my kid

So my 2nd grade son's teacher had been picking on him at school. I'm interning at a law office and when I asked them what my rights are about getting him transferred they came up with some stuff for me to use. Background: This had ben going on for a few months. In December we had a meeting with the principle, his teacher, his mom, me, his grandma (who teaches at the school), and some other school staff and my chick and I thought some good things came out of it. However, even though Markus wasn't aware that we had had that meeting, for him things got worse. He came a few days after that meeting and said things were worse than ever in class. A couple months of trying to get the principle to change Markus' class reaped nothing. So I finally wrote a letter that had all the legal responsibilities and an outline of what the teacher had done (she said "crap" aboout his work a couple times and used Markus as an example when saying to other kids, "oh great, now you're slower than Markus"), in it. Now keep in mind the kid is smart, he gets the stuff but he gets super distracted, really easily. We feel the teacher's pain here, we have him at home and it's the same, but the problem is she is an adult and a 2nd grade teacher who is now taking her frustration out on a 7 year-old. Also, Markus internalizes everything, he takes everything personally, even when he gets in trouble at home. The difference is, at home, and everywhere else in his life where he sometimes gets disciplined for not staying focus, like his Kung Fu classes, once he get's torn down, he gets built back up. In class he wasn't getting that.

In the teacher's defense, I understand, I think, what she was doing. She was looking for way to get through to him. A way to make him stay focused. The problem is, when she figured out it wasn't working she didn't change it, she got worse. Like I said, after three and a half months of this, since the December 15th meeting, I knew something else had to be done. I worte a legal letter outlining everything and the laws, and that Markus had to be moved from that class immediately, no questions, just make it happen, in a more proffesional manner.

Here's the thing, so without us doing this for 3 months, nothing happened. In a matter of two days of me taking action, shit got done. I went at sat with an Associate Superintendent, got pretty verbal with her, and that produced a call from the principle. Got pretty verbal with the principle the next day, and that produced the teacher crying in the principle's office and sitting Markus down during a break from class that day apologizing to him for the way she had treated him, telling him she'll make the effort to help him learn.

So, I tell you that so I can tell you this. At the risk of sounding arrogant, normally when situations like this arise, and I begin to research and devote resources to figuring people out, I know what's coming. But this time I was wrong, I'll admit it. When we went in the next morning to meet with the principle and now the teacher too, after she had apologized to Markus the morning before and he came home from school for the first time in months saying he had a good day (Again, he didn't know about that meeting either), I fully expected her to lie about what she said. I knew it was going to happen and I knew how I was going to discredit it (she had been caught in a lie about what other teachers had said about Markus, earlier in the semester), and I was going to go over everyone's head to the Super and school board. In fact, the day before I told the principle in a heated argument, that even though you have a good reputation now, they can topple like that, and that he would be held just as responsible for the neglect, discrimination, and emotional abuse that she had shown Markus because he is the principle and we'd been trying for 3 months to get him to do something about it, and he let it happen. Anyway, I was wrong, she didn't lie, she didn't deny, she was holding back tears ( I didn't believe the principle who told us she was crying the day before).

I had absolutely no thought in my mind of giving them a second, or what I felt was even more than that, chance, when we got there. But three things happened, Markus came home happy from school for the 1st time in months and at this age, getting turned off from school could have life long affects (and he has now for 4 straight days), we realized that had we done this footwork earlier (Assoc. Super., letter, etc) the teachers attitude may have changed then, and I was wrong about what was going to happen. Because of those three things we gave them an opportunity to not have their reputations irreparably damaged and make it right with the kid. It's like I told the principle "I know you have a good reputation in this district, but when it comes to children, your reputation can topple from the pedestal like that, if your responsible for damaging them. You may as well be labled a sex offender." I know, I'm an asshole.

Moral of the story. We admitted where we were wrong, they admitted where they wrong, and I even admitted, in my own mind, where I was wrong (about the teacher's following actions that didn't happen...yes I can admit it...I know, weird), and all of that resulted in what was best for Markus.