Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My coworker is a nice person with a communication disorder. He’s relatively new to public education (was DOGEd) and is getting used to being a para. He takes his job seriously, but has had almost no training to prepare him. He also watches a lot of teacher influencers on social media, which I think leads to the problem:

He uses inaccurate and sometimes inflammatory language to describe what other staff do. He’s loud when he does this.

For example, our school requires teachers model any new skill before having students practice it. If I want to teach how to conjugate -ar verbs, I can’t just list the rules for doing so. I have to demonstrate doing it on the board and think aloud while doing so. He loudly asked me, why are you spoon-feeding them? I explained the school’s expectation to him, but a passing colleague heard his comment.

Another time, he said I was “engaging in a push out” after I asked a student to stop brushing her waist-length hair during instruction. He said she probably is secretly ND and stimming. He was more upset than she was until his defense of her which made the other kids stare at her. I told him his comment was inappropriate, but now I feel like I need to tell him (privately, of course) to adjust his language. We have 9 more months of school.

Knowing his disability, AITAH?

To be fair, you yourself seem to focus on irrelevant details and overly descriptive language, which makes you come across as a bit of a drama queen and in fact TAH.

Why does it matter what length student’s hair was? (is brushing waist length hair somehow more unacceptable than brushing short hair during instruction time?) Why is it relevant that the new coworker was originally doged?