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I'm sorry but that teacher has no right at ALL to publicly humiliate your son like that! I am seething on his behalf!!

This sounds exactly like the issues we had here with DRA when Aiden was in pre school.

Is there anyway that you can just ignore the DRA stuff and send his own books with him to read anyway? IOW instead of fighting for every step, just go around the obstacle - surely when they see his choice of reading material they will start to understand or at least question.

In terms of the money worksheet - if this is happening now, you should assume its happening for most, if not all of the other in-class work. Again, perhaps asking him to just do it quickly and then send something he will be happy to work on that he can pull out of his bag and carry on with.

It's not ideal - the purpose of EDUCATIONAL institutions is surely to educate your child, and that should mean that he is learning something new and growing at a decent, regular rate in knowledge acquisition, understanding, comprehension and application of knowledge across the board.

I really hope you come right one way or the other.

How unprofessional!

Seriously. See, for this teacher, asking for a challenge and to actually learn something is "argumentative" "oppositional" poor behavior, etc. These are some the "behaviors" that she sees as a problem, that she considers argumentative and oppositional. She felt the same way when DS wanted to read more challenging books. That was also a big fight. I plan to document with an email but I did call and say very calmly and actually sadly that all DS his desire for challenge and to learn offensive and felt compelled to shame him in front of the entire class for his asking to actually learn. He was asking to please learn something, for something challenging - isn't that suppose to be what a teacher wants to see in a student?


I would be willing to do this (and I do send in books - big battle that was too) but DS gets upset and angry and starts acting out, causing more problems, when he doesn't see himself making progress in the levels. He literally said and, I quote, "It's not fair that everyone else gets to learn and move ahead and I don't. If I really failed the test maybe it's because they just aren't teaching me and that's why I get bored. It's just not fair!" And he has point. And, an additional concern, is how far should he fall (how long should he stagnate) before I step in and say something and find out why and what can be done? If he really failed, I feel like I would be a bad mother if I just let him regress and not see why and try to help, ykim? I mean, if he is really failing then he isn't learning and that just isn't acceptable to wait until he is below grade level to see why.

Irena, are you keeping him at this school next year? If so, I'd talk to the principal if I were in your shoes. If no traction there, I'd move on up the chain, with special attention to those people who are responsible for compliance with special education law.

Yeah and I got smart this time. I called another mom in the class (not easy for me to do) and asked her to ask her child what happened. I wanted to make sure I don't hear "DS misinterpreted" or that "never happened" this time.

Good for you. That is horrendous. I'd talk to administration as well because behavior like that should not occur.

You know what's ironic. I am angry but not that angry - you know why? And this is pathetic. Usually he is humiliated by teachers and paras for his disabilities. I am actually relieved she didn't make fun of him based on his disabilities... weird, huh? But this teacher ... man, what beyotch. Every chance she gets she tries to pull him down. He told her that he had practiced counting money and figuring out how much things cost all last summer (yeah, well he likes to go on amazon and shop for toys - he compares prices and then presents his case to DH and I LOL And the boardwalk at the beach had tons of lessons in money as well!) - you'd think she could have used him as an example to say "see - if you practice you'll master this skill too class- DS practiced and knows ways to make learning money fun and easy ...." or something that recognized his ambition and hard work (it's not like he said "I was just born brilliant, you bunch of dumb-butts - he admitted that he had worked at it). I don't know something more like that, rather than what she did. Ugh.

I know there are teachers like this out there but every time I hear about one, my heart just aches for the kids.

Sounds familiar. Why is it too much to ask that our kids make a year's progress each year? Ds7 went backwards in maths his first year and seems to have made minimal progress in the last year. In reading his teacher gave the top group no instruction once they reached a certain level so everyone could finish at the same level. Maybe that is what they mean about kids levelling out.

You might want to edit your son's name out of your post Irena. I am sure it was a slip.