Background: My 12 year old daughter was diagnosed with written expression disability and ADD one year ago, through private testing. Was expecting a battle due school testing did not id disabilty due to test score averaging. But school did accept and did everything to support - had a wonderful year, lots of progress. Did everything the same this year, gave all teachers personal note with list of her needs and weaknesses (twice). One teacher has not made any accomodations (other than front of the room) and expects all students to take notes from lectures, study from same notes and end result was D on end of unit test. Daughter was told her notes were good directly by teacher and same was sent to IEP meeting in Sept. Therefore, daughter would not include addl info from text book into study material. AFter test, I wrote note to teacher explaining again her weak areas, esp. notetaking. Pointed out that all but three of the questions she missed were not covered in her notes and that she knew more than her test score revealed. Asked for assistance in preventing recurrence. Also asked for future tests to have larger font and better print quality (looks like test was typed on old typewriter and copies of copies for many years.) (Daughter has vision problem as well.)
Problem: Teacher took offense to my letter and initially said couldn’t change teaching style, perhaps daughter would be better off in other class. After much conversation, agreed to meeting this Tues. to discuss “a couple of suggestions.” But if not good enough, recommended changing to another teacher.
Teacher called back next morning 7AM to say bothered since receipt of my letter and did not see solution and needed to have daughter moved out of class as could not teach under these conditions. I broke down (sobbing) and refuted all the arguements - not a difficult parent, not challenging teaching ability, just looking for suggestions on how to support my daughter. Teacher backed off and agreed to meeting as scheduled.
Then, same day, the teacher spoke to my daughter about this - told her I was upset and asked if she should move to another class. Today she asked me why I was mean to her teacher.
School admin. seems to be inclined to support me so far, but hasn’t talked to teacher yet. I don’t know what to do. My daughter should not be punished for the unprofessional and illegal conduct of the teacher, but can I safely leave her in this class? Am dreading this meeting like there is no tomorrow. Can’t sleep, can’t eat, not sure I can be rational. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!
Re: Need Help - Hostile Teacher Meeting Tuesday -long
Go immediately to the principal and have a meeting. The principal should also be present at the meeting with the teacher on Tuesday. good luck
Re: Need Help - Hostile Teacher Meeting Tuesday -long
The problem is that this is also her homeroom teacher (assigned by her last name). The other problem is she doesn’t want to be moved - when my husband questioned her today about the conversation on Friday, she defended the teacher. It’s not fair that I end up the bad guy. I think in my heart, I should move her, but I worry about the affect on my daughter and it makes me angry that the teacher gets away with it. I feel that I am in a no win situation and would like to see consequences for the teacher.
Re: Need Help - Hostile Teacher Meeting Tuesday -long
God Sharon,I have soo been there before. I had BIG problems with my son 4th grade teacher. He loved her,had her for 3rd grade. But she wasn’t willing to help. The same type of scenerio developed. It was over using his alphasmart keyboard. It was written into his IEP,I insisted he use it,she told my son that your mom insist you use it,which made my son angry at me. What I wound up doing,I came clean with my son. I explain exactly what developed. I told him how he had the right to use it,and I was fighting for his right to do so,and that I felt it wasn’t fair for her to tell him this,because 1. the conversation didn’t quite happen the way she told him. 2. Why would it be right to make him feel bad about using something that helped him?
He rose to the occassion,and a change was made. I met with the principal and the teacher and my son. All went well,with the teacher ultimately apologizing profusely. In the end,my son became much more aware of what all those accomodations were about,which helps him to advocate for himself. Good Luck,we are on your side.
Re: Need Help - Hostile Teacher Meeting Tuesday -long
I think you need to try your best to go in to that meeting with a smile on your face and a positive attitude. Sometimes it pays to be a good actress. If you go in there hostile, she will sense it and be on the defensive.
Ask if another student(who is an excellent note taker) can use a sheet of carbon paper to make a copy of her notes to give to your child each day. That way you you can compare them to your daughter’s and see what is missing. If the teacher says that isn’t fair to the rest of the students, take Richard Lavoie’s approach (from the video “how hard can this be) that fair is giving each child what they need, not giving all children the same thing. (as he explained, if someone in the room has a heart attack, you wouldn’t withhold CPR because it wouldn’t be fair to give it to only one person. If only one person needs it, you give it to the person who needs it.)_
You're the parent
First I’d check out the other teacher… but basically this teacher is waxing all kinds of defensive over… having to do her job. You aren’t making demands that are even taxing of her. Heck, you didn’t make ANY demands!!!! All you did was state the problem and put it into her lap. She dumped it back into yours somehow, successfully if she broke you down.
Any way you can take an advocate of any kind wiht you — a friend, somebody to just nudge you under the table if you say something that sounds foolish? (I count on certain friends to give me a nudge when I get a certain look in my eye, or start down an emotional path — it’s just not productive).
Bottom line — stick to a few key points and don’t let your mind or heart get dragged any where else. ALL you are asking is for the stuff already agre3ed upon, that your daughter needs, you are not trying to tell anybody they’re doinga bad job (because it will speak for itself).
So stick to what you said about the test, just the facts, ma’am. If the teacher is the one who gets all defensive and that’s what it sounds like — she’s the one who was upset by the letter, right? — just keep coming back to the facts — what are you going to do about the fact that her notes were FINE according to the TEACHER… and here they are, and here is the test…
Thanks to all for input - am back on track
All,
THanks for leveling me out once again. It’s funny how it takes one teacher to set me back to where I was when this all began. I delivered a letter today to the principal who will meet with the teacher prior to our meeting. In it, I chalked it all up to a misunderstanding or miscommunication and asked for a fresh start. I let them know that my daughter asked me to write the original letter to ask for help and I never meant to offend the teacher. In fact, if that is what happened, I apologized as that was not the intent. I am looking for solutions.
Hopefully,this will provide the best opportunity for a win/win solution. You know, when girls in my scout troop have a problem or want to give up, I tell them that there no problems, there are just solutions that you haven’t thought of. I guess I need to listen to my own advice, thank goodness I have you! By giving up my anger and panic, I now feel capable of handling the situation. My husband will be there too, and probably the Spec. Ed teacher who has volunteered to be my daughter’s case worker (don’t know what that is). My husband is my leveler and we had already agreed that I would do the talking and he would touch my knee if I was going down a path I shouldn’t be taking. So, I hope all will be fine.
The meeting was just moved to Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully I will be posting good news!
Thanks again for your great suggestions and support.
Sharon
Re: Need Help - Hostile Teacher Meeting Tuesday -long
Over years of teaching, I’ve found it’s very hard for teachers to change their teaching style. It’s even hard to get them to abandon or change one thing - no matter what the IEP says.
I’ve seen teachers look principals in the face and say, “Forget it. I’m not doing it.” Or say, sure, fine and then go back to their classrooms and do exactly what they’ve always done.
I guess my advice as a parent of LD children would be that I’ve found we have to accept the unfairness sometimes. I can’t fight every battle with every teacher and neither can our children. I pick and choose.
I also do the notetaking myself for them if I have to. If a teacher requires them to do the things that they cannot do - and will not listen to the reason of the learning differences - then I just do whatever it is, type it up and send it in as their work.
When I need to, that’s helped us over some hurdles there seemed to be no other way around.
Good luck.
Move her to another teacher!!!