Top Ten Things I Learned at Our Meeting This Morning
Background:
I and 4 other parents at my kid's school are concerned about our behaviour students, who often roam the halls, or, in 3 cases in particular, pitch enormous screaming hissy fits that include throwing chairs within their classrooms and then heading down to the supply room to chuck stuff around. One child has repeatedly hit a teacher. His brother had to be physically restrained on Friday because he had gotten too close to the big paper cutter. Another child, not related, closed down the second floor of the school and got library and computers cancelled for some classes.
We wrote a letter to the board and gave a heads up to our VP, who heads up our JK - 3 school until we get to our new building. She called in the principal, who has her office as the 4 - 8 holding school to speak with us before we send any letter. We had sort of hoped they would help us focus our efforts and perhaps help us advocate for more behaviour classes or psychatrists or something.
So, on to the list:
10. We can't discuss individual students.
9. It's hard to talk about generalities, since each student is different.
8. What happened last year isn't relevant.
7. This year is better than last year.
6. The cumulative effect of this on our kids and specifically on the kids in the same class as our behviour kids is irrelevant.
5. We only had 2 extreme behaviour moments this year, not the 5 I have personally logged since February 3.
4. Locking our kids into their own classrooms so that they miss recess is a good thing.
3. There's just no reason to ever let parents know when any kid has had a meltdown that requires kids to be shut into their classrooms for their own safety.
2. It'll all be better when we get to the new building.
1. We shouldn't be worrying our pretty little heads.
posted by Seana @ 2:13 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
What you need is a list of Ten Ways To Kick Incompetent Adminstrators in the Head Until They Come To Their Senses. Only that might set a bad example so be sure to NOT do it in front of impressionable children.
Seriously, your school admin people sound extremely incompetent, condescending and in denial. Remember - I'm the parent of a kid with fairly severe autism who was always capable of melting down and creating havoc all around him - only when he was in elementary school he was surrounded by competent & creative teachers & staff who utilized advanced techniques like Observational Anticipation and Redirection. Or are those just common sense? He also shared an Aide with another kid with issues, so when he or the other kid needed a quick one-on-one intervention there was someone there to do it.
If some kid in PK - 3 is able to shut down an entire school then either he is monumentally out-of-control (which needs to be addressed before said kid is 6'3"!) or the school is monumentally incompetent. How will the new building fix that? Will each classroom have a little padded-wall time-out room? Jees.
O.M.G.
Swami: I'm not sure how the new building will help. We do have a Special Ed room, but apparently only kids from outside the cachement can go to it. I guess we would send our behaviour kids to another school... I'm not really sure why that is.
Fun update! On Friday, our new VP and Principal were at our school to be introduced to the kids. One of the kids had a fit. Actually, two, if you include D, who was sulky and didn't want to go to the assembly. A pitched a fit that involved kicking the door to the gym and shoving the piano around. This was cool because now the VP and Principal could maybe get a better idea what we were talking about. Anyway, both those kids went home, as well as D's sister, who hasn't actually attended class in 2 years and A's brother, who is a danger to everyone around him. This is the largest mass home-sending I've seen since a bunch of kids got into an ice-throwing fight last year. I do vaguely wonder what would have been done had I and 2 other of the parents, as well as most of parent council hadn't been there that day.
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