A new problem, imagne that! LOL

It depends on whether this is a big enough battle to fight. Only you know that answer. Now if this is a teacher who you have spoke to before,if his IEP states he needs accomodations and states that the teacher must assist ,then I suppose it would be an issue of complying with his IEP. If it isn’t stated in his IEP,I suppose you need an IEP meeting. I believe the teacher gets away from the confeditiality issue by having them keep it in their notebook. True it is a very lazy way to keep track of grades,and I suppose if your son isn’t doing it then this teacher will have a dificult time figuring out what his grades are. I suppose if I was a intelligent kid,I would forget to write my scores too! Bigger issues I hear you talking about;
The kid is afraid to speak up, this is a problem.
The kid is not fully responsible for his ed performance,the teacher has a hand in this responsibility. It boils down to the teacher either not understanding the impact of your sons disability or she is a rotten control freak who wants to humiliate and hurt others.

Yes, she’s a control freak, and she’s also one of those teachers who think LD kids are lazy and don’t try. This is the same teacher, who when told he was only responsible for completing 50% of his homework said, oh then does he only get a grade of 50.
I had decided I was sending a note back, saying that he didn’t understand how to maintain this grade sheet, and would she please go over it with him, or if she doesn’t “have time”, ask the LD teacher to show him how.
As for the keeping track of grades, she keeps a grade book, this is just something extra she wants the kids to do. I think she is very uncaring and not understanding, with all the issues this kid has to deal with….why would she harp on something like this.
But, I guess I’ll have to just play her game. The sad part is, he’ll have this same battle ax again next year.

1. will she explain things in a calm and caring manner? If not then I believe I would speak with his special ed teacher.
2. The bigger battle is trying to get another teacher next year. I would be proactive and discuss your difficulties with the principal. Doesn’t have to be today,or even tommorow,this is just another very specific example of why another teacher might be a better idea for next year. Clear and specific examples,without any emotion.

Sounds like a control thing to me too. Especially when you tell me about the ‘good behavior’ points. Sadly people with control issues do go into teaching.

I like e-mail better than notes. Could you e-mail her? If not, go for the note. Tell her her note got you to thinking about this practice. Tell her his notebook could be opened by any student and thus his grades would be made public. Tell her this is making your son uncomfortable and now that you think about it, you’re uncomfortable too. Grades are a matter of private record and a student’s notebook carried all day risks not being private. Tell her right now the Supreme Court is deciding whether this is a violation of students’ rights or not and the practice has been outlawed in seven states and may soon be outlawed in all schools in all 50 states.

Given that, ask her, shouldn’t we wait until the Supreme Court makes up its mind? Tell her if she e-mails his grades home you’ll keep a grade sheet at home.

Good luck.

well kathy you have struck on the two things the school can do and does have plenty of….new problems and controll freaks. The school may run out of textbooks, space, programs, money, xerox paper, and sanity, but they have a never ending supply of new problems and control freaks. I think they have a computer at each school that is on 24 hours a day with its sole responsibility being to generate new problems. And I think part of getting a teaching degree means you have to score at divergent levels of cotrolling behaviors on a standardized personality test.

ok about your problem, Mybe you should call an IEP meeting and fix the iep, you have found something that other kids can do solo and your kid cant theirfore it needs to be addressed through the iep, either in the format that they will teach him, or in the form of a modification- maybe he could log the grade without doing the calculation, or if thats to much then maybe it should be modified out entirly.

you have more strength through the iep process then you do trying to fight it based on a ferpa law that hasnt been ruled on yet.

I faxed the teacher a note, written on the bottom of what she had faxed me ( I was hoping the prinicipal might see it first)
I said yes I know my son forgot to bring this sheet home to have me sign it, he told me, which I guess is the step in the right direction, at least he remembered he forgot. I also said this is one of the downfalls of having weak organizational skills, which I know he needs to improve on, but I’m at a lose as how to solve this, so if she has any ideas, I would welcome the suggestion.
And, I told her he doesn’t know how to do this grade sheet and he’s afraid to ask her for fear of getting yelled at, I also added that I was sure she didn’t yell at him (but I”ve been told she does) but that’s how he preceives it, something common among LD kids, so he will need a little extra help getting this completed.and…..his MFE also says he has problems with sequencing so this is probably the root of the problem. I also told her I questioned the importance of keeping a grade sheet, especially with all the obstacles he has to overcome in school everyday, and we need to weigh it’s educational value and we need to pick our “battles”, so that only the things that will be beneficial to him are the important issues we worry about. The note said a few more things, but I kept it polite. He did say that all the other kids who didn’t bring in thier worksheet signed by thier parents today got a detention, but he didn’t. But, I didn’t receive a response from her either, which is typical……I think she believes if she ignores me I’ll go away.

We have no other choice but to have her again next year, he goes to a small shcool, the 7th grade and 8th grade teachers are all one and the same. I am so frustrated with this school, I don’t know what to do. I’m so tired of everyday it’s something, adn then I spend another night not sleeping. Can you sue the school for mental anguish to the parents? LOL But really, I worry about my kid, if I’m this upset how does he feel having to face them everyday. I try not to let him know how upset I am. I really worry about him, how he must feel going somewhere everyday that makes him miserable and to think that’s it’s trained professionals doing this to him. GRRRRRR! Another thing that is bothering me, is I have to have surgery next month, I know I borrow trouble, but I keep thinking what if I don’t wake up, what will happen to him. or even just on the short term…how will he get his homework done while I’m in the hospital. We have a very supportive step father in the picture, but he knows nothing about how to handle these LD issues, he supports me and him all the way
but to handle it alone, he would be like a fish out of water. He won’t even really be able to help with homework, because my son and I have a system for completing homework, but it’s taken us years to get to this point, and as you all know it’s not like doing homework with just a regular kid. I’m hesitant to even tell the school I’ll be in the hospital for a while and could they help with homework, because the way they are it’s like an open
invitiation to say, hey mom’s laid up, let’s pick on him some more, she can’t defend him.

On a more positive side, after my talk with the super. and she tried to turn things around to things being my son’s behavior problem, I had a talk with him and said, if you want me to ever get things right with the school, you have to really try to not talk in class, lean back on your chair and stuff like that and get into trouble, So he’s done it…..12 days without a detention, and I reward him every week. But do you think the school has ever said good job! Nope, instead they take good behavior points away because he can’t fill out a stupid grade sheet. This is all taking a toll on him, his stomach hurts constantly, he isn’t eating enough to keep a bird alive. We went to the doctor yesterday, just to make sure it wasn’t a medical condition, said maybe it’s a virus. He’s lost 4 pounds in the last 12 days.

Ok, I know I’m rambling, but I feel better, thanks for listening!

Poor kid! Poor You! Do you have any wriggle room on science?? Could he take it from a local community college next year? Or correspondence? Is there another elective he could substitute? Sometimes authority figures will take pyschological-emotional things more seriously than what they regard as behavior probs. What if you tell school that your impending surgery is causing him severe emotional stress and he needs out of the class and will complete assignments at home or resource room. ( Maybe not exact line but something like that) Could stepfather accompany you to provide silent male authority? Too often Mom’s get discredited by authority just for being Mom. And prob some truth in the emotional stress part. If you’re worried- scared , then he is too. No matter how hard we hide our emotions- it’s a kids worst fear losing a parent. Man, too bad they don’t give medals for courage in life! Good luck. By way sounds like you handles it as well as could be.

I’m willing to bet that the teacher is trying to make kids aware of their grade. She keeps her own records but wants the kiddo’s to know where they stand. Often kids will say they had no idea that their grade was a D, they thought they were doing okay! Since the kids have grade records, the parents can ckeck the grades, too.
I have also worked with teachers who posted grades every Friday or second Friday with codenames to protect identies. But a better way exists- www.mygradebook.com. The teacher can post her gradebook securely and kids and parents can check in.
You have a teacher who is organized and able to supply you with your child’s grade at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, she has no idea how she is coming across to your child. Give her credit, she is trying to make the kids 1) aware adn 2) accept some resposibility for their learning. Most teachers I know who attempt the student grade tracking approach include a step by step formula right on the gradesheet ie total score divided by total points or in case of weighting : total the projects columns and multiply by .25, total the tests column and multiply by .50, ………Maybe you try suggesting she include the formula.

I’m not sure that this teacher is all that organized, at one meeting I ask what my son had gotten on a test, two weeks earlier, and she didn’t know she hadn’t graded it yet. If I hadn’t had so many other issues with this teacher I might try to give her credit. This is the same teacher who when told my son was only responsible for completing 50% of his homework, said oh so do I only give him a grade of 50. When the prinicipal said how does he do with hands-on things, she said great! So I ask could you grade him on that, and she said do you want me to give him good grades because he comes to school and has fun? After a very frustrating meeting…my response to that was, why not, you give him bad grades for showing up and trying. On one particular assignment he was having trouble with, and I couldn’t find the way to do it either, I wrote a note asking for him to have some additonal help, her response was…you just want him exempt from this assignment. NO I didn’t want him exempt, I wanted her to teach him how to do it. By the way, it’s not just my child who has a problem with her, it’s the whole class. The LD teacher even told me….she doesn’t like to comply with IEP’s.
This teacher thinks LD kids need to try harder and not be lazy.
So giving her credit is something hard to do.

This really sounds like a toxic situation for the kiddo. If she’s at the “ignore you” stage but is also not giving detentions… maybe if there was some wayto very quietly get out of her hair (so everybody didn’t jump ship too)… at least mental health days for the kiddo — an early dismissal for an “appointment”?

You are right- anyone who is responsible and who has kids keep a grade record doesn’t take two weeks to do the grading.

Good luck