Shelby flips off his teacher
Ok, well, not exactly, but…
Long story & I’ll try to summarize the main points here…
He’s in 2nd grade. Last day is technically Monday, but that’s only a 15 minute day, so, in all actuality, it is today.
In the fall, at parent teacher conferences, his teacher told me that he was not a ’self-starter’, but he was (and continued to be) doing fine academically & behaviorally, otherwise. I kind of figured that it was an awesome thing that his teacher had figured that out about him and that, as a professional educator, she’d take that knowledge of his personality & use it when teaching him.
Instead, near the end of January, after hearing *nothing else* from her, her student teacher or his other teacher (teacher he went to for the advanced reading group) in the intervening time, she calls me to tell me that he’s inattentive, not staying on task, not completing his work in class -and- that this has been going on all year. Apparently, with no intervention on their part at all.
Various phone calls & emails started at this point. In most of them, in addition to talking about the inattentive, not staying on task & not completing work, the teachers *also* threw in little comments about how they thought he was ‘odd’ or ‘unusual’ - asking if he had any friends (he does - one even arranged with the teacher to bring juice to keep in her room so that he could sit with milk-allergic shelby at lunch); talking about his playing alone on the playground (maybe his friend wasn’t there that day); telling me how once, while the other kids were taking off their coats, he stood back from them, with his coat over his face & hit himself on the head (he later told me that he was not comfortable pushing his way through the crowd of kids at the coat hooks & would rather wait until he had more space around him). Just all kinds of ‘that kid is weird’ allusions without really coming out & saying it.
It all culminated with a ‘PPS Meeting’ *months* later (and, in the mean time, apparently, no changes to their daily classroom patterns in order to accommodate a student who they are clearly not motivating). At the meeting they, again, told us the same things that they had told us months ago. The only difference was that we were face to face, now & there was a school psychologist present. During that meeting, they often said how he was ‘not normal’, not falling within developmental norms. The most obvious indicator that they could show us was the results of his ‘math facts’ testing.
Math Facts are addition & subtraction problems. 100 of them, on a sheet. The kids are sat down with the test & a timer is set. I’m still not clear on the time limit - sometimes when we’d talk to her about it, she would say 3 minutes, sometimes she would say 5 minutes. (And, ironically enough, during the PPS meeting, she made a point of saying that she didn’t understand how Shelby would have a problem following her verbal instructions because she is naturally an organized person… But, the 3 min/5 min thing was not the only time during the school year when she got things wrong, contradicted herself, sent home instructions that were unclear even for an adult to understand, sent home work with no instruction at all, etc… but, anyway…)
The kids are expected to complete, correctly, all 100 math problems in that time limit. They just keep repeating the test until they get it right. I totally understand the idea behind it. The kids need to practice doing simple math quickly so that, when more complicated concepts are being presented later, they won’t be slowed down figuring out 3+5.
Shelby, on the other hand, wants to take his time & make sure the work is right. It’s not slowing him down immensely, it’s just being careful. And, we didn’t really care if he was fast. We wanted him to be proud of his work.
But, at the PPS meeting, they showed how he still hadn’t completed the addition facts test in the allotted time limit & told how all of the children were required to complete both addition & subtraction facts in the allotted time limit or they would get a ‘3′ (not meeting expectations) on their report card at the end of they year. Whatever. I don’t really care if he gets all 3’s, as long as he’s learning & being polite. He was, by the way. In addition to being in the high reading group, he was also in the high math group - working on understanding multiplication & division concepts - just not doing adding & subtracting fast. And, he never got a ‘red mark’ (her system of behavior control) during the entire school year - always earned lots of ’store dollars’ (another layer of her behavior control system) every week.
Anyway, the PPS meeting came & went. He, apparently, met with the school psychologist, but we never heard back again from either the psychologist or the teacher regarding any of this. At all. Nothing. Not a word.
Sometime in April, Shelby finally completed the addition Math Facts test in the allotted time period. Hooray! He then moved on to the subtraction Math Facts test. But, kept bringing them home at 70%, 80%, occasionally something in the 90% range.
Yesterday - two days before the end of the school year, he brought it home complete - 100% finished & all of them right. He told me that, when he knew it was his last chance to take the test before the end of the school year & that he knew he’d get a ‘3′ if he didn’t finish it, he knew that he had to get it all done this time. So, he tried a new way of doing it (I didn’t remind him that this is what dad & I had been telling him to do all along). He was just going to concentrate on doing them fast & not worry about whether they were right or wrong. And, he did & he finished it. Just as he could have all along, he just didn’t care enough to do it then.
To me, even though I’m sure it was not intended on his part, it feels like a great big ‘Fuck You’ to his teacher. Kind of like he could have done it all along, just didn’t see the point in getting all worked up about it until it actually mattered *to him*. It’s a sarcastic, “Yeah, two digit subtraction, that was *really* hard” *eyeroll* “Did you see how fast I did that? Did it make you all excited inside?” :-p
Ahhh, I can’t wait til next year. I hope he has a teacher who actually gets excited teaching a kid who loves to learn - not just someone who’s going through her checklist, making sure each kid passes all of the tests they’re supposed to pass & fills out all of the appropriate worksheets each day.
