Six years ago I quit my last full time dev job, moved to the big city, failed some startups, got job offer as a substitute teacher at the local high school, been doing that ever since.

Being a teacher and following a class over 2-3 years is like having a company with employees whom you have to teach everything, but if you teach them good they can become useful quite quickly.

This year I have taken on a "special" class where many have learning disabilities but some are literal geniouses.

Very hard to lecture about something that grabs all of their attentions.

So if you have any good tips that is more than welcome.

Also I kinda forgot about this app for many years but I remember we used to have a really good community here, so nice to be back here.

Looks like meat is back on the menu boooooois

The biggest problem is in my opinion that many people with learning disabilities have a very short fuse.

It's often not even their own fault. They're just very insecure - and angry - because everyone treats them like a numb nut, even worse insults them.

So first advice is patience and listening. Don't patronize, they need to find the solution on their own, even if it takes a few tamper tantrums.

Second advice is: Don't pile up on the frustration. If someone has for example dyslexia, reduce the amount of cognitive tasks they need to do. Read out the questions, go more into a verbal problem solving mode, reflect with them... teach them that they can do the same - e.g. using TTY, letting the smartphone read texts aloud for example.

Most disabilities have such forms of "once you find the right tools, it's a lot easier to handle".

The last advice, though that is really really hard, is to incorporate other teachers / family / community.

If the parents at home or other teachers add to the frustration pile, it's like Don Quixotes riding against windmills....

@IntrusionCM that is very good advice indeed, thank you!

Did you just get sick of dev in general or what?

@ars1 not really, I just needed a break and ended up approaching the problem in a different way

Instead of fixing bugs in shitty code I now prevent shitty code from being written

Programming ppl instead of cpus 🤭

On the topic of attention:
Now these things may sound pretty basic, and "begginer teacher tips" and you may already know them, in which case feel free to ignore, but I was surprised how many teachers were not aware of them so just in case:
- Hands. Talk a LOT with your hands, make gestures, shapes, move them when you speak, point etc'. The more you move them, the more attemtion it grabs the eye.
- Be mobile, walk a lot around your board, walk while you speak. Don't teach by standing in place! switch between being in the right side of the room and the left side, our brains have an entire mechanism of giving attention to moving objects.
- Varry your voice: Don't be monotone, it's very hard to follow something of constant volume and tone, it very quickly becomes "white-noise" to the brain, vary both your volume and your tone, match the energy of the room and of the topic.
- Get excited! We are monkeys, monkey see monkey excited, monkey get excited too. If whatever you're talking
. . .

. . .
- Get excited!(Cont.) If you're excited about whatever you're talking about, your students will get excited about it too. If you look/sound bored they will get bored too. Literally a part in our brain is programmed to mirror emotions and state of whoever we look at, abuse this.
- Make it funny. Whatever they laugh about they will remember 10 times better, and laughing creates a small mental rest moment, and refills the students with energy and a good mood, but more importantly builds a good relationship with the class(see next point).
- Build a good relationship with the class. Not specifically with students individually but with the class as a whole, the more the class feels comfortable as a class(as a single unit) and comfortable with you, the easier it will be with them to listen to you and the more they will feel comfortable to ask questions and generally have a good time, which also helps a lot with staying focused.

There's probably more points which I currently don't remember, but I hope at least one of those can be of help.

Oh, also, forgot about that:
- Involve the class. Turn the lecture into "ping-pong" between you and the class, instead of just answering a question from a book/board/screen or starting a new topic, ask the students instead, let make some guesses and let them express their opinions, You'll both do good for the creativity schools so like to crush, but also create an atmosphere where they feel like they can freely try and be wrong without judgement. Even if the answer is completely wrong, but sound interesting or creative, reward them with a "That's not the answer I was looking for, but I really like where you went with it, that's a great guess/idea!". Create an atmosphere of "we" instead of "Me and you". Ofc with this comes being careful of "do not confuse good atmosphere with friendship, I am not your *friend*. I'm just far away from being an enemy".
You'll also see that almost every real problem you teach, at least one student will be at least somewhat close to an answer.

@SoldierOfCode I agree 100% with everything you just said, you obviously know what youre talking about so thank you for your advice!