Kind principal and vice principal. Excellent librarian who introduced us to Pax and A Wolf Called…read moreWander (and the sequels or 3rd novels by the same author.) She took an avid interest in families and built a love of reading in the kids.
Kindest kids we have met in school here in Bend. Not a lot of bullying and kids watched each other and learned from each other.
We liked my child's small group reading instructor but his teacher was hard for us.
She told me we weren't normal and to get my child video games. I did as I wanted him to be like the other kids. She told me I shouldn't hug my second grader and some things happening in her own home life that gave me context for how she was.... I still hug my child.
She had a heart monitor and my child did, too, at the same time. She thought, because she didn't have feelings about this, he shouldn't either. He did. She told me, at the start, before school began and we were creating a 504, "kids with disabilities have them because of the parent and I am going to find out what's wrong with you" (this was as the Vice Principal had stepped out.) I didn't know to leave yet and was shocked. She now works with kids with disabilities and we feel sorry for the families...
My child loved art and she tried to remove this in him, having him sit at his desk and go over finished pictures over and over again until they tore. She didn't want him to be friends with his best friend and told me I would thank her later. I let them be friends. She saw this as disobedience to her authority and told me she was the only one to shape how my child would be perceived and her opinion was the only one that mattered from here on out.
The vice principal and principal helped, letting my child and his best friend have breaks to play legos together in the v.p.'s office. The teacher broke this for us at the end of the year, manipulating to affect how we were seen by them, and that trail of hope created for us. She had been reprimanded early in the year for punishing parents who were not participating as she thought they should. At one unit, kids were supposed to make Stone Soup. Only half the kids brought in veggies, due to the parents not participating. We brought a veggie and my child was given 2 bowls of soup. Half of the class went hungry and weren't allowed to make soup or eat it. He brought a bowl for me as his teacher had bowls taken to all of the parents who did participate. I wasn't interested. The teacher was talked to and she focused her efforts on my child's best friend and in doing so, on my child, instead of on the entire class. She kept them out of sharing, group reading times and even his small group instruction in math and reading, sometimes for small things such as his best friend farting or on special days, wouldn't let them cuddle stuffies or play small games of cards they brought, always for small things.
She told me I would thank her for not letting my child be friends with this child she saw as a problem... we were somehow still seen as good? I decided, both kids were worthy of friendship and wanted to be friends. So she punished me and my child for this. She wanted to punish me for not giving her absolute authority, for cuddles I still gave at home, for feelings and emotions still talked about and expressed, for having a child who had the same medical condition as her, but who had it as a child, not as an adult... and who still felt.
We went to this school as another parent enjoyed this teacher for K, before the pandemic and after a difficult experience at Highland, and I learned to never again follow another's guidance, when it was not right for us. I wanted a kind, easy experience of school. I did learn to not trust what is right for another will be right for us, too. I had really kind educators in public and private schools as a kid and was surprised by a different experience, how quickly the kids are shaped and divided into who is good or not, at such a young age.
Parent encouragement/ intervention is key, though this teacher thought I was a teenager, despite being older than her. She had moments that were disrespectful and that held back learning.
Luckily, these skeins fell away with the right ones.
