourglass squeezed full of sardines
stuck against the frames
wedged open and our few screws
have come loose again
as they shiver the words:

"Miss, do we have to keep them open?"

but coats and mouths are zipped to close
down mentions of the C-word,
for this tube is held
by bleak Outlook pings
and crippling reminders 
that 'Held' means hero in German-
  Held back with 'can't's streaming down my cheeks,
  Held up through the missed minutes 
and unsaid pep talks on weary late nights
Holding us up through the missing links
that test us in tubes
squeezing to burst.
This tube is held…

Creativity in the corridors of coping

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I am the teacher tired of paceman-style manoeuvres that create chaos in the corridors of not coping

Creativity tends to be a major strength in dyspraxic adults and young people alike, as we can think “outside the box” in highly valuable ways. These ways might include, but are in no way limited to, creativity in art, music, and our use of language. Creative writing can be a cathartic practice for all of us, particularly in testing times, and I know that this is certainly the case for other dyspraxics too. When you are pushed to your limits, your struggle can fuel a creative energy that enables others to feel and connect with your experience. My students sharing their own powerful poems on handouts in the staffroom this week has motivated me to do the same.

This first poem is entitled “Corridors of coping”, and expresses some of the logistical challenges involved in starting as a teacher this September.

Corridors of coping

armed with dog-eared downside-up seating plans

scrawled with hieroglyphs that hold your gaze –

today’s performance is masked by a face drenched

in sanitised regrets. i only tried to  

sanitise my mind, yet my mind is a magnet 

for lost words stuck down the back of yesterday’s trimmer.

i misread my timetable and arrived five minutes late,

asking you to fill in today’s missing pages,

not to fill the room with your fits of giggles.

but i can decipher the codes      clues to your 

barrier to learning       familiar to my own    barrier to teaching

for i am the teacher who catches you 

dropping      to the floor without a back-up plan 

like a pile of clumsy papers lost       along the 

one-way maze at rush hour on a weekday.

i am the teacher tired of pacman-style manoeuvers

that create chaos in the corridors of       not coping.

i aim to be the teacher who builds a bridge past the haze, 

that unexpected rare breed of teacher, like the 

novelty of a poem unfinished

misspraxic © 2020

As always, feel free to get in touch with your thoughts or any questions via the website and do take care everyone,

– misspraxic

Out of time and one step behind: Misspraxic misses Awareness Week

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Storms of coping

I had planned a series of daily posts for Dyspraxia Awareness Week 2020, including sharing my own poems and illustrations to raise awareness of dyspraxia in these challenging times. However, I missed that boat, which sailed away three weeks ago in the storm that is coping as a new teacher in a pandemic – my endless to-do lists scrawled onto post-it notes lay strewn across my floor, alongside literally hundreds of dog-eared worksheets destined only for the recycling bin… To make up for missing Awareness Week, here is a timely(!) post about the challenges of managing your time as a dyspraxic adult, along with some worked strategies that can help.

Time seems to be in short supply as a dyspraxic teacher, yet time feels like the secret ingredient to survival. There needs to be sufficient time and mental space away to reflect on the “bad” lessons, to properly process the criticism from observations, and to feel satisfied enough with the “better” lessons. According to the Dyspraxia Foundation, time-management, planning and organisation are issues that present in most dyspraxics to some degree, and affect their experiences in both education and work. A quick search shows that time management tends to be a challenge specifically for dyspraxic teachers too. Timing and pace come under the Teacher Standards, yet a greater understanding of how dyspraxia affects timing and pace is important in discussions of teaching and learning. 

Teaching is a great performance, but I don’t pretend to be a perfect performer: I tend to be one step behind my beady-eyed students at least half of the time, and I know they know this too! The sound of “Miss, the date is wrong”, “Miss, we don’t have that on our sheet”, and “Miss, the board is frozen” are only too common occurrences in my classroom, which leave me wishing the remote-control could freeze the whole lesson at times, Hogwarts-style. Or even better, a rewind button to back-track on my dodgy explanations. This week, when I was in full flow with my noisy Year 8 class, I could have sworn I had ten more minutes left. I was determined to get my silence, insisting on “five minutes silent working” – I even dared to put a timer up on the board. But to what end? In less than a minute, the brief tranquility was shattered – most of the class was shouting out over my gentle voice: “Miss, the lesson is OVER. We’re going to be LATE. We need to GO”. I felt a deep sense of self-frustration with my mess-up of timings, yet again, despite thorough planning and best intentions to get this right.

To top things off, last week I lost track of the time and nearly paid for the consequences. I was multitasking again, trying to achieve five different tasks with ten different tabs open, flitting between them all and in reality achieving nothing. It was half past three and my teaching was finished for the day and I had the innocent aim of taking less work home with me – I was catching up on some lesson-planning, logging reports, tracking student data, marking tests, and then thought why not stick around to make some phone calls home. I was utterly caught up in an all-consuming bubble: somehow, it was now half past five. My line manager had made it clear to me at the start of the term: you must leave before 6pm, or the doors will lock. But this wasn’t clear enough for me. I seem to have to learn from experience…

Lockdown 2.0: Misspraxic is locked in school.

Armed with two Tesco bags full of exercise books to mark, I wobbled along to the School Reception at 17.50. I was in a state of panic when my keycard refused to open the doors. I took a deep breath, consoling myself, this can’t be possible, and I tried the outside doors. They were padlocked too – no luck there. I was reminded of that time in Paris, when I set off the emergency security alarm by pressing the big red button. Only this was worse, because there wasn’t anyone at the end of the intercom to hear me. Trapped. Just as I was starting to despair and give up on my hope of leaving the school for the evening, envisioning the worst from horror films, I was very grateful to see a member of the site team emerge. She wasn’t best amused, but did let me escape. It is in these moments that you either laugh or cry. Choosing to laugh comes from a place of strength and resilience, knowing that it could always be worse – after all, I know that I won’t have been the first OR last person to have got locked in the school. Hopefully – can anyone back me up?! 

Dodgy organisation anecdotes aside, here are some time-management strategies that really do work well for me: 

  • Break down to-do lists and use separate post-it notes for different classes – ideally different colours, to keep my thinking separate between the different groups. I recommend the strategies on Twinkl, to compartmentalise your to-do lists and prioritise. So as not to feel overwhelmed, limiting the list to 3-5 key actions can help. Organising the tasks in terms of priority (from non-negotiable to thing that can wait) helps me to feel less overwhelmed too. I have to physically tick off each task once I have completed it.
  • Stick to “cut-off times” – each evening, I aim to not to work beyond a certain time. Accepting that at some point you have done all that you can and sleep is more important. 
  • Prepare 1) lunch, 2) clothes and 3) bag the night before school – again, as a list of three actions to do before I can sleep, this makes it easier to remember.
  • Create mini-rewards for ticking off tasks on to-do lists – this helps me resist the urge to procrastinate. Easier said than done to complete one task properly rather than flitting between five different ones and not finishing any of them, but I try to complete tasks as they arise.
  • Similarly, plan the next lesson as soon as possible after the previous one – this logic also works for things like essay-planning and preparing presentations. When information is fresher in mind, you can make your future self grateful by at least setting up the steps for you to come back to later. In this way, I make use of ready-made templates for emailing, which might help you if you are a slow emailer like me!

My dyspraxic students struggle with timing and pace too – in their daily routines, this often presents itself in them arriving late to my lessons, mixing up which lesson they are in, having the right equipment or books but for the wrong day, and seeming like they are “in the clouds”. A large part of me being a teacher, of course, is needing to be the teacher I didn’t have myself – a teacher who noticed what made me different, for the right reasons. I find myself in the unique position of identifying with the student who can’t remember where he sits in my class, and take it seriously when the other students snigger at him. I feel for the student who bursts into tears about the low grade she got in the test, because I can see that she defines herself by it. I have admiration for the student who comes to my classroom to show me her purple Irlen lenses with pride: “Miss, look what’s finally arrived!” She puts them on for me and grins. I feel a surge of purpose and my why re-surfaces once more, after being knocked to the floor minutes earlier by my relentless year 9s. I think to myself, if only there could have been a teacher who encouraged me to use my coloured overlays and wear my coloured lenses, a teacher who could see beyond my quirks.

I’ll blog next with some thoughts on maintaining a sustainable well-being in the face of anxiety in education settings during this second lockdown. Take care everyone, and do reach out to me via the website if you have a comment or question.

– Misspraxic

Further links and research on time-management and dyspraxia:

Miss Praxic has lost the plot

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I’ve survived my first month as a teacher, and while I honestly can’t say “thrived” just yet, I wanted to update you on how it’s been.

Dyspraxia is associated with pejorative words like “impairment” and “disorder”, which bring to mind the deficit approach – a focus on what we can’t do, which can often be internalised. I certainly internalise it at times. As someone said to me last week, it can be hard to shake off the “dys”. Diss. Dissed, even by my own students, as they erupt into laughter when I collide with the desk and make the computer wobble. Another three bruises, thank you. Or when I send the board rubber flying halfway across the room (out of my red and yellow danger-taped teacher exclusion zone), or when I start trying to write on the board with the pen lid still on.

Finally, my shaky hand crafts an illegible scrawly script across the board. As soon as I’ve finished, cue the complaints and chuckles from my honest students: “Miss, we can’t read it.” Another interruption, and even worse, since it’s one I hear on average once a day: “Miss, the date is wrong again… why’s the date always wrong?” Here we go again. First impressions are everything, they say. Four weeks in and they know me now. It’ll be the same story for the rest of the term, and year. Don’t smile before Christmas? More like don’t cry before half term.

The one way system has been another adventure, with the yellow-painted arrows causing me to arrive minutes late to my own lessons in classrooms across the whole building. Lost year 7 students bombard me with questions of “where’s my Science room?” and “how do I get out of the building, Miss?” In my most convincing fake-it-till-you-make-it teacher-voice, I create the illusion of knowing exactly what I’m talking about, going on a very thorough round-trip of the whole science department with one student, before being picked up by the Head of Year. And when one nervous Year 7 had to escort me to the library, it felt like the blind leading the blind yet again.

“Consistent” is a word you hear a lot during teacher training. Teachers are meant to be scrupulously consistent. But being consistent requires a pretty good working memory too – something that not all of us are blessed to have. My mind wanders onto several questions in the same second: did I give X student a sanction or not? Was it another? Which student arrived late? Which student was talking over me? What was I going to tell them again? Despite lengthy planning, I forget which bit of the lesson I’m on and have to talk myself back through it in a cringey monologue, with everyone thinking I’ve lost the plot. Just like how I forgot to set any homework in my first two weeks. But the kids were probably grateful for that slip-up and for the free laughs I give them on a daily basis.

My Parisian traumas of disasters with the photocopying machines are fresh in my mind now too. I have had no more success with the printers at school – 10 takes to scan a document the right way up, then printing 30 double-sided A3 sheets instead of 15 single-sided A4 ones. My poor printing budget, but I’m used to this. The trimmer isn’t my friend either – I’ve cut through endless copies of sheets, splicing words in half and having to start from square one, five minutes before my lesson is timetabled to begin. Speaking of which, one teacher wasn’t well amused when I picked up his 30 test copies and mistook them as my own, leaving him without any tests in the next period. “Miss Praxic, did you happen to see a pile of test papers on the desk in our shared classroom? And did you take them?” In another one of my eventful test lessons, I had managed to leave the tests upstairs in the office. By the end of the day, the whole department had somehow heard about Miss Praxic’s latest dyspraxident.

The intense processing involved in decision-making has left me feeling drained on a daily basis, as I put all my energies into my strengths: being creative, being empathetic, being thoughtful enough. But my fragile processing system senses the strain and it lets me down. What do I say to student A with the challenging behaviour? Student B asks to go to the toilet – but is it genuine? Do I left her go? Instructions on how to record test data, or how to set work for isolating students all fades into dust collecting at the back of my mind, unless I record or write down my to-do lists.

The new routines, however, are at the forefront of my mind. Hand-sanitising seems to be an all or nothing activity – on one day last week, I didn’t only squirt it all over my worksheets, my board pens, my dress, but also all over my face mask, just for good measure. Don’t ask me how, but on the positive side, at least I was definitely 100% sanitised, unlike most of my students.

Before I left for London in August, my neighbour asked me if I had ever had a “transformative moment” – apparently, the “TM” comes when, at some point in a lesson, you suddenly realise that the class is enjoying this, and that you are too.  He told me, “You always know that you have it in you to be a really good teacher, and you have an inner confidence that you can deal with anything that comes up in the classroom. The next thought, perhaps at the end of the lesson, is, ‘Oh my God, I’m actually quite good at this!'”  I haven’t had such a moment yet, but I think I have been close at times.

During my teacher training, we were frequently reminded to go back to our “why” in challenging times: the reason I decided to become a teacher in a global pandemic. On some days, I have to search deep within to recall my “why” – but my “why” resurfaces in the form of emails of gratitude from my dyspraxic students’ parents, from my New to English students’ parents, and in comments from students who have decided that German is now their favourite subject. These little things make up a “why” that is just strong enough to make you keep going another day.

I’ll be back again on Monday with a short daily post to mark Dyspraxia Awareness Week – I will share a poem with you every day, to highlight different dyspraxic traits and how they can manifest in everyday situations.

-Miss Praxic

Misspraxic returns: A journey from dyspraxic student to teacher

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Madame Catastrophe à la fête foraine (Monsieur Madame) (French ...
Mademoiselle Catastrophe…
my francophone partner in crime?

When I was still a languages student at university from 2014-2018, I posted very actively to this blog. I took you through many of the frustrating yet amusing dyspraxidents that occurred during my time at university and on my Year Abroad, and aimed to prove what is possible in spite of a dyspraxia diagnosis. During this year, I survived and thrived as a language assistant, a volunteer teacher with refugees, a trilingual administrative assistant and an au-pair with French children. My Erasmus-funded year abroad feels far ago now. When I started writing this in the midst of a suspended teacher training placement and Brexit on the horizon, my distant memories of setting off security alarms in Paris and colliding with lampposts in Germany a few years earlier felt almost like a luxury. Following my year abroad, I successfully completed my undergraduate degree and a Master’s. I then went on to train to be a languages teacher, and regret not having returned to the blog to share the ups and downs with you all.

When I was still a languages student, I didn’t think or know that the path awaiting me was that of a teacher. In fact, it’s fair to say that I never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a journalist, an interior designer, a translator. But never a teacher. Partly because it was a profession I didn’t think I had the “right” character for. And indeed, earlier this year, when I was told that I might consider “changing my personality” (reinforced after being told to “leave my personality outside the door” in the corporate office I worked at in Paris in 2017), this doubt somewhat solidified the following itching thought: What if I am too dyspraxic to be a teacher? What if I just can’t do it?

Back in June, I took part in some research into student teachers’ perceptions of “success” in schools, reflecting on what “success” meant to me as a neurodivergent trainee teacher. It feels more necessary than ever to continue sharing my journey from a student to now teacher – and a lover of languages and the arts, despite the odds. Late diagnosis remains an issue, with many students slipping through the net. Language-learning for dyspraxics has yet to be explored in depth by previous writers and not much research has been conducted into the language-processing of people with Specific Learning Difficulties. Dyspraxia tends to be associated with “problems of perception, language and thought” (“speech apraxia” or “articulatory dyspraxia” can affect how people express themselves verbally and their pronunciation of words). But this doesn’t have to mean that dyspraxic people are automatically less able in language-learning – an argument I will come back to in future posts.

I’m very grateful to the people closest to me who encouraged me to start writing this blog again. The world has never been such a complex place, and having once been where my students are today – albeit in a less complex world context – I hope I can provide some encouragement. I continue to speak to fellow dyspraxics who might be put off languages in light of their reputation as “too difficult” for those with “language problems”. But I also address those who might never have heard of, or do not understand, dyspraxia and its implications for the mind and body, and for learning and teaching. In this way, I’m addressing my past teachers and lecturers, my current colleagues in teaching, and my family and friends. Above all, I write for myself – I might not be a student anymore, but I seek to continue learning about how dyspraxia affects my life and that of my students. I hope to be able to offer various perspectives from a learner and a teacher.

In this series of blog posts, I’ll continue to bring you reflections on my experiences as a young person / adult / student / teacher. This time, I’ll intersperse my reflections with humorous stories, poems, my own art and also research about dyspraxia. As I venture into a baptism of fire, learning how to be a new teacher in a London comprehensive in the middle of a pandemic, I aim to also provide some hope to those in similar situations and to improve understanding about what dyspraxia means for learning and teaching.

I hope you’ll join me again on my journey!

A bientôt,

– misspraxic

The “rentrée” and my “départ”

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Chantilly
Dramatic clouds at Chantilly

I started writing this post in mid-August, when both life at the office and life in Paris were considerably quieter. What people say is true: the city tends to empty out each August as a large proportion of parisiens go on holiday, leaving mostly tourists. The métro was generally quieter because of that, but it remained as busy as ever during rush hours. A year on from my summer school in Heidelberg, one thing has certainly not changed: I still find myself losing balance, slipping, and stepping on peoples’ toes. It makes it harder to “laugh along with myself” in Paris, though, because there are rarely smiles of amusement when this happens.

Louis Vuitton
Finally got around to visiting the excellent exhbition at Fondation Louis Vuitton: ‘l’Art africain‘

I mentioned in my last post that the family was going on holiday for most of the month of August. In their absence, I attempted to water their garden. Supposedly, this should be a manageable task that doesn’t take too long. The reality for me, and I imagine for many others who struggle with their coordination and spatial awareness, was the opposite. The greatest challenge was not tripping up in the hoops of the hose pipe as I moved from one area of the garden to another. I can only hope the family remained blissfully unaware of the stalks that snapped as a result of my awkward maneuvers around the garden… On a few occasions, water wouldn’t stop spraying out everywhere from the hose pipe. It took many attempts at fiddling with the setting and turning the lever backwards and forwards before I managed to stop the fast flow of water, by which time it was not just the poor patio that was covered in dispersed soil, but also my legs… thank goodness no neighbours were about at the time to witness the drowning.

Galerie Chantilly
Château de Chantilly – galérie des peintures

I made the most of my final month in Paris, by exploring most of the remaining musées and parcs on my to-do list. I was fortunate to have a few visits from friends and family during the final six weeks of my placement, which made it a lot easier to focus on office work during the week. I saw an incredible cabaret show at the Moulin Rouge, and experienced some great classical and jazz concerts indoors as well as at the Parc Floral. I have increased my tolerance to loud music – oddly enough, it hardly bothers me now (depending on the quality of course!). I enjoyed a few wonderful days with one of my German friends who came to visit – the photos above are courtesy of her talent! We had a great day in Chantilly together, visiting the château pictured above. A few days later, I travelled out of Paris by train again, to catch up with one of my French friends in the town of Auxerre. Back in Paris, I also fitted in some final visits to art museums before the end of my placement. My favourite museums within central Paris include the following: Musée Marmottan, Musée de l’Orangerie, Musée national Eugène Delacroix, Musée d’Orsay, and Musée Rodin. Go and visit their exhibitions if you get the chance! Needless to say, of everything I know I will miss, I will miss Paris’ vibrant arts’ scene the most.

arc de triomphe

It is now the beginning of September, widely known as “la rentrée” to parisiens, who have been reluctantly returning to work – and school – following the quiet month of August. The métro is no longer so calm. The office is no longer empty. There is once again a sense of colleagues buzzing around the office, after two weeks of less activity. The rushing-around starts all over again, and fortunately, it is now that I leave – just in time! My départ from the hectic world of Paris was not dramatic at all – my year abroad ended quietly, in contrast to some very loud moments along the way.

I feel a mix of relief and pride as I claim my seat on the Eurostar train back to London. I saw my final placement through to the end, an achievement which at times felt doubtful. I have proven to myself that I can often accomplish a lot more than what I initially consider to be possible. With the right support along the way, a year abroad can absolutely be realistic for a student with specific learning difficulties.

I intend to continue my blog in time, with advice on some of the practical challenges I have not been able to detail in my posts, and more reflections on what I have learned this year. I will also update you on how my final year at university goes! Misspraxic adventures, although not abroad for the time being, will definitely continue.

Thank you to anyone who has read my posts this year. Thanks to your support, I have achieved my biggest challenge yet. I will now be taking a break from scanning machines for the foreseeable future!

Love,

–misspraxic