Drawing on a student’s face is a bit whacked. However, this:
is even MORE whacked (not your husband, the policy) in the other direction. Can’t touch a student on the shoulder? Sheesh!
I don’t understand why the teacher received PAID administrative leave. Sounds to me like she got two days paid vacation as a “punishment” for marking on children.
No argument from me there.
Eh, it’s startling at first, but given some time to think about it my husband (and I) decided it’s a good policy. It’s WAY far on the side of caution, but it’s also a simple way of dealing with a very complex issue. Cutting out casual hand-on-shoulder contact is a small price to pay for settling the whole issue definitively. And students are still welcome to initiate contact with the teacher (say, a hug) if that’s important to them.
It’s not just a liability issue, either. Some kids really DO NOT like to be touched, and that needs to be respected. Maybe it’s a sensory issue, or they’re a victim of abuse or bullying, or they just want their personal space respected. I was like that. Unless a kid is clearly okay with it, hands off the best policy.
(I was actually on the receiving end of an incident similar to the OP when I was five, and I fought the teacher in a blind panic. Between that and other things, personal autonomy is still a Big Deal to me today. So I’m not an unbiased opinion here.)
Don’t have kids but I wouldn’t be too worked up over it. It was a bad decision on her part but escalating it is a worse decision on the parent’s part also. I’d be angry, take a breath, and let it pass. As for the lesson it teaches my hypothetical son? Instead of teaching him to stand up and fight injustice, I think a better lesson would be to turn the other cheek.
I’m confused as to why there was any punishment in the first place.
Key the teachers car, then let it go.
I’m not generally a helicopter parent. I let my kid go up to all the houses alone tonight trick or treating (I was close, but wanted to foster a little independence), but if someone did that to my kid? I’d flip out. Yeah I know it’s not permanent, but it would make me crazy. While the suspension is probably a good punishment assuming it doesn’t happen again, I wouldn’t want to let it go either.
Last week I was doing a pick up after school and the teacher’s aide was yelling at all the kids the whole time. It was near 70 and sunny. She was screaming that they had to put their coats on if they had worn them in the morning. While that might be a reasonable rule, on a day where there is a 30 degree increase between school start and end might not be the day to make the big deal out of it. Then a little girl was tying her shoe and she was screaming at her to keep up with the line… which was at a complete stop just 6 feet ahead of her. This was a first grader who was being yelled at. Rules are rules, but I was very close to start yelling at her, telling her to relax just a teeny tiny bit.
Wrong, to humiliate a kid like that is crap. Even if the kid is too young to realize it is happening [which it seems in this case] just proves that the teacher was doing it for her own jollies.
I would let it go as you are moving but I would let any other parents I know what happened and also write a letter to the board. Bit passive aggressive I know but as you are moving it makes sense if you were saying I would move the kid anyway.
Just how is a kindergartener supposed to “handle” the problem of abuse by an adult authority figure such as a teacher? Seems to me that’s exactly when a parent NEEDS to step in.
I know what I’d want – for the teacher AND the principal to acknowledge that the face-painting was a totally inappropriate action, and for them both to pledge that it would NOT happen again. With what we’ve been told so far, it appears that neither of them thought it was big deal at all, only that there was an error on a technicality. If that is the case, I’d be very upset to know such ignorant fools were in charge of kids.
Exactly. And she did. And as soon as a corrective action plan is created, she needs to step out. Which is what I said in the rest of the post which you cut out of the quote.
What I hope she doesn’t do is kick up a fuss where the kid sees/hears about it. As far as he’s concerned, it’s done. Letting him know she’s still steaming about it is risking sending a message to him that he’s been profoundly damaged by this idiocy. 5 year olds have a way of internalizing parental anger towards their teachers as a message that there is something wrong with them, not the teacher.
Whatever happens now may be encouraged and insisted on by the OP, but is really between the administration and the teacher, especially as the family is moving away.
Follow-up after our grievance report meeting: Found out that this teacher is the lead kindergarten teacher. We recommended that she be removed from the lead position, principal stated she is considering it. She has also been placed on a “growth program” that will follow her the rest of the school year, and any other incident will be termination. She has also been enrolled into 3 courses over the next 3 months on child/classroom discipline. We have requested that each certificate of completion be emailed to us. We also received a copy of the letter placing her on administrative leave.
I hate when people dont leave follow up information so here is ours.
Our son never had any idea that we were perusing this issue and has continued on with his normal school routine.
I have a problem with the whole thing. What kind of infraction is leaning out of line? Is this a Marine boot camp kindergarten or something? I would do everything I could to see that teacher fired and never allowed to work around children again.
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Key the teachers car, then let it go.
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I agree with these two. You wrote on my child?!?! She’d be lucky I didn’t give her a red nose.
I swear I think it’s the first thing they teach them in pre-K. Stepping outside of the line is a serious infraction of the rules, don’t ya know? :rolleyes: It’s all “lips and hips, children! Lips and hips!” I personally found it ridiculous to see 40 four year old students marching down the hall with one hand on a hip, the other over the lips. But it seems to keep them in line, and that’s all they want.
Does anyone else think their kid would find having their nose painted the funniest thing in the world?
I have rules that seem arbitrary in my class. For example, students should have their hands at their sides at all times.
Today, of course, a kid forgot. She was swinging her hands as she walked, like happy kids do. And she got a little overenthusiastic, and her hand swung a little too high, and it had a lunchbox in it, and the lunchbox smacked the head of the kid behind her. It ended in tears.
Often the rules teachers put in place may seem arbitrary, but there’s a good reason for them. Kids often don’t have the experience necessary for exercising common sense, so they need very clearly-phrased rules that tell them what they should be doing. For example, the rule might be, “When you are in line, face forward at all times.” Without such a rule, kids will decide it’s a fun time to walk backwards, and when the line stops, they’ll fall on another kid, and it’ll end in tears. If you phrase the rule with exceptions or qualifications, kids will just hear, “When in line, face forward at all times, unless you maybe think there’s an okay reason not to, in which case it’s fine if you do something else.” And it’ll end in tears.
If the rule is, “Face forward at all times,” I have no trouble at all with administering a consequence to a kid who breaks the rule. Naturally, drawing on a kid’s face is totally inappropriate as a consequence.
On a first-time offense, I’m likely to compliment by name the kids nearby who are doing the right thing (“I love how Jim is walking: he’s facing forward, hands at his sides, voice quiet. Awesome, dude! Shakayla, looking good!”) That’s going to fix the problem most of the time, as the offender remembers what to do.
If it’s happening multiple times a day, or if the kid is ignoring the compliment-your-friends strategy, I’ll call him out. “Fred! Eyes forward!” A little military voice isn’t a bad thing here; you want some chagrin to be happening. Once they’re complying, you smile and thank them.
Only if it’s causing real problems would I put in a consequence. “Fred, you’re going to be spending some recess time practicing how to walk in line,” I’ll say, and at recess he’s going to show me, for five minutes, how to walk in line.
At no point do I draw on his face. Good grief.
These are all reasonable things to do. I don’t think anything more than a verbal reproach is necessary for a kindergartener leaning out of line (assuming it’s not a chronic problem with him). Despite that, there is something seriously wrong with a teacher drawing on a child’s face as a punishment in any circumstances.
Ever tried to keep thirty kindergarteners under control all by your lonesome? Let alone teach them something? Unfortunately a lot of arbitrary ‘shut up and stand in line’ becomes necessary.
Best research estimates is that classrooms should stay smaller than 15 kids. Bigger than that, and the teacher spends too much time disciplining and it’s not an effective learning environment. My husband has been in a classroom with fifteen students… once. In a tiny school, on a day when a bunch of the kids were out at band camp. 25-30 is more normal in the well-to-do suburban district where he’s working now. America is not handling education very well right now. But that’s a different rant.
Suomy, thanks for the follow up! Glad to hear there’s a plan in place, it sounds like a pretty reasonable outcome to me.