Five-year-old Alex Barton was voted out of kindergarten class by his fellow students in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Before the vote, his teacher told classmates to say what they didn’t like about Alex: He was labeled “disgusting” and “annoying.” They voted 14 to 2 to kick him out of class.
The boy apparently has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism that’s linked to poor social skills. Children can learn how to function in a group but they need to be taught explicitly and they may always be awkward, withdrawn or odd.
Alex has had disciplinary issues because of his disabilities, Barton said. The school and district has met with Barton and her son to create an individual education plan, she said. His teacher, Wendy Portillo, has attended these meetings, she said.
I’ll bet the plan doesn’t call for public humiliation and isolation.
Barton said after the vote, Alex’s teacher asked him how he felt.
“He said, ‘I feel sad,’” she said.
He hasn’t been back to class since the vote. When his mother takes him to school to drop off his sibling, he starts screaming.
Barton filed a complaint. The teacher “confirmed the incident did occur,” says a police spokeswoman. The state attorney’s office decided not to file charges for emotional child abuse. Apparently, the school district has taken no action. The mother is considering filing a lawsuit.
This is the equivalent of putting a slow child at the front of the class and asking students to vote on whether he’s too stupid to be in the class. It doesn’t have to be a criminal case of emotional abuse for it to be cause to remove the teacher from contact with children.
Thanks to Cardinal Fang and Daily Kos diarist MaccaJ.
Update: The district has reassigned the teacher to a desk job while the incident is being investigated.
Update II: Melissa Clouthier, mother of an Asperger’s child, links to a CBS interview in which the mother says Alex’s best friend — the only friend he’s ever made — didn’t want him kicked out of class but when the teacher asked him a second time he changed his vote to side with the majority.
Update III: The teacher says she only meant to kick Alex out of class for the rest of the day, not permanently. He’d been removed by the school resource officer for lying under a table and kicking it with his feet; she thought he should stay out longer.
Update IV: Slate has the police report.
This situation makes me sick. I have two grandchildren that are in the Autism Spectrum. One was diagnosed in pre-school at the suggestion of the teacher. She has had the help needed and is an A student. She is now 8 years old and will tell you herself that she has problems and has to be good, as she puts it. The older sister was just diagnosed at 11 years of age. I guess that the older one was better had covering for herself at times. I am thankful that she is getting help now. One of the things that I did find out is that there is a federal law for persons with disabilities as to how they should be treated and what they are entitled to. Excuse this Grandma for not being able to quote chapter and verse.
Re this teacher…….I do wonder if she has children, had problems in school in the past herself, is just plain stupid and unfeeling or is lacking as a human being. I don’t care what the situation, one does not give 5 year old children the power to vote anyone out of a group. I do hope that she is not allowed to have any contact with children as she will only cause more damage………
torn: “Exactly what was the crime she committed?”
Child Abuse, for starters. Assault (in the literal definition) would apply, and so would Child Endangerment.
Your hyperbole seems ill-suited to the discussion, so I would advise you to avoid further attempts at sarcasm.
I tried to submit earlier – apologize if this is a dupe – my son has Asperger’s and we removed him from a school after a few abusive incidents. I had repeatedly confronted one of his teachers about bullying and abuse in school and then the lying and excuses started flying at warp speed. It turns out one of the teachers children was one of the primary abusers. We were only able to get the school to address the issue with threat of a law suit. The principal, teacher and teacher’s child all transferred out of the school. after another incident the following year we had to have our city councilor interven to have our son transferred out of the school. I repeatedly asked why the principal and teachers would permit any teasing or abuse of a child with a brain disorder but I never could get a straight answer. I guess that’s why they’re in the “caring” prefessions.
Clearly the school system needs more money. That’s the “solution” that the NEA and AFT always states. Funny how those Catholic schools do such a good job with far less money per student. Anyway my son doesn’t have any syndromes or learning problems other than being an energetic 6 year old who would much rather be at home than at school. His teacher worked with us to figure out things she could do in the context of the classroom to keep him calm.
In <a href=”http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/may/27/st-lucie-teacher-reassigned-after-student-voted-ou/”a subsequent article we learn that the teacher has been removed from the classroom until further action is determined.
Here’s an article on the teacher’s side. She says the students were only voting the boy out for the day, not for the rest of the year. The boy has now been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and ADD.
Sorry about that. I wish this blog had a preview option. Here’s the first article, about the teacher being reassigned.
OK, three words…..FIVE-YEARS-OLD.
Seriously, five. This is how we treat 5-year-olds in government schools? I don’t care if he has autism, or is dumb or smart or a total and complete jerk. He’s five. They cry when a cookie breaks or when ice cream drips on their sneakers. This kid was repudiated, in very cruel and harsh terms, by both his classmates and an “authority” figure. SO not only have you probably set his treatment back months, but you’ve now taught 16 other impressionable 5-year-olds that it’s OK to be pointlessly cruel to other humans who are different than you. Not to empathize, or symapthize, or help or protect, but bash them over the head with how much you dislike them until they leave. Which fabulous ed school did this moron get her credentials from?
tom, the teacher’s crime was cruelty toward the innocent and helpless, and teaching a kindergarten class to ostracize those different than themselves. There’s just no excuse for traumatizing any five year old this way.
I’ve known a few kids with Asperger’s. It’s rather amazing to me that in an age when we so obsess over the value of tolerance and celebrating diversity, they are labeled as having a disorder because they naturally communicate and think differently than others. True, there isn’t always a sharp cutoff between Asperger’s and autism (which clearly is a disability), but a fair proportion of these people just need to be treated with the same consideration we’d try to give anyone who comes from a different background or has a different way of thinking. Imagine the fallout if a teacher ridiculed a kid for talking jive, or acting gay!
It’s worth asking just whose behavior in this scenario has demonstrated poorly developed social skills, the Aspy or the teacher?
Anyway, I won’t rant any further because Cardinals Nation has said it all.
MPH makes a legitimate point:
“This is obviously is a sad and unfortunate story. However, disruptive students often have a way of punishing the entire class. It isn’t right to sacrifice every student to the needs of one.”
But my question is: why do teachers spend years in school if not to learn to handle problems like this more delicately (not to say less maliciously)? Even if we strain credulity by assuming she meant well, a teacher who behaves like this is incompetent. A kindergarten teacher who cannot handle a disruptive five-year-old without resorting to abuse ought not be teaching kindergarten.
The ‘one day’ excuse, Cardinal, is as lame as the abuser who says he ‘only’ hit her once.
This is a difficult issue for me. It does seem that the teacher’s action was cruel and will leave indelible scars on all involved. Clearly this was a morally reprehensible action.
But I have two girls in catholic school. Their classes are routinely disrupted by such students. Further, my girls are often put to work by the teacher in various ways to control their behavior. Their education is being significantly impacted by this.
No doubt their daily acts of service are helping to build Christian character. But I wonder to what degree I should push back as a parent to help guarantee that my kids get the proper education; especially since I am paying (double) for the privilege.
It is not the job of my girls to serve as babysitters.
Why do teachers spend years in school if not to learn how to handle difficult situations like this? THEY DON’T!
I spent 4 1/2 years getting my elementary ed. degree. I can assure you that dealing with difficult kids is NOT what teachers-in-training are taught. Instead they’re taught how to create instructional units. Over and over and over again I had to create a unit on something; whales, frogs, the planets, etc.
I had ONE class on special ed. kids. ONE.
I taught upper elementary one year, then my principal decided to move me to kindergarten (which, BTW, I was not certified to teach). Luckily for me, I was in an unusual situation where I had a partner teacher with me, and she had 20+ years of experience. Nearly half of our class was special ed kids. We had kids with hearing impairments, learning disabilities, and a few with both. And one with Downs Syndrome (who was incidentally one of the meanest children I have ever known).
It was rough sometimes. For months one boy would routinely throw temper tantrums under a table, disrupting the class. Nothing we could do about it. The assistant principal in charge of our grade level refused to do anything to help us, and the kid’s mother was unable to control him either. It was just tough luck for us all.
Training for dealing with special kids? HA!! Again and again in teacher in-service training classes other teachers would ask the instructors for help with the special ed kids. Beg for strategies for coping with their quirks, for figuring out how to manage time so one kid didn’t suck all the teacher’s energy and time. Every time we were told that if we had a problem with a special ed. kid it was OUR FAULT. We just had a bad attitude and we needed to be more accepting. No tips. No suggestions. No sharing of successful strategies, books to read, nothing. Just told to be quiet and fix our own bad attitudes and then everything would be fine.
We’d wind up asking each other for tips, but we were all struggling, all at a loss.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not blaming the kids here. I’m saying that the training for dealing with different kids is sadly lacking and very much figure-it-out-for-yourself, and support from administrators can be really slim. The principals don’t want to hear about 5 year old Billy’s temper tantrums and disruptions as long as he’s not drawing blood; they’ve got to be lunch monitors and worry about who will cover the classes of the absent teachers and making sure they have all their endless mounds of paperwork under control and hassle with implementing all the changes the new superintendent (the 3rd in 5 years) wants to make. If the kid isn’t physically harming other kids, or if his parents aren’t breathing down the principal’s neck, helping a teacher figure out how to handle a disruptive kid is a loooooooow priority.
Sure, SpEd evaluations are supposed to happen within 3 months of the request, but sometimes it takes 6 months just to amass all the paperwork and preliminary stuff necessary to even turn the thing in. I’ve seen requests drawn up and then not dated – just to get around the 3 month rule. Especially if the district is full of ESL kids and there’s a shortage of bilingual testers.
Training…. what a laugh. Sorry for the rant, but you really hit a sore spot for me. I tried very hard to make my classes work and do the best I could by my students, but after 2 years I was exhausted and burnt out.
I can’t think of anything to justify what this teacher did, but I can damn sure understand how she could feel so driven into a corner and totally at a loss with a student to WANT to throw him out of her class. She was stuck with him; no other teacher was going to volunteer to take him off her hands, and the principal sure as heck wasn’t going to remove him. The teacher was cruel and wrong to do what she did, but I have to admit I feel for her.
There have been some very interesting comments here, along with some startlingly ignorant ones. Do those of you who have family members on the autism spectrum (my son and daughter both) feel as angry/frustrated/saddened by some of the comments here (superdestroyer, paul, tom, etc.)?
Autism is a disability, not an affectation. You don’t treat polio by kicking the crutches out from under its victims. You don’t tell a burn victim to “man up” and take a bath. You don’t tell a blind woman she’s just not trying hard enough to see. As has been remarked upon repeatedly, autism is a disorder that affects socialization skills. If the teacher or the school had a problem with Alex’s behavior, the school should have taken positive steps to address them. Instead, the teacher punished him.
Hey, how about we start pushing people in wheelchairs down stairs? Blind people into traffic? They’re just getting in everybody’s way, and they’re a drain on public resources. Why the heck do we need wheelchair ramps anyway?
Before you start mouthing off about the cost of an IEP, consider what it will cost you when a growing population of uneducated, non-functional, non-productive autistic people become adults. Education is a public good because it helps alleviate the burden of a persistently uneducated underclass. Compare the records of educational attainment and per capita incomes across the developing and developed world. Take note of the significant differences.
My children are nearly fully functional, non-disruptive, and test out above grade level; but we had to fight hammer and tongs to get them the education they needed. I have little or no sympathy with the bloated public education bureaucracy (sometimes combined with an incompetent and/or diffident staff of primary educators) in this country. I hope Alex’s mother successfully sues that school into penury. Those people need an education in humanity before they presume to instruct children in reading and writing and arithmetic.
Sasha:
I don’t have a child on the autism spectrum, but I do have a child with disabilities and, yes, some comments are purely ignorant and mean-spirited. Like you, there has been plenty of effort expended on advocacy in exactly the environment that Amelia describes. Although, I have to question her assessment of training. While there might have been a single class “on special ed kids” in the required curriculum, I am guessing that there were some required classes in psychology and sociology–just as part of the core curriculum. And there was likely some room for electives that might have been filled with appropriate learning.
On the one hand, while I have heard over and over that teachers don’t have the “special training” that they need to work with my child–I haven’t seen any great clamoring in over a decade to ensure that teachers get any more learning. Some years I have begged that the teachers who work with my child get some inservice in my child’s particular disorders. But the attitude is that they are all “special ed” teachers and already know everything about everything (except content–that’s something that THEY don’t get training in).
Contrast this with the parents I have known who burn up the internet looking for helpful information (and print it out and hand carry it to school to show the teachers). Kids with learning differences don’t arrive with a set of directions. I have never had anywhere near the resources that my district has. But somehow, I am always expected to be the problem solver. I have given up trying to suggest helpful strategies to write into the IEP, because teachers don’t seem to be able to implement things that they don’t come up with themselves. If they actually set measureable goals, implemented strategies and revised based on the outcome, we might make some progress. Instead, an IEP is something to be rushed through, signed and then filed.
What I have seen over and over again from the schools–particularly from those on the general ed side of the divide (and why is there a divide, I wonder) is at best a kind of benign neglect aimed at showing that they can’t “handle” kids with different needs, so that they have to be served in a more restrictive environment. I spent some time today reading the report of the school resource officer (one of the articles above had a link) on this case. One thing that struck me was that the resource officer (this would be a cop placed in a school) was the one who seemed to be spending one-on-one time with this little boy. He commented that he had helped him on his schoolwork when he was sent to his desk in the office. The kid tore up his work when he was ignored. You gotta ask yourself–why is a cop providing tutoring for a kindergartner? Maybe our resources aren’t as well allocated as they should be if we have a cop defaulting to being the kindergarten aid.
That one behavior (tearing up papers) was among the worst cited in the report, which was based on interviews with classmates, teacher, assistant principal, nurse, student and parent. Apparently the other behaviors included kicking a table, lying on the floor, eating crayons and eating boogers. These behaviors are annoying, to be sure, trying, wearing, frustrating, possibly disruptive. They do not fall into the category of dangerous, violent, volatile–the kinds of behaviors that might require another setting for education. One would want, certainly, for the teacher to have some assistance (hopefully not from a cop). But it does appear to be pretty small class (fourteen plus two plus one). I don’t think the teacher is a terrible person–but she did do something pretty inexcuseable. I don’t know if it is appropriate to hold her personally responsible given the overall environment of an education system that still–for the most part–believes in excluding kids with disabilities from the “regular” kids.
Reading today has been encouraging. I don’t generally see so many comments that express sympathy for the child with disabilities.
The teacher set a pitch-perfect example of boorish behavior and ought to be ashamed.
On the other hand, unlike those who said they pray she never have disbled children of her own, I tend to think people like her should, just so they can experience the anguish and heartache that others inflict on those kids.
Between the cost of private schooling and the incompetence of much of public schooling, the home schooling idea is more appealing with each passing day.
Last year my third grade child was in a class with two seriously disturbed children. One boy regularly discussed having a sex change and brought pornography to school. On several occasions, another girl threw her desk at the teacher, hit several children and, threatened to burn down the school (with particular children inside) and made teaching/learning difficult to impossible.
That being said, if my child’s teacher had done to either of these children what Ms. Portillo has done to Alex, I would have been appalled and pulled my child from that class. What she did was wrong.
But, I wonder, why was it so difficult to get children who need help some help?
I was/am frustrated that my daughter went to and came home from school scared about what was going to happen in class. I felt sorry for the teacher who had to face that classroom everyday. I felt sorry for the children who needed help.
It is very hard (or maybe it is easy and I just can’t do it) to find a solution. The normal kids need to learn, the bright kids need to learn, the slow kids need to learn. The kids with disabilities need help and they can fall into the normal, bright and slow categories.
It seems that all the options/solutions involve helping one group at the expense of the other.
Hi Margo:
I don’t doubt Amelia is writing accurately about her experience in her pursuit of an Ed degree (MA?). You’re right, there are elective elements to the tertiary Education degree (or certification). It varies by state. I also believe Amelia was put in a position which demanded more of her than her education equipped her to deal with. Still, I don’t feel sorry for her at all: Education students seem to be predisposed to having their world organized for them rather than being proactively involved in the education process. They are, in that respect, least suited to teach to begin with.
Much of my world view was molded by inspired (and inspiring) teachers who considered teaching a calling; a calling that carried them beyond the material to a place where students learned to think for themselves.
Amelia should never have been a teacher in the first place.
I’m sorry to say you’re also right about the attitude of special education teachers; but it extends to many traditional primary teachers as well. Whole Word Learning may have passed, but “New” New math has pitched American innumeracy to a “New” (and frightening) low. While my son aces his math homework, I’ve had to work overtime (after we’ve worked on homework) just to undo all the things he THINKS he knows. Especially, I have to explain that numbers don’t normally have little red dots on them.
As parents, WE are ultimately responsible for our childrens’ education. I would NEVER rely on the public school system for more than structure and material. I’m not going to hand internet materials to teachers: I have no idea what they might do with them. I’d rather teach my kids to find it themselves.
We also had “rushed” IEP meetings. Advocates and threats of lawsuits slowed them down considerably… Oh! It also delivered participation from required participants (who had previously been strangely called away at the last minute).
At some point, we do need to step away from moral equivocation. At some point, we need to say “this is wrong, and this is the reason why.” I think it is fair to call Ms. Portillo a terrible person. Whatever I may think of the lesson plans and programs organized by the public education establishment, her actions exceeded her responsibilities. Significantly.
Bull Connor enforced the law. “I was doing my job” was not a very good excuse.
I am convinced many modern American primary school teachers are ignorant. I would like to be proven wrong. I have lost my confidence in that system. I live next door to primary school teacher (who teaches in a reasonably good California school district) who gets drunk on the weekends and complains loudly to her friends about the n—–s and c—-s in her class.
She makes me shudder at the prospect of my children entering into the “normal” school program here Thankfully, they are in decent ASRD programs and are prgressively being integrated into regular classes (which we monitor CLOSELY).
To care for my family, I spend most of my year teaching at a college in Pennsylvania while they stay in California. That’s what we have to do. We can’t engage in the same (four years of) battles all over again just to make sure they get the education they need.
The complaints of the teachers in this thread are insulting.
They should quit, teach, fight for changes or shut the hell up.
Jane:
You’re right up to a point: There ought to be more done for all children, but it ISN’T a “zero-sum game.”
Education for autistic children needn’t be introduced at the expense of education for “normal” children. In fact, there are postings in this comment board that point out the value of integrating (or, occasionally, reverse integrating) students with disabilities into a traditional educational environment.
My grandmother spent most of her adult life working with children with Down Syndrome. She never met a Down child she didn’t like. She never met a Down child she couldn’t work with to make their life better. In the process, she said, her life was better.
If there are problems with developmentally disabled children, they are either in the wrong educational program or (as is true of normal children) they don’t have sufficient discipline in their home life. The former demands a different educational program, the latter demands calling in the parents for their failures to enforce basic parental discipline. In many parts of the country, support and education services exist to help parents with the latter problem.
The more serious problems are people like Amelia, who combine the excuse of bad administration with student disabilities to excuse their own failings as teachers. No one is asking teachers to substitute for parents in the lives of their students, but many teachers seem uninterested in being proactive in addressing the problems of their students these days.
It’s real easy to judge someone when you haven’t seen the entirety of their situation.
Admitting you don’t know what to do with a special ed. kid is kind of like admitting to postpartum depression; admit you have a problem and so many people just sit in judgment on you and blame you for not automatically divining the solution.
Yup. I had failings. I often didn’t know the right thing to do. I was a sorry noob. I did the best I could with what I had, but I didn’t think my best was adequate. It really bugged me that I felt so often like I was improvising, because kids’ education is so important. I was afraid it would take too many years for me to progress beyond mediocre, so I quit teaching. Relax.
And for the person who says I just want to use kids’ disabilities to excuse my own failings, you miss my point. I knew I didn’t instinctively know how to handle everything, so I asked for help. Often. I admitted I had problems and asked more experienced teachers and the special ed. teachers for ideas and suggestions – because I wanted to do better. And, like you, so many of them said it was my own fault – my attitude, my laziness – that I didn’t know what to do, and left it at that. Not helpful.
My point is that I sought help and didn’t get it, and my experienced is co5mmon. Training is inadequate and a mentor is hard to come by. That doesn’t excuse screwups – but if you want to make things better you have to identify the problem. Sorry training is a problem.
Oh, and just to clarify. I wasn’t completely useless. Tantrum-under-the-table boy eventually quit once he realized that his tantrums didn’t get him what he wanted. It just took months for him to accept that he would still get time outs even if he made it difficult for everyone in the room to hear anything besides him. When I said we couldn’t do anything, I meant we couldn’t do anything to make him *immediately* quit his bawling and rolling.
DJ Drummond,
Thanks, but I will not take your advice. No, It is not assault in the literal definition. Rude, hurtful, disrespectful words are not assault. The unlawful touching of another human is an assault, or in some places a battery. Also, please show the legal child abuse and child endangerment. These things also have very specific legal definitions, and being a bad teacher is not part of those definitions. Just because an action disturbs someone does not make it illegal, no matter how much you would like it to be so. You are the one engaging in hyperbole, either intentionally or through ignorance.
Sasha,
You should not feel angered at what I said. My heart goes out to the child. As previously noted, I realize he is not responsible. My posts were directed toward the fact that most everyone wants to lynch the teacher and criminalize bad teaching. And I do not retract my assertion that mainstreaming is not always the answer. When a child is so disruptive that it impairs learning and functioning for the other children, then what is gained? I do not know what the solution is, but it seems evident that something else needed to be done in this case. If one of your college students disrupted one of your classes to the extent that teaching could not take place, what would you do. I find it very easy for you to be so judgmental about other teachers who are in the classroom 30 hours a week handling problems that you never face.
Nathan,
I was referring to engaging in a specific act that violates a clearly defined law. Crimes are thing that violate laws, not just reprehensible
behavior. If a teacher ridiculed a child for talking jive or acting gay, it might be rude behavior, but not a crime.
Look, it seems that you are trying to have it both ways, in that you assert that there is no disability, just a different way of thinking. If so, why should any special allowances be made for the disruptive behavior. Also, using your example of the jive talker, I would not ridicule him. I would also not allow him to communicate in this way in the classroom. What we do not need are more people that can’t communicate with standard English.
Some people, here and elsewhere, say that an Aspergers child shouldn’t have been mainstreamed. Maybe, but nobody knew he had Aspergers when he entered kindergarten. And that’s no one’s fault– Aspergers isn’t always so obvious in a young child, especially if the child is a first-born.
Lots of disabilities (dyslexia, Aspergers, sometimes ADD) won’t be diagnosed until the child goes to school. Therefore, a school needs to be able to deal with kids who later will be found to have disabilities. If they can’t, they are not competent at their job.
I disagree with those attacking Amelia. New teachers are thrown in the classroom without mentoring support. How could she be expected to know what veteran teachers know? Schools need to provide a structure where teachers can exchange tips and techniques of teaching and classroom management.
What this teacher did is horrible.
But I will guess she is a young teacher with no children of her own in that age group. My oldest is 26 my youngest is 9. I have seen young clueless teachers do these kinds of things to kids over and over again.
If a parent attempts to get help for a child with special needs the schools do — as little as possible. The concept in schools is push them through and eventually they will pick up the information they need.
Teachers and administrators do not really care about children learning – they care about teaching to test – getting the kids top get good grades on standardized tests so the teachers and administrators can continually ask for more money. Look at their salaries, pensions and retirement benefits.
Check out http://www.thechampion.org
I (and many other parents) in our middle class junior high were told my teachers and shown how the teach to test at a Curriculum Night. The principal received lots of phone calls – but that is how our school district does do well on standardized test the teach the children HOW TO PAST those tests so the teacher and school look good. It has nothing to do with getting a REAL EDUCATION. We are teaching our kids how to fill out forms and past tests. Not how to be creative thinkers.
This is the 956,768th reason we homeschool our son.
So much codswallop flying here, I feel I should respond.
Amelia:
PPD is an unavoidable consequence of birth for some women. I don’t know of anyone who argues the solution to PPD is entirely internal (except for scientologists). Post partum, there really isn’t a solution to the basis of the problem, only therapy (and possibly medication) to provide relief from the symptoms.
You didn’t have to stay in the education environment.
If you found yourself incapable of teaching, you should have stepped away. You did, and that is to your credit. That you equate PPD with your situation isn’t.
I was the one who suggested you were using excuses for your failure; and what does it suggest that you didn’t bother to read the commentor’s name before you remarked upon my posting?
You gave the kid time-outs. You ignored his problem until it went away. Wow. How proactive.
No one likes to hear it; but did you consider the possibility that your critics were right? That you were/are lazy? Do they continue to do the job you found yourself incapable of doing (and presumably wanted to do)? What do you do now?
Tom:
I suppose, in the end, there is no prosecutable crime. What is your point?
Is it actionable? Absolutely.
People don’t get imprisoned for slander, but they do get sued. People don’t spend time in the pokey for their “oontributions” to the Superfund sites, but they are liable.
Megan Meier is dead.
I’m tired of hearing excuses for people who behave badly and/or incompetently.
Yours’ seem particularly interesting:
“One child sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. One child who demands 99% of the time as well as physical, mental and emotional resources in the classroom. Why was this child in a mainstream classroom? Why did the school allow him to disrupt everyting for everyone else? Oh and did you notice that the parents are thinking about suing the school. Its not enough that most of the resources in the class were already being consumed to handle their child. Now they want to get more.”
I can see how your “heart goes out to the child.”
His fellow students criticised him for picking his nose.
What do you know about the circumstances of his experience in the classroom?
People like you dismay me. I spend most of my time in the classroom working to unwind the bullshit and received “wisdom” of years of public school education. I tell my students again and again to think for themselves, to look at the numbers and reach their own conclusions. Most of the time, I get a book report.
You’re reciting a litany of talking points from the AFT. You’re an ass.
“I find it very easy for you to be so judgmental about other teachers who are in the classroom 30 hours a week handling problems that you never face.”
When you’ve spent a year teaching 300 students at three different universities in Tashkent for the CEP, organized Central Asian student and faculty conferences and set up web pages for the same, and managed publications… you can tell me about your problems. What is it, exactly, you find easy about my life that you know nothing about (setting aside the immediate issue of having two autistic children)?
p.s. 30 hours a week?!?!?
REALLY????
Explains a lot.
Sasha,
Don’t you dare to presume to judge me. You know nothing about me. You may choose to disagree with what I have written, but don’t ridicule my compassion for the child. You are so busy patting yourself on the back for being such a great example of what teaching should be and bashing other points of view that you are insufferable. My point about there being a crime was that many of the contributors to this thread called for the criminal punishment of the teacher, when as you say the was no prosecutable crime. As to what I know about his experience in the school room, I don’t know much, AND NEITHER DO YOU. You can play the martyr if you choose, and attack an argument I did not make about your having an easy life. I said you find it easy to be judgmental. I stand by that.
OK, if it is more than 30 hours a week, you reinforce my point. I also thought your ad hominen attack calling me an ass tells a lot more about you than about me. I do not know what the AFT is, so I can’t be reciting their talking points, unless by coincidence. Yeah, Megan Meier is dead. Since I had nothing to do with her death, I wonder why you chose to write it. BTY, who am I excusing for bad behavior or incompetence? I do not excuse what the teacher did, but I see how it could happen to someone not as steeped in perfection as you seem to be.
I commend the 2 children who voted to keep Alex in class. I take care of an autistic child and he has changed my life. He is so wonderful and full of love. My heart goes out to this family.
I’ve had better things to do than peruse these comments, but since Ms. Jacobs linked back to them today (and I find myself increasingly drawn to her very interesting blog posts) I guess I should follow up.
Tom,
Or what? You’ll stick me in the corner? Prosecute ME? You presume to judge the behavior of the teacher and student in this case on the basis of what little you’ve bothered to read in the press, but you take insult at someone judging you on the basis of what you write regarding your position on an issue you know little about? What a bizarre concept. Of course, what you probably mean to say is “how DARE you be critical of me, now let me criticize you for being judgmental!” Did I happen to mention you’re a hypocrite? Perhaps I should define the term for you.
I made no mention of a need to criminally prosecute the teacher, I merely pointed out that your defense of the teacher on the basis of what was known was inexcusable. I mentioned Megan Meier because you trot out the same shopworn moral equivocation that was used to defend HER persecutors. You can take issue with my judgment if you choose, I honestly don’t care; but why are you so concerned with what I think of you? It seems to me you should spend less time worrying about that and more time buttressing your outrageous claim that your “heart goes out to the child.” Nowhere in your posts do I find any evidence of sympathy for Alex. Moreover, you’ve already drawn conclusions based on information that isn’t in evidence. That, by the way, is why I called you an ass: you are led by the nose to beliefs based on OTHER people’s beliefs and not on the facts (AFT is the American Federation of Teachers, by the way).
My point about the amount of work I do (and have done) wasn’t to lay claim to some higher moral authority. Rather, my intention was deflate yours. I don’t claim to be perfect, far from it; but it would still be inexcusable for me to treat ADULT students in the way Ms. Portillo treated this kindergardener.
In the shadow of the looming edifice you’ve built to commemorate self-esteem (yours, not Alex’s) and being “fair” to all sides in an argument (ditto), I reiterate my prior assertion:
You, sir, are an ass.
There, I’ve dared.
I did leave something out…
With respect to Tom’s post:
It just didn’t register because it seemed completely irrelevant. That’s probably because I read Krysten’s post before I started writing.
Martyr? In what way did I express myself as a “martyr”? I do what I have to do for my family. I do what I have to do because it is the most important work I can do in my life. I do it because I am most happy and most fulfilled caring for the people I love. I have never been happier in my entire life.
My actions are entirely selfish. They have always been selfish, but they now encompass the lives of people I can’t live without. Every day I wake up next to my wife, I help my children off to school, I greet them upon their return and help them with their homework: those are perfect days. There are many and varied perfect days, but they are always about my family. They are always about my wife and my two curious, furious, dedicated and frustrated children who are SPONGES of knowledge for the world around them. Krysten would know, but it is apparent you don’t: my children are the greatest gift I’ve ever received, and they’re the surest proof I’ve ever received of benign deity in the world.
I am unhappy when I’m away from my family. I am unhappy when I have to fight for what’s best for them, or argue with nitwits who don’t undertand autism. I am angered by people and circumstances that don’t fully appreciate what autism is and means. I am infuriated by a system that seems indifferent to distinctions that are becoming more and more relevant as time goes by; and that’s not just for me, but American society in general (review the figures of autism diagnoses over the past thirty years).
And Tom, you just annoy me.
I know this is going to sound cold , but I as a parent with three children in the school system am tired of the small minority getting all the attention and the amount of tax money that goes towards educating some of these children. I do not agree with the way this child was disciplined but having seen the way these children behave over the years I am sure it was a long year of disruptive behavior. Then none of us wants to say anything for fear of looking insensitive at the expense of the majority of children’s education. It is time we stop being so politically correct and take these children on case to case basis. If they are not capable of socialization their PARENTS NOT THE GOVERNMENT are responsible for them.