Teacher training - comments on our article - Views on lefthanders and writing
We posted an article about Teacher Training and Left handed Children in March 2012 and received a huge response, with over 200 comments totalling some 30,000 words and hundreds of emails - this is certainly the biggest response to anything we have ever posted.You can see the original article "Teacher Training and Left handed Children" here
and the follow up article with conclusions from the initial feedback here
A lot of people told us about their experiences and those of their children with writing problems and the level of support they got (or at least didn't get!) from teachers. Here is a selection:
- As a youngster myself the only class I ever failed was penmanship because the teacher didn’t know what to do with me
- I was constantly having my writing book straightened” so that I had to write with my hand smudging the words I had written. I write with my book/paper sideways to write toward myself. Teachers should be made aware that whatever the position of the book there is no right” way, only the comfortable way. To top it all, I got marked down on occasion for scruffy writing.
- Little attention is paid to establishing good writing practices for left handers. Left handers often need special attention to make sure that they are holding pencils in the right grip and positioning the paper in the right way. This does not happen in my experience.
- At school I had a bad time with handwriting - my handwriting was deemed poor, careless and illegible” No help was offered as to how I could improve. It wasn’t until I was introduced to Italic writing an bought a left handed Italic pen that things improved. Left handed fountain pens make a big difference and now my writing is considered pretty O.K. Don’t ever try and change a left hander, whether child or adult. I was once asked if I would not find it easier to use my right hand to which I replied About as easy as you would to use your left hand”
- If trying to teach joined-up writing to left-handers, don’t punish them if they don’t manage it. I write capital Ns from right to left to this day, and form letter Os by drawing a clockwise circle. This meant that when trying to write joined-up (which I still don’t) at school, I used to go round and round in circles until finally I sling-shot off to the right to form the next letter. I also cross Ts and Fs from right to left. I only realised these differences in adulthood.
- As for handwriting schooling from 41/2 - 7 years was a waste of time, he suffered arm pain because he had to do it the school's way, he is left handed but I cried on deaf ears. School became a chore for him. He is just about average now but if he had had the correct left handed nurturing in those early years then maybe things would be different.
- My 8yr old is in Grade 3 in Australia. They copy a list of spelling words each day for a week as part of their homework. I have had to ask the teacher if the four days can be done in reverse across the page. ie Fri to Mon instead of Mon - Friday. Every time my child wanted to copy the next days words into the next column, they were hidden under her hand. The Teacher had not even thought about that.
- I don’t know if this is the same for many people but as a child I would write certain letters backwards.
- My parents were proactive with my writing and getting the right tools but I still had teachers who thought my writing was messy” because I didn’t write certain letters the way they wanted, I have had to help my cousin who is the only left handed person in his family by pointing out to my aunt and uncle the reason he was having difficulty is that his handwriting sheets were all for right handers and as soon as they got the right ones by pursuing it with the teachers he was fine. In my experience unless someone has experience of being left handed then it doesn’t cross their mind a lot of the time that there are different ways things are done, I constantly had to swap seats with my right handed neighbour as we kept bumping elbows when writing and yet it was also inferred that it was my fault!!
- In elementary, I remember my cursive assignments being graded poorly because it did not look just like the guidelines! My teacher humiliated me in front classmates nearby, saying aloud that I got a C on the assignment and compared my work to the work of a classmate (who was right-handed). Teachers need be aware of styles for left-handers and to encourage students to be unique, but still write legibly. In addition, parents must understand the difficulties for a left-hander in a right-handed world. Being the only left-hander in my family, no one understood what I was going through.
- Nobody showed me how to write left handed and I started using the hook style. This is a big problem with any sort of ink as the writing becomes smudged. My inability to write legibly and quickly was always a disadvantage in exams. It held me back in the eleven plus but I still passed. At secondary school I switched myself to an italic writing style and adopted Osmiroid fountain pens and their left handed nibs. These allowed a better hand position even with the paper straight. I continued to suffer at GCE O” level A” level and as a undergraduate. It took me longer to write my Ph.D. thesis than it might otherwise have done. What hurts me is that I can find more useful advice on writing left handed in five minutes on the internet than I was ever taught at school.
If you have anything to add, please leave a comment using the box below.
Links to the other pages of results from this project so far:
The original article "Teacher Training and Left handed Children"
Follow up article on initial feedback and comments
Detailed Comments on teacher training and left-handed children
Teacher experiences and lack of guidance
Positive comments on teachers and lefthandedness
Views that teachers should NOT provide special guidance for left-handers
Equipment problems (scissors, desks, computers, other items)
Advice and guidance to help lefthanders
Comments 54
I do still make my check marks backward though.
As I am growing up this was not affecting me at all as I am aware. But currently, I am at this huge mental breakdown with anger that why they have done such foolishness and never accepting that they were wrong. What keeps me bugging day and night is they don't even accept that they are wrong
Sorry but I'm a left-hander and even I didn't think about that. Unless you've just spent five hours reading manga, it's very natural to read and write starting on the left side of the paper.
My cooperating teacher when student teaching, would not let me write on the chalk board until I could write without without smearing the line above. So I had to practice every afternoon until my writing met her standards. That carried over to my writing on paper.
Because of the ridicule I took as a youngster, I did research about left-handed writing. I have worked diligently to allow any child to write in a manner that is comfortable to them, as long as others can read what has been written. This has lead to fewer problems for all children in learning howto write.
Being left-handed has been difficult in so many areas of my life: sewing, knitting, crocheting, even playing cards, as I arrange them left to right, as in reading. Others arrange them right to left. When dealing with a partner, this is problematic.
Thanks for an opportunity.
Do we really need to change the way hes printing? Its taking a big toll on him!!
Tiffany how is your little one getting on now? I see its been a few months since this post.
By her teaching me to angle my papaer opposite to what a right hander does when I write my hand and arm are at the same angle to the paper as what right handers are. Therefore I am not smudging or covering up what I have already written.
I will remember my first grade teacher as long as I live and always thank her for allowing me to write as normal or right handed people do.
I think the most important thing you can do for your son is to advocate for him and his brilliance. Do not let him be placed in special education unless he absolutely needs it and it is not a result of his left handedness. Cursive is not a required skill anymore thanks to technology. If the teacher continues to fuss about his letter writing then demand that either the teaching style be accommodating to left-handed children or that he uses a laptop in class to complete his writing assignments (the latter of which is much more congruent with the modern labor market).
Let's make it abundantly clear. Any teacher who doesn't take proper account of the needs of left-handed pupils isn't doing his or her job properly. Any teacher who tries to force a left-handed child to use the right hand instead is persecuting the child. The only thing that will stop this sort of thing happening is constant parental vigilance, and it would help if childcare professionals were trained to identify lefty children at an early age (just as they are trained to check for problems of sight or hearing, for example) and to alert parents to the probability that they will have to fight to ensure the child's teachers take proper account of the child's physiological difference.
How times changed.
I remain (obviously) left handed but growing up I became ambidextrous at pretty much everything other than writing - very handy for tennis, rounders etc at school. I always used to be on the winning team as I would hold the bat with my left hand until the last minute and then swop to my right.
Being a leftie doesn't make me different to anyone else... but has made me better in other respects!
Learning to knit was also a problem. After going into the school to see the teacher who had really upset me, my mother eventually taught me to knit (in the usual way as she was not lefthanded) and in time I became competent enough to work out my own patterns. I also got more help at home with sewing and I remember that I earned a badge in Guides as a seamstress. I went on to train as a dress designer and had to make many of the garments I designed while training. (I actually think using a sewing machine is easier for a left hander. I know the controls have to be changed with the right hand but there is more room for the left hand to guide the work under the needle and support any heavy fabric.) I some times hand-sew with one hand and sometimes with the other. Although I think it is mostly left, it just depends on what feels best at the time. I have always used right handed scissors.
Going back to my secondary school days (1950s), I never succeeded in 'serving' a tennis ball! The only sporting activities I was any use at were netball and swimming. The school also taught hockey, lacrosse, ( both with equipment for right handers) and cricket. I was too young to think that there could be left handed equipment with which I might have done better, or that the tennis raquet and cricket bat could be used with either hand, and it obviously never occurred to the sports mistresses.
My feelings regarding whether left handers at school need special help are ambivalent. In a still very righthanded world I think that left handers need to learn to cope with difficulties. Ironing them out in a 'sheltered' environment is not really helpful. But teachers do need to understand the problems facing left handers and encourage them to find solutions, rather than refusing to admit that there are problems. They also need to accept that left handers may be slow at some activities. It does not mean they are stupid or dim. With all my difficulties, at age ten I still managed to pass the entrance exam to an independant Girls' Grammer School and, at turned fifty(!), to get to University and obtain a dual honours degree!
My granddaughter, the only one of 6 grandchildren who is left handed, is a bright child who is also apparently 'slow' at school. It still goes on. Isn't it time Teacher-training colleges devoted some time in their curricula to this issue?
Lighting was also a problem because it cast shadows over my page. THEN, I became a teacher! I spent a whole summer teaching myself to print beautifully so I would be a good example for my students. I also acknowledged all my left-handed students and encouraged them with their written work. I am still not completely happy with my cursive writing but to be fair, I have never tried the proper pens.
I've sewed my clothes since I was 10 years old and made drapes with my Mother. Would you believe that I was in my late 30's before I was given left-handed scissors????? All those years, I thought cutting material was just a difficult chore!! Now I have left-handed scissors in every room.
On a trip to Boston, I found a left-handed store and went crazy. I bought myself a left-handed potato peeler!!! Absolute heaven!!! What a difference!!
I hope all parents are aware of the difficulties of a left-handed child in a right-handed world. Imagine how a pair of scissors made my world so much easier and I had to wait until I was an adult to experience it????
My mother is left handed and has a good neat style and though she was not forced to change hands she was forced to straighten the page so write left to right and not down the page as it were. She must have been pressured fairly agressively to do this because being left handed I used to turn the page and curl my wrist around to stop the ink from smearing and to be able to read what I had written more easily but she'd belt be across the back of the head and get me to write "properly" every time I was seen to do this. Needless to say I had exquisitely scrappy writing initially and was constanly criticized for this at school. The introduction of ballpoint pens was a saving grace for me. The smear was not so bad. It certainly was a case of find your own way.
I never learned to write "backhand". I write exactly opposite to a right handed person. I cannot in any way shape or form write backhand. I really don't know how they do it. How I hated that the windows in the classroom were always on your left side so they threw a shadow across your work. I always tried to sit as far away from the windows as possible to prevent shadows.
90* to allow space for movement of their arm.
i learnt to use right-handed school scissors out of sheer frustration.
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