Thanks, aeh. I thought I had my arms wrapped around this, but I'm feeling uncertain now. This helps immensely.
I was able to talk with my friend about her experience with this teacher. It was worse than I thought. Her child has an IEP for significant developmental delay and the teacher essentially ignored the child and the mother's requests for help with basic things. She was unresponsive and became defensive when the mother made suggestions about her son. She (the mother) went so far as to say that she didn't feel her son would have been promoted to the next grade had he not received so much outside help.
This pretty much describes the gifted teacher also and I just don't think we can handle a year full of this. DH sent a request for a meeting with the asst principal to discuss placing him in a new class and followed-up with her on the IEP process. If she doesn't respond within 24 hours, he's going to take it up a notch, respectfully.
I don't know if this is the right thing or not but my gut instinct says to push for the change and the IEP. My stomach is in knots leaving him there today. He doesn't know a single boy in his class and the teacher didn't speak to either of us when we entered the room. When I left, I said a cheery, "Have a great fist day" to her and she responded with a flat, "Thanks." I'm being overly sensitive and it's a very busy day and I'm sure that accounts for some of this.
Thanks for listening
