As our time at School ends and Claire prepares to move to New School, we thought it might be helpful to you if we disclosed some of the difficulties that influenced our decision to leave School.
As you know, our older daughter Chloe was at School from kindergarten through 5th grade, and generally had a great experience. Likewise, Claire’s first year here was wonderful - she learned so much, and her teacher Ms. Z was extremely helpful and effective.
Unfortunately, this year has brought repeated difficulties that have interfered with Claire’s education. Overall, I’d say that Ms. S’s handling of standard 1st grade issues tended to escalate problems rather than solve them. Over the course of nine months, we have strived to communicate clearly and advocate for Claire’s needs in a respectful and optimistic manner. But with the school year almost over, a truly unacceptable incident occurred, and we felt any further attempts to share our concerns were most likely to result in retaliation against Claire during her final weeks of school, so we chose to wait till she was out of the crossfire to share this information.
Of course we are angry and upset about this issue, but our main motivation in sharing this is twofold: 1.) Future students deserve a teacher with better training and oversight to ensure they feel safe, valued, and heard in their classroom; 2.) With School suffering from losing headcount, the administration needs to know when a particular teacher is inspiring families to pull out of the school and warn other families from joining.
Regarding some issues, such as Claire’s medical needs and reviewing Claire’s reading level, Ms. S had been perfectly helpful and appropriate.
The trouble began when Claire and a friend hit a rocky patch. Claire and Zoey have been friends and often enjoy playing together. However, Zoey would demand to play with Claire even when Claire wanted to play with other friends once in a while. Zoey would also demand to choose the games they play, or order Claire to give her items, let her cut in line, or similar, under the threat, “If you don’t ____, I won’t be your friend!” or threats to cry ostentatiously and get Claire in trouble for hurting Zoey’s feelings.
We realize this is a normal developmental stage, but we asked Ms. S to keep an eye on the situation and help the girls overcome these challenges.
Unfortunately, Ms. S seems to have a very emotional investment in the idea that everyone should get along and no one ever get their feelings hurt, even if the hurt is due to a friend setting a reasonable boundary in a kind way (e.g., “Zoey, I can’t let you cut in line because it’s not fair.”).
This led to Ms. S publicly humiliating Claire after Claire chose to play with some other friends at recess. Claire related that Ms. S yelled, “How DARE you?!” at Claire, because the day before, Ms. S had encouraged Zoey to include Claire in play. It’s perfectly reasonable that Claire may have benefited from some remonstrance about friendship being a two-way street. However, being screamed at in language more expected in an adult melodrama than from a teacher calmly imparting wisdom taught Claire only one thing: Ms. S is someone to be scared of.
Since then, Claire has felt helpless to resist Zoey’s manipulations and social aggressions. She tells us, “If I say no to Zoey, she’ll cry and I’ll get yelled at.”
Moreover, Claire doesn’t feel safe approaching Ms. S for any help. Recently she told us Ellis has been poking her, and won’t stop when she says to stop. We told her she needs to get help from the teacher. She responded, “I can’t talk to the teacher - I’ll just get yelled at for tattling.”
Overall, we get the impression that Ms. S just wants her class to run along smoothly, and any kid that upsets the apparent calm by not including every potential playmate, or even by making a fuss when they’re being physically assaulted, is made to feel they did something wrong, and further, is then open to vindictive behavior from Ms. S.
The culmination of her apparent grudge against Claire came on Friday, May 1. Claire had been out sick on Thursday, and didn’t quite finish her homework pack. I sent the following message to Ms. S:
[yada yada incident]
Obviously, a teacher disclosing the medical condition of a parent to the whole class is totally unacceptable (and I hope there is a policy against such behavior at School). To disclose it in such a contemptuous way that trivializes a life-and-death situation, and to do so in front of the seven-year-old whose life has been turned upside down by it, is unforgivable.
While it’s too late to keep Claire at School, we would like to see the following actions taken to ensure that future students are not subject to similar treatment:
- Ms. S needs education in anger management and communication skills so that she remains an approachable source of help to students, rather than a “yeller” to be feared.
- Ms. S needs training in properly handling normal interpersonal issues between first graders, including a plan for peace in the classroom that doesn’t require total capitulation by victims of relational aggression.
- Given that this may be a recurring problem for Ms. S over the years, some classroom oversight may be needed to ensure that she takes the lessons on board and doesn’t regress.
- The school should ensure it has proper policies in place regarding confidential and sensitive information teachers, administrators, and support staff may have access to, and provide review of these policies on a regular basis, as well as when an employee violates a policy.