Seeing red over teacher's actions - act now, or wait till kid is out of that class?

We’ve been having issues with this teacher for most of the year, but now she just took the cake. My question is whether to meet with the principal now or at the end of the year?

Now means my kid is either stuck in this asshole’s class and subject to her vindictiveness for the rest of the year, or possibly switched to the other class, which is a lot of upheaval just two months before the school year is over.

Later means that stuff won’t be a problem, but my kid is stuck in a class with a teacher she’s afraid of (and who is cool pulling this kind of stunt) for another two months.

So the stunt in question was this - I sent this email to the teacher yesterday:

and I got a response of “No worries :)”

Then I hear that this happened in class (and yes due to careful questioning, along with knowledge of our kid’s normal vocabulary, I’m pretty confident this is an accurate account):

Apparently the standard procedure is for the TA to call out each child’s name, and the child gets up and turns in their homework. When she called Claire’s name, the teacher turned to TA and said that Claire didn’t have hers, adding, “Yada yada yada, sick day; yada yada yada cancer.” This was in full hearing of the entire class, including Claire.

This teacher. "Yada yada"ed my fucking cancer. In front of my kid. (Not to mention sharing my personal medical information with a whole class of children.) :mad::mad::mad:

Is there another reason we should be attributing this to malice instead of stupidity? In other words, is this a foot in mouth thing or do you have another reason to believe that the teacher is vindictive?

Best of luck.

, “Yada yada yada, sick day; yada yada yada cancer.” This was in full hearing of the entire class, including Claire.

I would demand a meeting with both the principal and this bitch. Repeat what was said, and expect a grovelling apology. I would make it incredibly clear that nothing less will do.
I would also tell the principal that any sniff of retaliation by the bitch would get very ugly for the school.
I would then let my daughter return to the class, with her full understanding, that the bitch was on notice. The bitch would also understand that she was one cross eye away from being outed as a bully of children whose mom has cancer.
Yes, go there, she’s already told the class that you have cancer, why not have their moms know what she did.

Umm, she alluded to earlier issues…

As a teacher myself I am utterly appalled. :mad:

First, calm down. You’ll make fewer mistakes (say the wrong thing, make threats, tec) that could hurt your case.

Second, immediately take your case to the principle. Explain your side and produce as much documentation as possible.

Third, if necessary, make it known that you do not want to get lawyers involved in this (regardless of whether you intend to involve lawyers, or not).

My youngest daughter ran afoul of an assistant gym teacher in high school. Someone had been repeatedly turning the gym lights off. The ass gym teach eventually became irate, yelled at the class, and mentioned that it cost more money to turn the gym lights on and off than it cost to just leave the lights on.

My daughter had no idea what the ass gym teach was talking about. Unfortunately, she chose to ask the ass gym teach how it could cost less to leave the lights on. The ass gym teach blamed my daughter for turning the lights off AND SUSPENDED HER.

Besides missing classes, my daughter’s HS bowling team was forced to forfeit their match that evening because they were short one bowler.

We were unaware of the suspension until we drove to the bowling alley.

The next day, my daughter had to report to the VP’s office to serve the rest of the in-school suspension. That meeting didn’t go well because my daughter knew she hadn’t turned the lights off and wouldn’t accept the VP’s position that the ass gym teach must be correct.

Now, my wife and I became involved, along with the principle. Another student in my daughter’s gym class had come forward to admit that she had been turning the lights off. SHE WAS TOLD NOT TO DO THAT IN THE FUTURE. CASE CLOSED.

The ass gym teach refused to admit that she had made a mistake, or that another student had actually turned the lights off. I made it clear that I did not want that woman any where near my daughter, and suggested that changing gym classes (it was a big school, so no schedule changes were required) would be in everyone best interests AND I did not want to get lawyers involved. The Principle suddenly became very cooperative.

There were no further problems until the report cards came out. My daughter had failed gym. WHAT! She played water polo plus the bowling. She turned in her class papers and attended class every day.

Back to the Principles office, we go. Apparently, the ass gym teach had changed the grade my daughter’s new gym teacher had entered. What a moron. However, the ass gym teach was allowed to stay at the school until the end of the school year.

Bottom line, get the principle involved early. Otherwise, they might say that they had no idea there was a problem. After all, no one else had reported and difficulties.

The teacher was out of line. If you approach this correctly, you could get the teacher formally reprimanded. Absent a documented history of bad behavior, termination is unlikey unless you have substantial influence with the district admin and the school board.
What, exactly, were the issues you were having for most of the year? What did you do about them? Do you have any documentation?
Right now, you are in the position of calling the teacher out based on “my kid said that the teacher said.” The “in front of the whole classroom” part isn’t as damning as it seems because admin isn’t going to question other people’s kids, most likely.
My advice is keep your cool when you contact the school. Don’t make foolish demands like “grovelling apologies.” Approach this as the teacher being in violation of professional ethics. Unless the other issues are germane, handle them separately.
I am a union rep and I have represented more than a few teachers who were facing angry parents in a meeting with admin. The angrier, vaguer, and more scattershot the parent’s complaint, the easier the defense.
Be calm. Be focused. State specifically how the teacher did wrong. Don’t start demanding penalties until after you have actually established that the teacher did wrong.

WHAAAAAAAT. Oh hell no.

And ditto that for Unauthorized Cinnamon’s daughter’s teacher. What is wrong with people?

It’s my opinion that the ass gym teach did not have the proper attitude, or aptitude, for dealing with high school kids. Or any other age group of children. Or cattle. Or more than one bucket of asphalt at a time.

I have no idea how many other children were subjected to her odd behavior, but I’ve heard from a few. I believe that my daughter wouldn’t have had to deal with her if others had spoken up earlier. “Take it to the Principle” is a good principle.

If your daughter wants to change classes, insist on it, ASAP.

Either way, report it. This teacher needs to be suspended.

Phew, I can’t tell you how pleasing it is to read supportive messages and to see the teacher referred to as “this bitch,” but yes, I’m trying to keep on the rational side of this. For those who want more details or are curious how we’re proceeding officially, here’s my draft letter. This is framed assuming we hold the issue till the end of the year, but I’m thinking more and more that perhaps we should see if we can transfer her to the other class and take care of everything while the issue is fresh.

Oh, and for background, I’ve heard much gossip about this teacher being a yeller. One story says that a kid in a classroom next door to hers had to talk to the school counselor because her screaming was freaking them out. So that’s what I refer to when asking for oversight - I’m sure to the extent the stories are true, the administration is well aware, and I didn’t want to cite gossip in my complaint.

We do have emails back and forth documenting the frenemy situation, her weird “everyone just has to include everyone” stance, and stuff like Claire being afraid of her. Oh, and the teacher forgetting to do her typical birthday celebration stuff for Claire and Claire being devastated. Maybe need to add that to the letter too.

I suggest you not suggest any actions. Confine yourself to making your case that the teacher has done wrong. Penalties will be decided by admin and/or the school board after the teacher’s bad behavior has been proven. Their actions will be informed by both the local contract and your state’s school laws.

Yes indeed. State your issues and how they upset your child and yourself. Request meetings & the like. Do not state terms, they won’t be met.

I had an issue with Little Dose’s Second Grade teacher. I picked my daughter up after school (it was the start of the 2nd week of school) and was driving home and asked how her day went.

“Today she took my chair away and I sat on the floor.”

At first, I thought she had everyone sitting on the floor (she had spent some time in Africa and was very much about educating about standard of living in other countries), but no. Just my kid. Apparently the teacher had a rule that all kids needed to push their chairs in when they went out for recess. I understand the need to have rules, and discipline BUT she then took my daughter’s chair away and sat her on the floor for the rest of the day.

I was livid. You don’t do that to little kids. Especially little kids that are still new to the area and trying to find a place. Still, I managed to remain calm when I spoke to the principal. I used phrases like “zero-tolerance policy for bullying” and asked how they handle it when a teacher is doing the bullying. It helped that a) I had volunteers several times at the school b)I am a spokesperson by trade and am pretty good at presenting and messaging and c) I was still in uniform and would have cheerfully killed that woman.

We worked it out. The teacher was nearly in tears when she called me to apologize, and also apologized to my daughter.

I will say, I still regret NOT pulling her out of that class at the beginning. The woman was a bitch, and in 2nd Grade, most kids should still like school.

YMMV.

The problem with waiting until the end of the school year to communicate your issues to the principal is that it might be too late to do much about it in terms of that teacher’s role at the school the following year. Any disciplinary action would likely slide under the carpet over the summer and next year’s class will be faced with the same problems.

That’s a really good letter.

Quite apart from the disrespect of this incident (and all those other incidents you catalog are pretty appalling too), I’m kind of uncomfortable about that homework-handing method as a general principle too. It seems so formal and drawn out - I don’t really see what the purpose is for all that palaver apart from giving the opportunity to publicly shame kids that haven’t done theirs. What’s wrong with just having “put your homework on the teacher’s desk” time?

But maybe I’m out of touch. (I will admit that one of my daughter’s best teachers makes it quite public who’s done their homework and who hasn’t. But that’s in a very small class, and not with all that rigmarole)

I know, right? Back in my day, the teacher would collect homework by telling us to pass it up. It took all of 30 seconds. No TA or extra commentary needed.

That’s a very good letter (except I agree about not telling them how they should deal with it). And congratulations on not marching down there and kicking the teacher’s ass, which had to be tempting.

The only thing I would do differently, if it were my kid, is that I’d do something straight away. I don’t want my kids getting the sense that they’re helpless against abuse of authority and their only option is to suck it up, do whatever Zoey says, stay quiet when Ellis pokes them and take the teacher’s bullshit - and that telling a problem to a parent doesn’t actually result in anything changing. I would want my kid seeing, in concrete terms, that she doesn’t have to take that shit, and that her action in telling me has led to a change.

I would talk to my kid and ask her what outcome she wants - does she want to switch to the other class? Does she want to stay in that class, but with an apology from Ms S and the asurance that Ms S won’t be bullying her any more? And then I’d demand a meeting with the principal and Ms S, and sort out that outcome.

I second all of this. Postponing is not going to help your kid and will probably cause your complaint not to be taken seriously. If you aren’t up to a meeting with the principal, send an email and follow up with a phone call. It sucks that you have to deal with crappy teacher behavior at a time like this.

Something to consider is that not only should you take action but your child should see you taking action.

Wow. I’m really sorry you have to deal with this, Unauthorized Cinnamon. I have two kids in elementary school, and while I’ve been lucky so far and my kids’ teachers have all been good, I know it is tricky to deal with the school when something goes wrong. From what you’ve said it sounds like the administration is well aware of the issue and has done nothing, so I think you’re justified in being concerned about retaliation. On the other hand, that teacher really needs to be dealt with as soon as possible, and maybe your letter would be the tipping point. It’s a tough decision. Sending some positive vibes your way.