A MATTER OF GAZE: EXPERT TALKS
Get a taste of the conversations with our guests, Magdalena Strauch, Hristina Hristova & Morgan Glew and Niklas Satanik below. If the topics intrigued you, head to our YouTube channel where you can watch the full recording of all three talks.
Education for All: The Importance of Accessible Schooling with Magdalena Strauch
The first from the series of Expert Talks brought forward how a child's socioeconomic background influences their educational possibilities in Austria and the impact it has on society if a large number of young people leave compulsory education without basic skills.
Austrian schooling system
MS: We start going to primary school at the age of six. Before that, there's kindergarten, and then at the age of six, you start with primary school for four years. There are about 25 kids in one class with mainly one teacher teaching all or most of the subjects, and then at the end, at the age of 10, we split kids into different types of schools. I think this is pretty specific for Austria; there are not a lot of countries that separate kids at the age of 10 already, but we do, and we have two types of schools—one is a middle school (so is the one I'm teaching at) which is for kids between the age of 10 to 14, and then the other type of school you can go to is a kind of high school—a gymnasium and you can graduate with your A Levels there if you want to.
That would be for another eight years until you're 18. In theory, there's no difference between the first four years of a gymnasium and a middle school.
In urban areas, people can choose between a middle school and a gymnasium. The problem is that which type of school you go to depends mainly on your socio-economic background. So, the kids who come from disadvantaged backgrounds in terms of their socio-economic situation go to a middle school, and the other kids usually go to a gymnasium. That's a huge problem because you have this separation at the age of 10.
The kids coming from disadvantaged backgrounds already lack two years in terms of skills and education, so to say, compared to kids coming from privileged backgrounds. Then again, it gets a bit complicated because middle school ends at the age of 14, so they should have spent eight years in school—in Austria, it's compulsory to go to school for nine years—so they need at least one more year, unless they already had to repeat one of their years in which case they have nine years already. So after middle school, again, in theory, they can do an apprenticeship. They can continue with higher education and also do their A levels, but it's very difficult because of their circumstances, the challenges they're facing, and also because they lack a lot of skills.
Entry point—two years behind
MS: The school system relies very much on the parents being able to support and help their kids at home in terms of their school work and their homework, maybe because in school the teacher explains a new topic, you practice together and then if you do not understand that because perhaps it was too fast or too difficult for you, the school system in Austria relies on the parents that they are at home and are capable of explaining it to their kids or that they're able to pay a tutor who then does it.
Of course, kids from disadvantaged backgrounds don't have that support system—that's one of the reasons why they already lack skills and why they're two years behind. Most of the kids I teach do not speak German as their first language, and that starts with kids who just came to Austria and do not speak any German at all, and then some who were born here but do not always speak German as their mother tongue. So you have very different levels of German, which also makes it difficult to teach them all simultaneously because, again, in middle school, you have between 20 and 25 kids in one classroom.
Hidden impact
MS: Another issue is that teachers need to be aware constantly that whatever kind of emotions they enter the classroom with, the kids will feel and notice that immediately. They are like constant mirrors. If you're stressed, and you enter the classroom stressed, the children will probably be very active simply because you entered like that. You often are not even aware of it, so I think it also needs to start there in terms of teachers themselves having strategies of being aware of the fact how much they influence the classroom even on this level where they don't even intend to because you just come with your your own emotions, your mood, which is changing of course, it is stressful it is very challenging to teach 50 minutes and you have 5 minutes break, another 50 minutes and then you enter the next classroom. Maybe someone, like another colleague, wants to talk to you on your way to the classroom, or something happened, and you're upset. Hence, teachers need to be aware of that and need to have strategies for their own mental health because if you don't show up and you're not feeling well or not fully present again, it has an influence on the kids. I think that having your own strategies would change a lot already.
Also, because with everything you do in the classroom, you are a role model. They constantly watch you; of course, they learn, and the kids learn on many more levels than we intend to teach them. I enter, and I want to do geography with them, but they learn so many more things simply by how I show up, talk to them, talk to colleagues, all those little things you don't really think about…
Watch the full conversation below:
Magdalena Strauch currently works in a middle school (Mittelschule) in the 15th district. She is a Teach For Austria Fellow in her second year, which means that she teaches kids between the ages of 10 to 15. A lot of her pupils come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Before her current job in school, she worked for the educational initiative Teach For Austria. Teach For Austria has the vision that every child has the possibility to fulfill their potential—regardless of their parent’s income or education. Strauch has a bachelor’s degree in “development studies” and a master’s degree in “leadership, politics and management” and likes to take on responsibility for societal change.
Autism and Masking: Inclusive Means Diverse with Hristina Hristova & Morgan Glew
In this talk, we looked deeper into a personal experience of attending a school in Austria as an autistic person, what the role of the assistant is, and how we can communicate the autistic experience to a neurotypical mind.
Before the diagnosis
MG: I started going to an Austrian School, a typical Catholic Austrian School, and this was kind of problematic because they were very traditional, and everyone had to work exactly as the teacher said. It was very opposite of how I function. I remember specifically the math teacher—there was this problem that I had with division—I didn't understand how division works because the method that she was showing me was just completely strange and still, to this day, is extremely strange to me, and so I asked my mother at the time, and she showed me how she does it, and it was super simple to me. I could immediately pick up on it and then show the teacher my homework using my mother's method. All of the results were obviously correct, but it was considered wrong because it was not how the teacher did it. There was more importance on the way it was done than if the result was correct.
Generally, in every way, I seemed to be somewhat different from others, not alien per se, but it was just that all the things that I would think of were completely different from what everyone else would think of. My humor was utterly different, and back then, nobody found it very funny except me, which has changed a lot, but that's another topic… I just couldn't understand everyone else, and nobody could understand me except my mother because my mother and I are extremely similar.
I tried to ignore it, I suppose, and that obviously didn't work out. I started to get bullied more, and things started to get rougher; at one point, it even came to physical violence. I never really acted out my personal frustration in a violent way; it was always only because I wasn't being left alone—when I was, I didn't really care about the others. It was a difficult time for me, and it was around this time I started to develop depression.
International School
MG: The reason behind the change was that one of the teachers was actually encouraging the bullying, and that's when my mother recognized that this wasn't going to work. We went to the director, and the director said that they basically could not do anything about it, and that's why the decision came to change schools. In the International School, it was completely different; not only the system but the people were also entirely different. In terms of the teachers, I think I just got exceptionally lucky because I didn't have a single bad teacher; perhaps there were a few grumpy teachers, but only to a reasonable degree, in my opinion. Everybody was nice, but what was special was the fact that everybody had completely different backgrounds and because of that, nobody really cared too much about the differences because everybody was different. The fact that I had a different sense of humor was sort of a given because everybody else also had differing senses of humor, and we sort of had to make do with the common ground.
Even then, I wasn't really fitting in with the rest of the crowd because there were still group things and such, but it wasn't to a point where people would bully me. It was much more comfortable because I was left entirely alone and, at some point, even started to make friends with, well, the outcasts essentially, and so we formed our little group of everybody who didn't fit in a group.
The assistant role
HH: In school, it means someone goes with a child into class and helps them with whatever they need. You're not supposed to take the teacher role but help the children with their needs—specific autistic needs—if there are some social problems, for example. Or they need a particular room for some classwork and things like that.
In working with private clients, I'm quite often required by parents to talk to teachers in schools because even though there is a diagnosis of autism, the kids still have extreme problems; because a lot of teachers, I believe they want to help, but don't really get what does it mean that autism is not something that you see as any other neurodiversity, you just don't see it, and therefore we are living in a society where the behavior is explained by the kids or the parents being bad or something like this but we don't think about the diagnosis and what it means.
Often, there are big things, of course, and there is a lot of work required, but sometimes there are very small things where you just need to put headphones on the child, very simple things to solve the problem and instead, the teachers can still go into being traumatic to the child and how the child is so loud or aggressive, but they don't go into the problem. I want to believe that teachers want to help, and it's really the case of missing information. It doesn't matter whether you are neurodivergent or neurotypical; behind every behavior is a reason, and the problem is how we explain that behavior.
Watch the full conversation below:
Hristina Hristova has worked with people on the autism spectrum since 2017. She currently works in one-on-one settings and in small groups of autistic people using the TEACCH method, as well as in school assistance for autistic students in Austria. She is a part of the NGO “im spektrum”, which consists of people on the autism spectrum, as well as family members and professionals working with them, all with many years of experience with the finer details of autism. The Team of “im spektrum” and Hristina, as a part of it, believe that the word “autism” is currently filled with generalizations and false clichés, even in the professional fields, which needs to be changed.
Morgan Glew has been diagnosed since 2018 with Asperger syndrome, a type of autism. He works in IT and uses his autism to help give him an edge in his work life. However, he also has spent much of his life trying to understand the intricacies of social behavior, or to be blunt, “normal conversation.” As such, he has reached a level of social capabilities outside the usually expected norm of a stereotypical autist. He is part of the NGO “im spektrum,” an organization created with the goal of correcting the false images and stereotypes about autistic people that have become so widespread and showing people just how diverse and exceptional they can really be.
“im spektrum” is a group of people convinced by the idea that our society is ready to understand autism as a whole and how it fits into our lives. The team consists of people on the autism spectrum, as well as family members and professionals working with them, all with many years of experience with the finer details of autism. If you are interested in their project, you can contact them at office@imspektrum.at or learn more at www.imspektrum.at
Alternative Schooling: Benefits for all? with Niklas Satanik
Together with a teacher Niklas Satanik, we discussed alternative schooling systems and how they can benefit all neurotypes.
A day in "alternative" school
NS: The children come to school from 7:30 to 9:00 am. They have time to do their exercises or to take it home after school as homework, so at the beginning of a day, they have the choice to either sit and do the work or to take it home and instead play for that one hour. Then there is the morning circle to check in to see how many kids are there and to let the teachers talk about the daily program—that takes maybe 15 minutes. After that, the first part of the day is traditional frontal learning for one and a half hours. But during that time, they also have the space to see how they feel, and they can ask to sit in an individual place if it's too much for them or if it's too fast, they can take their time, have their own space and then come back—so they still have these possibilities even during the frontal learning. After that is a 10-minute break for eating or drinking, and after that, there are different options each day. For example, I have a movement class on Mondays and a creative class on Tuesdays, and they can choose what they want to do. It's a space for free learning, and the kids can choose what they want to learn during that time. That is why there is no need for a longer break; it's already a free learning space where they can play with other kids, take care of chickens in the garden, or ask the teacher for material on what they want to learn that day.
Conflict resolutions
NS: The kids are led to talk about their feelings to develop emotional maturity. To recognize that if I feel a certain way, this is the emotion behind it and to work with it.
When there is a conflict where part A and part B are fighting, and you don't know who started it—usually, from my experience, if you were seen to start something, you were the "bad one," and the other is the "good one," or you wouldn't be asked at all what happened and get punished—so we don't work like that. We ask what has happened, and everybody can say their side, and you repeat it to them, which is an important method to solve conflicts. There are minor consequences, for example, when the child destroys something important for everybody in the school, like a piano, they can't use it for two weeks. And, of course, we sit together without the others and talk about it again within the context of their overall behavior.
Accessibility
NS: Financial accessibility is a big topic. In our school and the kindergarten I worked at before, parental income was considered when it came to the fees. So, if you earn less, you pay less. Many parents I've met have said or still say that if it's important for me to have my child there, I do everything to make it possible. But for some, like single parents, for example, it might not be possible.
But there were problems when we had a group with more parents with lesser income; we couldn't afford to pay people working there, which was a problem. So it's like we can take one single mother, but we can't take four because we don't get any support from the state.
Watch the full conversation below:
Niklas Satanik has been working in the social work field for 20 years. He collected his experience in different places, such as working in the streets of Andhra Pradesh, India and giving music workshops for children living on the streets of Russia. After that, he worked for five years at a home for people with disabilities. For the past 15 years, Satanik spent his time in an outdoors-based Kindergarten, raised his two kids, and for two years now, he has been working at a private school as a Freizeitpädagoge in Ausbildung. During all those years, he also trained himself to play different percussion instruments which he played in various bands or performed as a solo artist.
The interviews were edited for clarity.