Life of a Dyspraxic Teacher

I first discovered I had dyspraxia when I was reading about it as part of my teaching degree and realised I was looking at a profile of myself. I had always been a bit different to my peers at school, a feeling of being odd but not understanding quite why that was the case. Out of nowhere, I had the beginnings of an explanation.

My initial attempt to qualify as a teacher did not go too well thanks to a tricky placement in an inner-city school with much younger students than I had ever worked with before. My confidence knocked, I put it on the backburner. I became a teaching assistant at a special needs school with no real intention of ever going into teaching.

Over the subsequent few years, I began to understand myself a lot better. I read a lot about dyspraxia, from journal articles to guidance for parents. The most helpful thing was reading about lived experiences and discovering how so many other people had faced the same challenges I had faced. The online dyspraxia community helped me learn that dyspraxia is not simply about being clumsy, it is something that affects the way my brain processes information. That might include tasks like finding it hard to ride a bike but it is also much more than that, from needing time to process an instruction to difficulty in organising my thoughts.

Eventually, I ended up having another go at gaining my teaching qualification and with strong support from the school I worked at it. The process proved surprisingly straightforward the second time around. I worried that my dyspraxia would be a barrier but I gradually realised that it was actually a strength.

One of the things dyspraxia has gifted me with is empathy. One of my biggest strengths is the relationships I am able to build with my students. I teach autistic students and I sometimes reflect that I can probably understand them quite well because I am also neurodiverse and my brain works similarly to theirs.

Dyspraxia also means I think in a different way to people with neurotypical brains and that is excellent for problem solving. The needs of my students are hugely complicated and each individual presents new challenges. I have often been able to come up with new solutions that can make a difference to a student that most people wouldn't have thought of.

Dyspraxia does present challenges in my teaching. I regularly trip over table legs and once fell flat on my face during a PE lesson. Every now and then I am presented with something that requires fine motor skills such as tying a student's shoelace and have found this tricky. I have learned not to get flustered and to get a colleague to help. I think it's really useful to understand our own personal strengths and weaknesses and I feel that on the whole, I can do that.

Colleagues often praise me for being so organised. I always find this odd because it's not at all how my brain feels. I have to work hard to put in systems that ensure everything is planned and prepared for in advance, with diaries and lists and routines, because my brain can't manage these things on the fly. I know other teachers who are far less prepared and I know my lessons would fall apart if I was like that. The classroom requires so much processing and flexible thinking which can be a challenge but I've gradually learned how to manage this- it's far better to pause and allow my brain to catch up than it is to muddle through and hope for the best.

Teaching is a career that has no endpoint, you can always learn more and become better. I think this suits me and I know I would struggle to have the attention span to cope with an office job. I have come to realise that dyspraxia, despite all the challenges it has brought me, has also allowed me to thrive in this career.

Written by Dan Hough