Teacher: My Tourette’s won’t hold me back
A TEACHER who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome has vowed the condition will not hold back her career.
Natalie Davidson’s teaching is often interrupted with her involuntarily shouting out expletives and other inappropriate phrases.
Her secondary school pupils say they are unfazed by the outbursts.
But Natalie, 38, feels some adults see her disability as an obstacle to her teaching.
A science teacher at Erdington Academy in Birmingham for 16 years, Natalie is the subject of a forthcoming TV documentary.
She said: “The automatic reaction to a teacher swearing at her class is, ‘Wow, we can’t have that.’ But I want that automatic reaction to be, ‘What’s the teaching like?’
“My Tourette’s is quicker than me, funnier than me and will always try and get me into trouble.
“There are times when you will tic and it will be loud and constant but it will eventually calm down.
“It is part of me, it is who I am. I want everyone else to know that with a disability you can be anything you want and it is not going to hold you back.”
And pupils told the Channel 5 programme Natalie’s disability made her teaching “even better”. One schoolgirl said: “Sometimes she sings, sometimes she swears. Whatever she says, she does not mean it.”
Tourette’s usually develops in childhood. But, for some like Natalie, it is triggered in adulthood following severe trauma. She was diagnosed after being raped by an intruder inside her university accommodation when she was 21.
She regularly posts to her 4,000 Instagram followers about what living with Tourette’s is like, revealing she has associated disorders such as ADHD, self-harming, paranoia and intrusive thoughts. She said: “I have been arrested, been hit and been chased.”
The Teacher With Tourette’s, Channel 5, Thursday, 10pm.