My fight really started in September, 2010. My son had just started 1st grade at Chimney Lakes Elementary and had a teacher that it was her first year teaching alone. Although I really want to use names because I feel that the treatment my son has received from a few key individuals is outrageous, I will save myself the problems that could come with mentioning their names.
My son started school in August with her and within a few days was crying that he didn't want to go to school. I tried all I could to get that to stop, and honestly felt that once I was out of sight and he was in the classroom that it was better because I was never told otherwise. Finally, about four weeks into the school year I was told by his teacher that the crying didn't stop once he got to class and that she was trying to work with him on it. That night I took my son (6 years old) out to dinner to discuss the crying and to try to figure out why it was happening. What he told me that night made me sick to my stomach and made me want so badly to hurt somebody. Instead, I turned that rage into what would become the biggest battle of my life, or so it appears right now. My son's teacher, when he would cry in the classroom and not calm down, would put him in a closet and close the door so that he would no longer be a distruption to the class. Clearly the crying started at the beginning of the school year for another reason, but had continued because of this fear of his teacher's actions.
The next morning I marched into that school, told my son that I would deal with it, but that he had to be a big boy that day and no crying...he went to class that day knowing that it was going to be all better. I walked into the office, asked to see the principal and received a response that I have now learned to expect from the principal's "gate guard"..."She's in a meeting and it's going to be a few hours". I am lucky enough to be a self employed contractor for a company that provides virtual assistant services, so I was able to respond that that was fine, I had my Blackberry in hand and could work from the front lobby, it was only 8:30 AM and I had until 3:00 PM that day to wait. I don't know that the secretary knew what to say at the point. And there I sat for an hours waiting for the principal to return to her office. Finally she came in and we went into her office and talked. I explained what I had been told and was told that it wasn't acceptable in her school and that it would be dealt with, afterall the teacher was being moved to Kindergarten because they had too many kids in Kindergarten (yeah, that's a good idea, let's put her with even younger kids). 48 hours later my son had a new teacher and has overall done well with her.
However, this first teacher continued to haunt us for a bit longer.
The problems that she caused continued up through report cards being issued for the first quarter when I declined to sign my son’s progress report because the first teacher hadn’t input any grades into the system for the work that was completed for the four weeks that he was in her classroom. Only after I appeared in the principal’s office for a second time, the day report cards were issued, with a print out from the online grade book in hand, did the problem get addressed and my son had mostly accurate grades on his report card.
That was how the fight started...
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