Student voted out of classroom!!!

[1908Revelations]

Originally Posted by epchick

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.

[epchick]

Originally Posted by 1908Revelations

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.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by 33girl

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?

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.

Originally Posted by 33girl

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.

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.

Originally Posted by epchick

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.

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.

[Senusret I]

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?

[TorrentRain]

wow ... the mom definitely needs to sue.

Originally Posted by TorrentRain

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

[Thetagirl218]

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....

[nate2512]

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.

Originally Posted by nate2512

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.

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

[Senusret I]

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

[TexasWSP]

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.

[RaggedyAnn]

I spoke with a school social worker (who also has experience with children with developmental disabilities) about it. First words out of his mouth were she should be fired.

My Mom-a teacher who is very active as an educator-was in such shock she didn't know what to say.

My feeling is the teacher is watching too much reality TV. The kid is 5. An adult would take it hard...they even have management training in the adult world that addresses the issue of discipline with large audiences.

[AnatraAmore]

Think about this: You're five. You think everyone should be your friend. Stupid is a bad word. You cry when someone knocks over your sandcastle. You cry when your friends play tag without you.

And then a teacher (who is supposed to be an adult), allows people who you trust to tell you all the things they don't like about you (in front of everyone else, no less) and then vote you out of the class? It doesn't matter how long it was for... I honestly hope that teacher loses her job. And that all teachers who find themselves with a student like this do a little bit of research about how to handle students who act out...

[AGDee]

This reminds me of the cheesy email story that goes around about a teacher who had all of her students write down what they liked about each student on a piece of paper and then presented each student with the list. In the story, one of the students dies years later and at the funeral, this teacher finds out that he had that list in his wallet with him at all times. Several other students bring out their lists and say they too carry it with them. Whether the email is true or not, I don't know, but I think it brings up the basic point. We care about what others think of us and what they say about us sticks with us for a lifetime. I think it's even more true for the negative things people say about us. I'm sure we each remember the kid that picked on us, whether it was to make fun of something ridiculous, like our name, or who called us a name, or who told us, on weigh in day, to take the water balloons out of our bra so we'd weigh less (thanks Roger.. I wore huge baggy shirts for YEARS because of you).. and it stuck with us for a long time. This is so harmful to a child's sense of self and there were so many better ways it could have been handled. If the teacher was mad that the administrator brought the child back too quickly, she should have talked with that administrator privately, not had each child in the classroom tell the kid how bad he is and then vote him out of the class. If you want to teach the kids how to give feedback to each other, you could do it on an individual basis so that if the child did something that was hurtful, the other child could say "When you do A, it makes me feel B" That's very different than having the child stand up in front of the room for a public, humiliating slam fest against him.

[UGAalum94]

I can't get the link to the teacher's side of the story to load, but I just have a hard time imagining that the actual incident went down exactly as reported at first.

I also know that I've been frustrated with local newspaper coverage where I am when there's some kind of incident with schools and a kid. The kid and the kid's parents can tell the media whatever they want to. The people who work for the school are almost always bound by rules of confidentially, so what's reported is almost always very one sided. Note that in this case all that was released [ETA: as near as I can tell anyway], and likely could be released, was a police report that's probably available by an open records request.

I also want to say that I think it's cute that so many people seem to think that if the administrators returned him to class that obviously his behavior had been dealt with. That idea is one of the funniest things I've read on GreekChat ever, funnier than the LOL Cats even.

Please note that I don't actually think what the teacher did was the right way to handle it. I just would reserve judgment of exactly how bad it was and what should happen to her until I knew more of the facts.