When kiddo was learning to write, their teacher—who was a beautifully kind, caring, compassionate person who even thanked me for making them aware of certain kinds of left/handed supplies, because their new toddler was a lefty and they’d never even thought about it—was teaching the kids a method for word spacing that involved placing their free index finger down at the end of each word and then writing the next one.
Pause for a moment, especially if you’re right-handed—and I’m being serious here, physically do this if you have two functioning arms and hands—and grab a writing tool in your left hand. Now place your right index finger down and try to start writing a word next to it.
Yeah. Great technique, huh? Really convenient and comfortable and easy. 🙃
I sent in a small baggie of small popsicle sticks I’d custom painted for them and labeled with their name for kiddo to use instead, but ultimately they stopped because it wasn’t as convenient when nobody else had to get something out.
Writing in English is difficult enough when you’re left-handed (most of our letters are designed with pull motions, but lefties must push), but even other foundational basics are made more difficult than they have to be, because their needs aren’t considered, even in situations where overt hostility isn’t intended.
Even now, in an older grade, they’re now all sharing a lot of the supplies, but my kiddo has their own pair of labeled lefty scissors they keep in their personal cubby. Teacher was 100% chill with me sending them in, but didn’t even consider to take the step further when I’d asked about whether or not they had them to just… get some for all the lefties. I know there are other kids, know some of them personally. (I made a set of writing spacing sticks for the single one that I knew of back in 1st grade.)
Regarding computer mice? Kiddo had standardized testing last year. They do it on chromebooks now at their school. They did their entire first day with the track pad instead of the mouse, because none of the teachers proctoring or assisting even knew you COULD switch the sides/toggle a setting to switch which button was the dominant select. We happened to have one at home thanks to remote learning during Covid’s early days, so that night we sat down together and found the setting ourselves so they could fix it the following day. But on a student account at school, they couldn’t change that setting. And? None of those teachers knew enough about technology to be able to override it. So even when I went above and beyond and personally sought out the skills and tools to help my child level the playing field on their own, the teaching staff was so unaccustomed to even considering this as a need or problem, that they weren’t able to remove the incredibly basic barriers to a fair schooling experience.
And this is honestly a good school, with staff that care and work hard and take 99% of bigotry concepts very seriously, teach about truth and compassion and how to recognize at this kid level a lot of the basic seeds that can grow into hate and hurt and also healing and helping. But the fact that left-handed needs are different? It is so ingrained to default to right-handed layouts that even left-handed staff don’t conceptualize these problems, because they were taught the exact same way.
