Student voted out of classroom!!!
 

PORT ST. LUCIE - Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son's kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.

By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex -- who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism -- out of the class.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...,2574622.story

I think this is one of the most cruel despicable words that don't exist things a teacher could do to a 5 year old child.

This is sad-especially if the child has Aspergers. This will have him fixated on what happened for God knows how long. That teacher should retire from the classroom permanently.

I would never DREAM of doing that to a kindergartener!!!
Now, if it was an obnoxious 15 year old doing it on purpose, that would be another story....

I don't believe it's true, not to the extent the parent said.

<----- has been the victim of false parent complaints before.

This would be traumatic to a "normal" child, let alone a child who may be high-functioning Autistic/Aspergers. Besides, asking five year olds to vote a child out of their classroom is cruel in and of itself!

Does anyone know if this is a public school?

Yeah, there's got to be something more to the story - the teacher would have to have a non-functioning IQ to allow something like this.

I dont really think there is anything more that would change the basic facts

When Alex returned to the class, Portillo said she and the class were not ready for him to return.

Portillo told the officer she asked Alex to join her at the front of the class.

"She said she then asked him to listen to what the children didn't like about the things he did, and she asked him how it made him feel," the report said. "She said at this time, 'We polled the class' to see how his peers felt about his return at that time."

Alex was voted out, 14 to 2.

Alex told the officer Portillo called his classmates' names out and they said "disgusting" things about him.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/...052908.article

that teacher deserves to be fired, and that is the nicest thing i can say about her

it is a public school. i can think of few things more cruel than what this teacher did.

she should be fired.

that school district better prepare their legal defense to settle, they can't possibly win this one.

As the father of an Aspie kid, I can't even begin to describe how utterly mindblowing and saddening this is. Fortunately, I can say that the teachers in our public school experience have been the polar opposite of this ignoramus.

I found this line in the second story linked particularly interesting:

"She said she then asked him to listen to what the children didn't like about the things he did, and she asked him how it made him feel."

Clearly she is not only clueless about disciplining kindergarterners in general, but she is clueless about Aspergers and how kids with Aspergers think and process information. I understand as well as anyone the challenges that these kids can present (though, again fortunately, our son never had these same kinds of discipline problems and frequent trips to the principal's office), but she's supposed to be the adult in the situation.

Just beyond sad.

ok, I read this over again, and what I get is he isn't "officially" diagnosed yet - he's in the process? MC, how long does that take?

I mean, it almost sounds like he's been having disciplinary problems and they are trying to find a disability that goes along with it.

Here's another article - while the voting was a bad idea by any stretch of the imagination, this article clarifies that it was only for the DAY - not forever.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/treasur...id=inform_artr

it doesn't matter how long it was for

Yes it does - the first article makes it sound like a teacher and 16 5 year olds are allowed to in effect expel a student! That just makes no sense but it does make the article more sensationalistic.

No, it really doesn't matter that it was only for that day. How long do you think that kid is going to remember what was done to him?

Yes it does. Behavior needs both rewards and consequences. At the time, he was not diagnosed.

Clicking on the link 33girl provided, I see even more now that these parents have a need to be in the spotlight -- who provides the media with current pictures of their children to be displayed to strangers?

An hour, a day, a week, who really cares? This kid is in kindergarten, his best friend in the class voted him against him. No five year old autistic or not, no matter how bad the kid's behavior was, what this teacher did was unacceptable and she shouldn't be allowed to teach kids again as long as she lives.

yeah, i mean, how objective can a "vote" amongst five-year-olds be anyway?

What bothers me the most is that the teacher essentially asked the students to tell the boy what they thought of him...specifically what they don't like about him. We all know little kids can be mean. A kindergarten teacher should know that five year olds don't really have empathy yet...they're honest, but not very good at censoring themselves or determining what's not a good thing to say. She didn't ask them how it made them feel when Alex acted out, she asked them what they didn't like about him and what he was doing - those are two very different questions when asked to very small children, and they're going to get very different responses. And she actually called on each student and put them on the spot?

The voting is another problem (what is this, Survivor?) for a couple reasons. First, she put Alex's classmates in the role of punisher. Second, I doubt the kids (and Alex) really felt she was asking them about removing him from the classroom for the day. She may have phrased it that way, but knowing the way kids are, once they shared all their dislikes about Alex, they probably wanted to vote him out for good if they had that power. And that's certainly what Alex was left with after all was said and done.

This teacher sounds like she has NO grasp on the mind of a five year old, and no basic regard for decency. Not to mention no understanding of autism, which is surprising in this day and age when autism is being diagnosed more and more. She's the one that should be voted off the island!

its probably a lot worse on a five year than you say, you getting voted out of your workplace or something.

Right, because little kids don't understand nuance or complexities of a situation like this. All this little five year old boy knows is that his friends don't like him anymore and don't want him to go to school with them.

I agree there must be more.

Me too!

What's worse are the ones where the children are 'childern of the corn' and thier parents KNOW IT, but blame me for everything as if the demons are tucked away in thier lockers.

I said over and over I do NOT agree with the voting at all. I do not think the kid will ever forget this, it was effed up. I do, however, think it's important to place into context what exactly occurred and what did not - i.e. a group of 5 year olds was not permitted to permanently expel a student from a class. Any teacher who allowed that would be taken to the county mental hospital, not put on suspension.

And yeah, good call by the parents for releasing a photo to the media so if anyone ever runs into this kid they'll know who he is and can ask him all about the incident over and over again. (sarcasm)

MC does this type of disability show up early in a child's development? Like could the parents of this little boy have noticed it when he was younger? The mother claims he was fine in pre-school, and he had disciplinary problems at this school and at the last. Yet the principal was the one who wanted the kid tested.

Maybe teachers refered him for services and the parents denied them, but the principal may have seen that a need was ever present.

I have had a parent decline services for their student. :(

Maybe you're right. For some reason though, I get a feeling that teachers/principal WANTED to find something wrong with the kid.

Depending on who they're going to, not necessarily long at all, once you get to the person making the diagnosis. Our son was diagnosed with ADHD in the Spring. We asked the psychologist doing the evaluation to screen for Aspergers since we strongly suspected it. She too suspected it but wanted someone more qualified in sifting through the ADHD/Aspergers/other stuff combination to evaluate for it. It took until Fall to get an appointment, but then the diagnosis was very quick (as in a matter of days).

I too got the sense that the disciplinary problems prompted the Aspergers question. I hope it was not just trying to put a label on him but rather the principal concerned that what she was seeing were in fact symptoms of Aspergers.

I'll agree as to how the article portrayed it. But speaking from the parent's perspective, it really doesn't make a difference if it was for a day or the rest of the year. If the kid really does have autism/Aspergers, then the trouble a normal kid would have understanding that it was just for a day will likely be amplified a great deal. These kids think literally and in absolutes -- either they like me or they hate me, either I'm in school or I've been kicked out of school. There is no in-between, no shade of meaning. Our son is still working on this.

Usually signs start to present themselves by about 3; in fact, I think the diagnosis requires that symptoms be present by then.

That said, it's not unusual in my experience for the diagnosis to come in elementary school. This is so for a couple of reasons -- sometimes the symptoms can be written off as something else before the pressures of school come, sometimes (often) parents really don't want to face the prospect of an autism spectrum diagnosis and resist until they really can't anymore. We knew something was "off" around 3, but he was 9 when he was diagnosed. We weren't ignoring things during those years; it just took that long for us to see what really seemed to be going on.

Wow for the first time ever i completly agree with your stance on an issue. . . This scares me. . . Greatly:eek:

ha, its not too bad. I apologize but i tend to be very opinionated.

Ok, I'm not making excuses for the teacher, but this is what it sounds like to me.

1. This kid was having a really bad day
2. His documented behavior was a disruption to his classmates learning environment and he was sent out.
3. It sounds like it's a consistent thing that this kid needs constant one-on-one attention to get work done
4. After sending the kid out, he was returned to class, at that point the teacher did this whole "vote" thing which to me, reads as follows:
   
   
   1. The teacher wanted the student to know how his behavior affected his classmates, hence the whole, "tell him what you don't like about him"
   2. The vote was not "Should he be allowed in our class", it was "should he be allowed in RIGHT NOW. Which indicates to me she was hinting that maybe he needed more time to cool off, reflect on his actions, etc.
   
   

Now, I don't have a Spec. Ed degree or certification, so I can't speak to how this situation would affect the kid's psyche. I also don't think that kids at that age have a good idea of the consequences of their actions, let alone how it would affect someone else, so the idea of trying to "shame" him into better behavior using critiques of his peers is most likely not appropriate. Do I agree with the steps the teacher used? I'd agree with it for my classes of HS freshman and sophomores but not for kids that young.

All that being said, does this teacher have a SPED cert? If not, in my opinion, its not entirely fair to paint her with a broad brush, just because she's not up to date with the Autism Spectrum. I took one class in the Ed School addressing SPED kids. To be honest, if I wanted to work in a classroom with SPED kids, I'd have pursued that endorsement. I have a student in one of my classes that is autistic, and it is a daily drain on me. He exhibits some of the same behavior as this student, if I'm standing over him, working with him exclusively, I can get work done. The second I move away, he's off task. Fortunately, he's in my smallest class so I can spend more one-on-one time with him, but if he was in some of my larger, more boisterous classes, heaven knows how it would go.

Which is why I'm not a huge fan of Inclusion. I wasn't when I was a PE major and I'm still not as a classroom teacher. I understand that children with disabilities have the right to receive the highest quality education that their disability allows, but when it comes at the detriment of their classmates, who is that fair to? If a kid goes to a resource room for English and Math instruction, why should they be placed in a Science or Social Studies classroom, where those skills are essential parts of the instruction? Just my feelings.

Kitso
KS 361

wow ... the mom definitely needs to sue.

I have no doubt she intends to. Hence releasing the her son's picture to the media to drum up sympathy.

Kitso
KS 361

Here is an article on the teacher's side of things. There was actually a link to the actual report by the school resource officer but it seems to be taken off line....

After reading the teacher's side, I still believe that was wrong, for her to do that. Now if they were o its lder, I could understand a bit more, but kindergarten, unacceptable. It doesn't matter what the intentions of the teacher were, its the interpretation from this little boy, and its sad that things came down to that. It's not the place of the little boys peers to decide his discipline. If the administration was sending the boy back to class, they obviously felt confident that had taken care of the situation, and it is not for this teacher to undermine that. She gets paid to teach, and thats what she should have been doing. If you teach kindergarten, you should have a little bit more patience, the only thing she cited was pushing a table up with his feet, which just sounds like a kid with a little too much energy. Let the kids take a break go out to the playground and release some energy if you have to. But the way she handled is just baffling and uncalled for.

^^^ Have you ever been a Kindergarten teacher before?

Ok man, I'm calling bullshit on this. Yes, she gets paid to teach. Part of teaching is classroom management, i.e. making sure your students have an environment in which learning can take place, free from disruptions. That's the whole reason for behavior interventions and policies.

Look, unless you've spent 9 years teaching kindergarten like this teacher, or anytime at all with those aged kids in an educational setting, you really don't have an idea of what it is like. I spent 3 years of my Education preparation dealing with these aged kids in a PE setting, and in that setting it was hard enough to keep them focused and on task. This isn't daycare or babysitting, kindergarten teachers have objectives and information that they are responsible for teaching those kids. If one kid is CONSTANTLY and REPEATEDLY disturbing your classroom environment, he needs to be removed.

Did the teacher handle this situation in the best manner? No, but I honestly feel that her administration did not do her any favors.

As far as "taking them out to recess". Yeah, that'll be real effective. It'll take the kids maybe 2 or 3 weeks into the school year to learn that they can get free time by misbehaving. Once you go down that road, you've lost them.

Kitso
KS 361

What an absurd story. My mother taught kindergarten for 10 years at a private school and said she would have been fired on the spot if she would have done that.

Completely uncalled for and totally unjustifiable. I don't care what was wrong with the child and for how long they sent him out.

But isn't part of the problem the fact that kids w/ Asperger's ARE quite intelligent & have high IQs once you get past the behavior issues? I mean, I don't think it would be fair to them to have to sit in a classroom w/ kids who are 7 & still don't know the alphabet.

I don't know how big this school district is but you only have so much $ & so many teachers & classrooms.

I've only glanced at the story, but from what I can tell, it seems completely inappropriate. I am certainly in favor of tough punishment for unruly kids, but shaming a young child in front of his class is absurd and cruel.

That is part of the problem. Another thing to consider here is that truly disruptive behavior is not necessarily a common trait among kids with Aspergers/High Functioning Autism. In my experience it is the exception rather than the rule, though I can't say how it pans out nationally. I know it has rarely been an real issue with my son.

What are common traits are the ineptitude at social interaction and non-verbal communication (body language, inflection, sarcasm, etc.) and that disciplinary tactics that work with most kids may not work (may even make things worse) with the Aspergers/HFA kid. You often have to find different strategies for them.

The bottom line is that there isn't one right answer on whether these kids should be mainstreamed or not -- some kids should and others shouldn't. It has to be judged on a case by case basis.