A's Language Arts teacher this year was amazing. She really affected how A viewed herself and helped to boost A's confidence. I saw a wonderful, tremendous change in her.
Coming from an education background, I believe that praise is more productive than criticism. I also know that many times, in education and other industries, the supervisors hear only the bad things, the negative comments and complaints. When A was in kindergarten, I felt that her teacher was wonderful and I wrote to the superintendent and principal. This year, in fourth grade, I emailed them, as well as several members of the BOE.
I received wonderful messages of thanks and acknowledgement of the teacher from the Principal and Vice Principal of A's school, as well as the BOE members. The Superintendent's message started out very well, but ended with "What you have experienced is a combined effort on all of our parts."
Um, no.
It's not...
A's Math teacher read their standardized test scores out loud to the whole class and gave them threatening words of discouragement; she gave gifts to only the kids that did not get Basic Skills Instruction; she gave my daughter a test when my daughter had been out for 4 days with swine flu and when I called her on it, she asked me to stop emailing her; she was nasty to me more than once and she told me that kids can't suffer from anxiety. A's third grade teacher was OBSESSED with talking about the NJASK; she told the parents that the teachers at the middle school don't care about the kids like(they start Lower Middle School in 4th grade in our district).
More importantly, our Principal doesn't allow parents to approach her and ask questions, we need to submit everything in writing to the PTO Presidents and then they submit the questions to her and she answers what she wants. We are forbidden any direct contact with her because she feels "threatened" by parents. AND her latest thing, which I found out yesterday when I went to lunch with some moms from PTO that I seldom get to see anymore...is that she has forbidden certain parents from being on the Executive Board of the PTO. Our elementary school is the newest and was designed to accommodate the needs of special students. Thus, all of the special students in the district attend the elementary school around the corner from me, regardless of where they live in town. Three moms of special needs students, who have served on the PTO for several years, volunteered to be on the PTO Executive Board and the Principal said that they can not because they live in a different elementary school zone of town. The PTO and many, many parents feel that this is discrimination. These moms didn't ask to have special needs children, nor did they ask the town to put all of the special needs students at this particular elementary school. These women are willing to volunteer their time selflessly and should be commended! But she absolutely disdains involved parents, especially since these particular moms (maybe because they have special kids) KNOW what their kids are entitled to and she doesn't like that. By the way, all three of these moms ALSO have children that are not special needs that attend our school, so it's not as though they are going to ignore the other students. I am sick over this. Livid.
So, when the Superintendent wrote back that it was a "combined effort on all of our parts" and I had just heard this and spent hours discussing it over the last two days and when I thought of how IF my girls go back to school, that is ten weeks away and really, there is almost nothing that this woman can do to them until then....I decided to let it FLY! I told him EVERYTHING!!!!!! I can't even believe I did it!!! It feels good! Liberating!! But also, OMGoodness, I can't believe I did that!! I did include to him and the BOE members (I CC'd them) that I never intended for this to get negative, and with all due respect, I take offense to that statement when this has been my experience....and then I outlined it all for him.
YOWZER!!!!
