Jhalkias said:
This is an example of what I was talking about earlier . . .
John's post
Good points, John. Its "strange" to hear from the school admin end of things..as parents we tend to band together with common situations (bullying,poor teaching styles, etc) and don't see what admin is up against. On the other hand, and I hope I made this clear...I don't condone jumping to conclusions and raising the flag to the community that there is a problem in the school as a first step....there are steps to take and channels to take and this must be done. As you said, certain actions can not be excused and must be dealt with in the strictest fashion possible for a school, suspension, expulsion, etc. I agree that everyone deserves an education but there are limits to the environment that the education should be given....getting clobbered with a chair just to be able to learn is not acceptable. This is not necessarily a teacher problem, an admin problem, or even a parent problem; its a school-parent issue that must be worked out from step one to the final action and all parties, child, parents, teacher, admin and the other students and teachers exposed to that situation must be involved, with proper communication. To me, a physically threatening situation is not something to work out in the classroom, with the possibility of something horrible happening in the time it takes to wade through the paperwork...the education of the child is important, yes. But so is the safety of the child...this can not be the only case of a physical situation in the history of public education - I wonder how it has been dealt with before.
We have had issues with our school in that they get snotty when we ask for help - there answer believe it or not is, "she is not in special education, we don't have to do that..." We ask for help, they answer, "what do you want us to do?", not "sure, we can help you, we can do this or that or this..." - They are the educators, we are the parents, we are asking for educational advice from professionals...
I also don't say that teaching is not being done; I think that the teachers are the same as they have always been - the difference is that school doesn't always let them be teachers - one of DD's teachers (an older, experienced Language Arts teacher even told us she felt that she had no choice in how she was teaching, it was the way they are being told to do it now. She was willing to pass on her methods gained from years of experience but her curriculum now revolved around testing and grade levels of other children in the state. I just want teachers and admin to realize that at the end of the day, being able to write and read and add and subtract is more important that whose school is number one in test scores and such. We've witnessed DD's grades being "padded" to help her pass classes...we were told that this is the new method...she has a C, does a project using subject matter that is not relevant to the class and her grade jumps to a B or even A. How is that learning?
I started out going to school to be a teacher and changed my mind as I felt I was too young to be a teacher without first getting out in the world and getting some experience that I can pass on. More and more, we see young teachers coming into the schools who look to their text books to answer parents concerns....they don't have the experience to deal with these situations.
Bottom line: support the schools, but also work with them to show them that there is improvement needed. They are not just a part of our communities, they ARE the community and need to work together with the parents to solve these issues for the benefit of everyone. A child's safety, physical and mental, comes first before education and I hope that Lisa can get some resolution from the school to solve this for everyone's sake.
As some have said before, this subject will get out of hand and I've said what I can without being on everyone's bad list....everyone has their opinions and I'm no different.
. I hope all works out. The world is a better place because of people like you who care! Keep that in mind.
