IEP meeting today for Ds 9. Long story short his teacher is horrible and even called him lazy. Hubby and her went head to head and even the counselor and occupational therapist questioned her motives. So...thankfully the occupational therapist, director of services, speech therapist and school therapist agreed his current setting is way to negative. We found out he had been scoring off the charts during testing but his teacher never told us this. Technically because he isn't failing academically he is not elligble for an IEP however the specialists all agreed changes needed to be made so they wrote up an IEP against the wishes of his teacher and legally she has no choice to do what is on this agreement. The teacher is horrible and had nothing but negative things to say but as soon as a test score or something positive came up she took the credit...no joke...and thankfully none of the specialists care if she likes them or not because they want to help ds not only succeed but love how his mind works and enjoy learning. Overall a positive experience but stressful lol.

Wow, that person should not be a teacher. A teacher should never use the word, "lazy" and taking the credit for his test scores, what a terrible educator!
I'm sorry your son has had to be in her classroom, but thank goodness there are staff present who see right through her. So, is he moving classrooms or just recieving different services or accomodations?

Oh dear Cola. I am glad you can see the positives from the meeting because dealing with that teacher sounds awful. Well done to you, DH and the team for trying to help your DS! You must have a very resiliant child to cope with a toxic teacher of that magnitude.

There are no other classrooms its the only gifted class for 4th grade. They suggested maybe pull out for 6th and 7th grade math and reading and she said no. Then when it was brought up to have him work on the computer instead of handwriting her exact words were "we have to get this kid ready for the real world". So what they are doing is forcing her to allow him to use the computer for dysgraphia, physical breaks, using positive only daily charts, allowing him fun time so like when he reads 2 chapters of the "boring book" he can read his encyclopedia set and to help him with the rote memorization they will have him peer mentor younger kids so he sees first hand why math steps need to be written down. He will get tattoos as immediate rewards and will also meet with the therapists at least once a week.

And yes a formal complaint to the school board and the principal regarding her behaviour will be written and filed. It was even mentioned he scored exemption ally on aims tests and she said it was because of the provisions she put in place for him lol but refused the idea he should be anywhere but in her classroom.

So glad to hear there was positive progress at the meeting.

Unfortunately if teachers are not trained in 2e, they may misattribute a student's difficulties. The teacher may benefit from learning about 2e and the NCLD website may be one source of information. The teacher's future students may benefit as well.

It is my understanding that standardized test scores are being utilized to evaluate teachers; Low scores are said to indicate poor teachers while high scores are said to indicate good teachers. The teachers did not establish this system, and many have objected to it. Unfortunately using student scores as a proxy for teacher efficacy provides incentive for some teachers to keep high-scoring students in their classrooms when a different placement may be beneficial to the student.

Who writes anymore in the "real world" anyway?
I found this accomodation (limited writing/usage of keyboard) to be the most challenging when advocating for students when I was a special education teacher. So many people just don't get it.

I can't believe this is a teacher for the GT program. I'm glad he has such a strong advocate for a parent, good work, Cola!

funny, my interpretation is that in the "real world" you can do as you please, including typing everything. (although I am somewhat saddened by the lack of handwriting in general) What a witch!

I love to write...by hand, computer, whatever. But I'm a writer...that's what I do. My father is a top notch engineer and couldn't write to save his life yet he's a brilliant geotechnical engineer who made it just fine in the real world

So I have parent teacher conferences and asked if any of the specialists would be available to go with me and the speech therapist is going with me so I don't have to face the witch alone and to also get a chance to review ds work before he begins speech therapy. She wants to help him so much it literally made me cry lol.

Cola, sounds like progress. It's better when the awful is out in the open (as opposed to "concealed awful.")

Maybe this is a hidden opportunity for a mid-year grade skip of he is receiving single subject accelerations in math and ELA. I would not trust my child with such an unprofessional and personally repellant person.