Do you think it's okay for a reg ed teacher to hang kids ups

LA,
I don’t think any of it is appropriate. If the principal has no idea how long he will be dealing with subs for your son’s class, I would strongly suggest your child be put in another teacher’s classroom where things may be more stable. I am sure part of the reason for my son’s early difficulties was the fact he had a long term sub in 2nd 3rd and 4th grades. In all, he had from kindergarten to 4th grade a total of 9 teachers. I hope things get better soon.
Amy

There are three 2nd grade classes each filled to the state mandated maximum of 22. EVERYONE wants their kid moved. It’s just not possible. I already asked. No one else is moving. There is simple no room.

I asked if we could increase his resource minutes each day. That would have him out of their more. So, the resource teacher is looking into that. Right now it is 60 minutes a day. Maybe we could do 90 or 120 minutes a day, almost to the point where all he does in the reg ed class is recess, lunch, specials.

I appreciate your input. I’ve been taking a survey here at work and most, not all, think it’s not okay at all to hang kids. Some don’t want the kids touched and others think it’s a poor use of time.

No, the ankle thing is not appropriate. Will some poor child have to be accidentally dropped on his head before they figure this out?

Cub Scouts specifically banned it for this very reason.

What I suggest is that you gather a group of parents together and set up an appointment with the principal. Ask as a group that one long term sub. be assigned to the class. There is power in the group over the individual. At our elem. school this same situation occured and that is what the parents did and the principal took action. Another year when one of my son’s teacher was having a problem preganancy having learned from the past the principal immediately got a long term sub.

Helen

PS. We also had a teacher who was having emotional difficulty and parents removed their child when the teacher turned over their child’s desk and grabbed them. Principal left at the end of the year and new principal had teacher out of the classroom within the first ten days of school.

I’m having a little trouble believing this post is a serious one. Holding a child upside down by their ankles? 2nd graders? And how does a woman have the strength to hold children of this age and weight upside down by their ankles? I know I couldn’t physically do it.

And what if they were dropped?

It doesn’t matter much at this point whether the children thought it was fun or not or whether the parents think any of it was acceptable behavior or not. No district can tolerate the legal liability that could result from such poor judgment on a teacher’s part.

Your child has protections beyond those guaranteed to students in regular ed. I think that if I were you, I’d start writing letters regarding FAPE (‘cuz it’s not happening for your child if the teacher of the day isn’t aware of accomodations on a regular basis.)

My guess is that the school could hire a full-time assistant for another class, move your child in, and continue to be legal….at least that’s the way to get around class maximums in the states in which I’ve taught. Of course this will cost real $$, so it’s not a quickly offered alternative. ;-)

Good luck!

I wish this was a joke, but it’s not!!

The principal sent a note home to the parents saying she had been placed on administrative leave while the district “investigates some parental concerns.”

This teacher was a 3rd grade at the school for the last 6 or so years, but moved to 2nd this year to get away from being in a testing year. (3rd graders have to pass the 3rd grade test to be promoted to 4th grade for the first time this year.) She told me she thought it would be less stressful. (ha!)

The district told one parent that they can’t fire her bec she has a contract. That just can’t be true. There must be something about conduct in there.

I just wanted to see if anyone thought it was okay to hang kids by their ankles and I have talked to some people who think it’s harmless. Of course the taped mouth/storage room thing is totally unacceptable. My son was never sent to the storage room but says several kids have been - without the tape.

The local paper - major metro paper - was going to run an article about it, but killed the story for some reason. I’m in the process of finding out why.

wow, question.

Has anyone stopped to consider the emotional toll this teacher placed on these children,then to have her abruptly removed and placed with sub after sub? How unfair.These kids could use some counseling. Spent many a night having nightmares about “the closet” when I was in 3rd grade…

BTW, good luck on the special school. We too are waiting for word, and expect to hear in February.!

When I dropped my son of this morning the counselor was in the classroom. My son doesn’t *appear to be too troubled over what is going on. He said, so far, he can read everything the sub is teaching which is good for him, but since he is LD and is way behind on his reading, probably not great for the rest of the class. Also, my son liked being held upside down so he doesn’t feel harmed in any way. I’m approaching it with him as a Bad Use of Time thing rather than You’re a Victim of Teacher Abuse. Plenty of other moms are approaching it as You’re a Victim. I’m not sure I’m right or wrong on this.

I think you are right to use your child as a guide for your response. The teacher was wrong but your child’s perception is important.

I try to gauge my child’s response to his teachers without imposing my own predjudices. He had a teacher that I couldn’t stand once but I never let him know. He was happy and I value his judgement.

Several questions and several answers:

Tape on mouth: Absolutely OUT. Illegal. Assault. One way to judge quickly if something is borderline or totally off the wall is to change the object of the action. If you did this to an adult, what would happen to you? Jail and court, right?
Ok, now a side note — I had teachers in elementary school who taught chatterers to stop talking with *symbolic* tape — a tiny bit of scotch tape, maybe a half inch, that hardly held on, just to remind them that they were moving their lips. Probably not allowed by today’s standards, but didn’t seem to do lasting harm. And the whole point was to keep them *in* the group, but to remind them not to talk all the time.
Second serious side note — as a first aider — some people (even more common in children) have blocked noses and could really suffocate, even die, with their mouth taped shut. Absolutely OUT!

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Storage closet: from the sound of *this* situation, sounds like definitely out. For starters, even back 25 years when I was first teaching school — and the law is much stricter now — it is absolutely illegal to leave kids unsupervised in school. As in the health danger mentioned above, who knows what could happen?

Now, a caveat. When you mention storage rooms, there are rooms and there are rooms. In some schools with a space shortage, storage rooms have been converted into seminar rooms, tutoring centers, offices, class libraries, etc. I have also seen articles advising making a “quiet space” where kids can go either for a disciplinary tim-out or when they themselves want to de-stress; sounds good on paper, but due to the supervision problem mentioned above, I have always been leery of this. So when a kid speaks of going to the storage room, it is a good idea to see exactly what this entails — a nasty dark fearful place, or the class quiet reading corner? Look first, then react.

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Hanging kids by the ankles: as a teacher, I wouldn’t do it.

As a parent, I did it all the time and my daughter thought it was hilarious; but as always, circumstances alter cases: My daughter was terribly underweight and easy to lift until she was about eight or nine and got too tall. She was very athletic and able to do cartwheels and roundoffs, so even if someone’s hands had slipped, she was quite able to lift herself out of the position with her hands — and of course we knew this. She was used to her parents and confident and relaxed so accidents were unlikely. We didn’t do it above concrete floors, but usually over grass or padded carpet. And I have been a downhill skier for forty years now, and I’m far above average strength for a woman especially in my hands. All of these change the question.

As a teacher, I wouldn’t know the kid’s weight or athletic abilities or physical confidence, and school floors tend to be very hard. I wouldn’t know if the child would enjoy the physical joke or panic and hurt him/herself. So I would not do this, definitely.

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Yes, absolutely ask the principal to get a long-term sub; he should know that a permanent replacement is going to be required, even if he can’t actually give a permanent contract until the paperwork is through.

Yes, teachers CAN be fired; the contract or tenure ONLY means that there has to be due process, which is why a new permanent teacher cannot be hired right away (but a long-term sub can, and can turn permanent later.) Due process ONLY means that they have to have a hearing and provide evidence and reasons for firing the teacher. Give the school letters signed by actual witnesses, and that’s evidence.

Gee, amy, my crystal ball must really be working!! Over on the math board I answered your concerns and commented that your son had probably had very poor math teaching and the difficulty now is that he has a teacher who is trying to teach higher-order work to a bunch of underprepared kids. Again, not really clairvoyance, just seen this too many times. All the more reason to take advantage of someone trying to pull up the level as much as you can. Please see note on math board.

At least there weren’t news trucks at the school - yet. So sad. The district had their PR people there ready to give statements. I’m sure they will spend the day there. The current sub will be there for 3 weeks. Don’t know what will happen after that. I do like the teacher, but I don’t know how she can come back with half the parents furious. The school staff is bending over backwards to help these kids and parents cope with the disruption.