Teacher who led students in humilating boy with an ASD has tenure restored

I can't say, since I don't have long years of experience dealing with five- and six-year-old children.

Drabbler wrote:

Cy, I think you're making a couple assumptions there. The teacher said she directed the kids to state what they didn't like about his behavior. Carefully controlled and constructive, that's nothing like hazing. It's an intervention. Of course, the boy's story about what was said was different, that the kids were mean and hurtful, but we all have plenty of experience with people who are (supposedly) more mature yet still can't accept even the slightest criticism without calling it a witch hunt.

He was five. Not some 16 year old fanbrat.

The point is that just because he says it was mean and hurtful and a witch hunt, that they called him "disgusting" and "annoying," doesn't mean that we should take that at face value. If we don't automatically believe it when someone older says the same thing, if we recognize that their perception and reality may differ, we should acknowledge the same possibility here.

How do kids - starting a whole lot younger than five - learn that behaviors are wrong? They're told so, first by those who are older, then by their peers. The big change is that, as they get older, we trust them with more of an explanation with why they shouldn't do things. So I am going to say that yes, with proper instruction, a kindergarten student should be able to distinguish between "You're bad!" and "Your actions hurt me." If this boy couldn't, why not? Was it solely because of his condition or because, like so many of the fanbrats, he had adults around him enabling and excusing what he did?*





*["My son's not unruly," she said. "What he does he can't help."] - from the same article I posted earlier.

Drabbler---just sayin', but Movie-Land isn't real life. And a teacher singling out a student and having the other ones say to his face what they don't like about him is about as far from Dead Poets Society as you can get. I agree that maybe having the calling-out of his behavior come from his peers might have been a good idea, but that is not the way to do it. Yes, children can be taught to call each other out on unacceptable behavior without being tattlers, but you don't turn it into a fucking witch hunt. I would like to see the other side of the story, but from the information I have now, the teacher crossed the line.

grmblfjx wrote:

IT'S NOT MIKEEEEEEEEEEEEY


What, he used his week off to take a class in eloquence and how to write full paragraphs? IMPOSTOR

1.) Judging by that Weepy, you missed Mikey.

2.) I've always been this eloquent. Which really isn't very eloquent.

NastyHobbitses wrote:

Drabbler---just sayin', but Movie-Land isn't real life. And a teacher singling out a student and having the other ones say to his face what they don't like about im is about as far from Dead Poets Society...

Hobbits, go back and look at what kind of movies I was talking about, because Dead Poets' Society doesn't come close. I mean the ones like Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, and Lean on Me (except he was a principal and did get called on what he was doing).


Also, even in the absence of a direct accounting of what was said, there's still enough evidence just in what's been posted that the source of the story as presented is more than a little biased, which should at the very least warrant skepticism.

A clip from Stand and Deliver:



Kimo is badass and I know it's probably lame work but goddamn it I want to teach math and inspire kids like this someday

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Take it from somebody with a disability of their own - handicapped kids can be fucking annoying, especially when they're smart enough to pull the "I'm handicapped so you must be nicer to me" bullshit.

Also, I've got Aspergers. And having Aspergers doesn't stop you from shutting up and learning, it stops you from socialising. If he was being crazy then that's him being a gimp, not the AS, just like me when I'm all bitchy and annoying, but at least I don't blame that part on the AS.

(Thank you.)

Cyberwulf wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

If he was being crazy then that's him being a gimp, not the AS, just like me when I'm all bitchy and annoying, but at least I don't blame that part on the AS.

:law:
You used to blame it on your Asperger's all the time.

... Wulfy, this is the first time I've seen her bring it up since the beginning of the Orange Boards, where she said she wasn't going to bring it up anymore. She's actually kinda maybe growing out of blaming her trolly personality on it, y'know?

After all, people change. I don't remember you being such an annoying nasty bitchface when I first started hanging out around GAFF.

Aw, Alana you're sweet. Yeah, I used to be that way but now I'd rather have control over myself than blame it on a condition that nobody really believes exists anyway (shit, I don't even fully believe it exists and I've GOT it).

Trouble is that without actually MEETING this kid to assess him, it's bloody hard to work out how much of it is him, and how much of it is a social disorder.

I hang with (other) kids with social disorders all the time and I think I've got a damn good right to notice that none of them run around biting people and screaming. It's easy to sit down and blame things on disabilities. AS doesn't lead to discipline issues. DISCIPLINE leads to discipline issues. AS varies, but it's not a 'run around screaming' disorder. More a 'speak when spoken to' disorder.

And if he's worked out that by screaming and throwing a tantrum he can avoid going to school (where for the sake of things I'll be gracious and say he's not enjoying himself) then he will do that.

None of which made what happened, which I have yet to see any contrary evidence to, at all right or correct. He's a young child. I don't get how everyone can focus on his supposed misbehavior, assume its severity, and then heavily imply that what happened (again, if it's true) was alright.

It's a real shame we don't have, like, a camera into the classroom at that exact moment.

ARI, part of the issue with that is that so many people are saying that kindergarten students are fundamentally incapable of understanding what this teacher -- who'd been working with kids that age for twelve years and with most of these ones in particular for the better part of a year -- was trying to do, that they're unable to fathom the difference between "I don't like it when you throw crayons at me," and "You're a bad kid, and we hate you." [The notion that the teacher intended it to be a witch hunt is absurd on its face.] I'm going to need to see some tangible developmental psychology data for that one.

The severity of his behavior matters for two key reasons. First, if this teacher had been having to deal with this behavior for months, then she and Alex's aide (who was absent on this day) had probably tried dozens of different ideas to try to get him to calm down and were always looking for new ones. In that context, "Let's try staging an intervention!" becomes much more understandable.

Second, it provides evidence that the published version, the mother's version, may not be reliable. A parent is, at the best of times, biased. They love their kids and want to think the best of them. However, anyone who's worked with kids and parents can tell you that some are far worse than others; they live in complete denial of their kids' misdeeds. ["My angel would never do that!" or "It can't possibly be my kid's fault!"] In the articles provided, she both denied the extent of his misbehavior and excused it, calling into question her reliability. It certainly provides enough reason to be skeptical enough not to demand the destruction of the teacher's career.

That's one of the biggest problems with this whole affair. The mother's story became national news because it fit into the bias (and the agenda) of a particular group. Thousands of people with no knowledge beyond what the mother said took her word completely uncritically and acted on it. The school's office was unable to function for days because it was inundated with calls from all over the country (and beyond) from people who wanted to express their outrage. Students at the school were harassed by strangers and became afraid to say where they went. That's a whole lot of collateral damage, and that definitely wasn't the teacher's fault.

You really don't understand social developmental disorders, do you? Regardless of his behavior, that was not the way to address it. It would do nothing to help, and only be a stressful, humiliating experience.

And again, I have yet to see or find any evidence to contradict the story given in the articles.

Look back through this thread; people are saying that he couldn't have understood because of age alone, and I'm saying that I'm going to need something more substantial to back that up. As for the condition, we don't know for sure what he has, so we can't say what effect, if any, it has, or whether any delay has an external source.

And remember, it was the teacher who was subjected to a trial by press here, with almost no chance to defend herself. The events that followed showed clearly that there's no presumption of innocence in such trials, but I was hoping we could be better. All I'm doing is trying to show that there's reasonable doubt.

Drabbler wrote:

The severity of his behavior matters for two key reasons. First, if this teacher had been having to deal with this behavior for months, then she and Alex's aide (who was absent on this day) had probably tried dozens of different ideas to try to get him to calm down and were always looking for new ones. In that context, "Let's try staging an intervention!" becomes much more understandable.

Second, it provides evidence that the published version, the mother's version, may not be reliable. A parent is, at the best of times, biased. They love their kids and want to think the best of them. However, anyone who's worked with kids and parents can tell you that some are far worse than others; they live in complete denial of their kids' misdeeds. ["My angel would never do that!" or "It can't possibly be my kid's fault!"]

I accept both of these points but I still don't believe that what the teacher did was right. They may have been at the end of their tether, but you can't expect young children to see the difference between "I don't like it when you hit me" and "you're a horrible person". Children don't think in nuanced ways. And a teacher with twelve years of experience should have realised that before standing the kid on a chair to become the butt of his peers. Even in the difficult circumstances she faced, it was a rubbish idea.

Lexin wrote:

...but you can't expect young children to see the difference between "I don't like it when you hit me" and "you're a horrible person". Children don't think in nuanced ways.

Of course they do. At some point in childhood, children learn the skill to make that distinction -- or at least they should. As with any other skill, it's going to depend on two factors: innate cognitive ability and training. When we say children are incapable, we're saying they lack the former; this is where I'm saying I need to see some hard developmental data. Kids get the ability at some point, and I'm not so sure that it's later. If it is, show me.

But as with any skill, this is one that must be learned. We need a guiding hand to show us how to use this ability. Some kids never get that, we all know -- e.g., the fanbrats -- and even some adults don't master it. To be fair, though, most of us have some trouble with it during heightened emotional states; we rely on calm hindsight to recognize the truth, and the biggest hindrance to that can be friends and loved ones reinforcing the initial misconception by feeding into the emotional response. ["Oh yeah, man, that [w]itch must go down!"]

Lexin wrote:

Even in the difficult circumstances she faced, it was a rubbish idea.

Quite possibly, but there are a few levels of wrongness between a rubbish idea and a career-killing one.

This thread is now about trains. What's your favourite train? Mine is the locomotive.

I have a feeling that this sort of thing isn't all that rare. I had a teacher a lot like that, who liked to let her favorite students misbehave and blame it on me. She'd also stick me in a corner with a packet of work and leave me to do it on my own, because the fool school dministration stuck me in a learning disabled class because I was diagnosed with ADD, therefore I must be unable to learn.

Quote :

This thread is now about trains. What's your favourite train? Mine is the locomotive.

Trains, huh. My AS friend says a lot of kids with autism find trains fascinating because they're orderly. They have precise arrival times, precise tracks that they're confined to, precise engineering, etc. I don't know if it's bullshit and she just made it up off the top of her head, and I don't really care enough to look it up, but that's what she says.

Yep, it's bullshit. Kids with autistic spectrum disorders can find just about ANYTHING fascinating, and find a way to order it or organise it. Trains are just something that NORMAL people see as being organised normally.

I'll be fascinated by anything I damn well please.

I am a little torn on this subject. Being an Auspie myself and having a speech impediment I can sympathize with the student for being called out by a teacher who may have lost the love of teaching and succumbed to group-think.

I was routinely humiliated and physically abused during my years in school and day care. My brother was as well for being my brother. My problem was not acting out in class, but not understanding that there is a time and a place for correcting the teacher. And that time was not in the middle of class. But that gave my teachers no right to jerk me out of class, bruise my arm or shout me down in front of everyone and make sure that everyone knew that I was Autistic. To those teachers, Autism meant that you were stupid, case closed.

It took me a long time to understand the whole time/place idea and I did not learn it by being humiliated. Humiliating a child makes that child avoid those situations all together. They learn nothing. However with gentle instruction with an even, but firm tone can work wonders. This teacher may not realize (And I am only assuming that the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome is not a sympathy ploy by a greedy psychologist), that a child with AS does not have the structures in the brain that deal with social development. Its not that they are not active...their just not there! So what people with normal social centers understand on instinct, we have to set up an internal dialogue and keep reminding ourselves of. It ain't as easy as some people think.

Quote :

But that gave my teachers no right to jerk me out of class, bruise my arm or shout me down in front of everyone and make sure that everyone knew that I was Autistic. To those teachers, Autism meant that you were stupid, case closed.

What the hell? You had teachers that HIT you?

When this particular teacher grabbed my arm, she put a rather ugly bruise on it. It was black for days.

bleachedblackcat wrote:

Quote :

But that gave my teachers no right to jerk me out of class, bruise my arm or shout me down in front of everyone and make sure that everyone knew that I was Autistic. To those teachers, Autism meant that you were stupid, case closed.

What the hell? You had teachers that HIT you?

My younger brother has ASD, and he has had his hair yanked out and been bruised while being restrained by the teachers.

bleachedblackcat wrote:

Quote :

But that gave my teachers no right to jerk me out of class, bruise my arm or shout me down in front of everyone and make sure that everyone knew that I was Autistic. To those teachers, Autism meant that you were stupid, case closed.

What the hell? You had teachers that HIT you?

When I was in fourth grade, a teacher flat out slapped one of the students. It was Brent Svangstu (I think I spelled the name right... if not, eh), and he was a dick anyway. But she hauled off and slapped him, and left a big red handprint on his face. The rest of the class were like this: O.O

She never got turned in or reprimanded, AFAIK, but I was in the 4th grade at the time--it's quite possible she did and I don't know about it.

Point is, stuff like that happens a lot more often than people would think.