Child transferred from other class has completely changed the feeling of a classroom - wwyd?

[Anonymous]

Another perspective here. I'm sure this must be hard for your daughter, but it's also a chance for her to gain some resilience. Camps, playgrounds, and other activities outside of school will have situations like this with disruptive kids, and it would be good for her to learn to tolerate it. Caveat - if this kid is hurting her in some way, that's obviously unacceptable, and needs to stop and be addressed. But it sounds like that's not the issue here.

Two strategies: one, you can reassure your daughter that she can do hard things, like tolerate this kind of disruption; and two, a little empathy. You can give her the perspective that while she experiences this as a periodic disruption to her classroom, this kid is living with a disruption inside of him or her all the time, and he or she is struggling. You can tell her that she is lucky that her mind and body is peaceful most of the time, because his or hers clearly is not.

Just my 2 cents on the situation, and I agree that it will help get this kid what he or she needs if you 1) talk to the teacher and 2) talk to the administration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry your kid is going through this and im so glad my kids are in private. This kid would just be asked to leave and they never switch classes, even when a request is made.

If my kid were in this position I would complain to the teacher and the principal in writing every time an incident happened. It is not fair for one student to disrupt the education of the others. That said I'm also sure they are aware of the problem and will probably do nothing.

My DD is at a private and they don’t all ask the kid to leave. They switched a kid out of my DD’s class a few weeks ago but we are leaving the school next year because they aren’t willing to keep the kids apart. Private isn’t always the answer.

OP, I am sorry for your daughter. There isn’t much you can do except contact the teacher, let her know that your daughter is upset and ask that she not be seated near this kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please go talk to the teacher.
Here's the reality though. My guess is the teacher is taking "data" on the disruptive kid because no evaluation can happen for months or even years until several rounds of "RTI" or "MTSS" has been put in place. It doesn't matter how many times the teacher has to evacuate the room or whatever. Most schools are getting push back because they are referring too many kids to sped and one way to reduce the referrals is to make the interventions so consuming for the teacher, she essentially just waits the kid out til the end of the year. (Example, kid throws things in the room. Sped team meets with teacher. Tells her to take data on the incident, what precedes and follows it to find out why it is happening. 6 weeks pass. Now there's data on the why. Then the sped team suggests, "why don't you try a chart with stickers?" Teacher has to implement that for 6 weeks. Oh and by the way, this is all while meeting every other need in the classroom, teaching content, and dealing with the out of control kid. 6 weeks later, problem is not solved. "Have you tried moving his seat near you?" (Omg, no, that never occurred to me! Thank you for your wisdom because this is my first rodeo!)
And on and on and on and on.

However, when OTHER parents complain, sometimes this speeds up the process. The school probably won't listen to anything the teacher says.

Good luck. I'm sorry this is happening to your daughter. I'm always very worried about how one or two kids can affect every single other child in the room in major and negative ways.

This so excellent advice, from another teacher. Some schools are very good about moving SpED referrals along. Others, due to lots of pressure from above, push back again and again on teacher, essentially blaming her for what anyone can see is an inappropriate placement for a kid. I have seen parental pressure from other parents make a difference, if this is the case. Affirm your child’s teacher and everything she has done all year to make it a positive learning environment in which your child has thrived. Contrast that with now. Be very specific about how many times your child has come home in tears, what she has said, etc. in detail. If you talk with other parents in the class, you might mention it, too. The only times I have seen dramatic improvements in supports and placement have been when parents of affected children really sounded the alarm about how bad it is.

To the extent that your kid is suffering, I guarantee your child’s teacher is suffering even more. Here she is thinking she is a good teacher and then WHAM, a disruptive child is switched to her class and nothing she tries is helping. She sees the other kids hurting and can’t help. She starts to dread coming to school, dear waking up in the morning, dread Mondays all weekend. The sad thing is, that child might thrive in another environment, like a self-contained ED class with a 3-1 student teacher ratio, much more positive behavior supports, a behavior regulation teacher, a calm down room, literally minute-by-minute reinforcement of his pro-social behaviors, art therapy, music therapy. With the experience of success with all these additional supports, he may grow in readiness for mainstreaming. Where he is now sounds like a torture to him, too, even if he doesn’t know it.

Lastly: this child’s parent may have no idea how bad it is. One year, I saw a 1st grade student be this destructive and disruptive, and even though the teacher was making daily calls home and doing a daily behavior chart, etc, the parent must have thought she was exaggerating or that it was within the range of normal until she invited a grownup of classmates to the child’s birthday party and no one rSVP’d yes. When she asked one parent she felt safe to ask, that parent kindly confided that her daughter was afraid of him because they so often had to evacuate the classroom when he would have a tantrum. The parents seemed not to register that the child’s behavior wasn’t just preventing his learning but was preventing him from having any friends at all, or anything positive. They went in to have him evaluated and did a trial ADHD medication that was immediately and dramatically successful…allowing the child to participate and engage like never before. The effect on the classroom was dramatic. This may be an outlier example and I don’t mean to suggest to call a parent unsolicited and be that frank, but it is possible that the parent doesn’t fully understand how miserable their own child may be.

[Anonymous]

OP: Contact the Teacher and let them know that your child has been struggling since date X. Your child comes home from school upset and crying. This new environment is making it hard for her to learn and she is starting to struggle. Focus on the date that things started to change and what the impact has been for her.

It is not easy for her, the Teacher, or the kid acting out. Your effort is on helping your daughter, as it should be. Keep the focus on her and her needs. Try and stay non-judgmental or assign blame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Was disruptive kid moved from another class into your daughter's? Or is the child moving into the school new?

If he was moved from another class, then they know he/she is a problem and your daughter's class is now stuck with the problem the other teacher could not handle.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please go talk to the teacher.
Here's the reality though. My guess is the teacher is taking "data" on the disruptive kid because no evaluation can happen for months or even years until several rounds of "RTI" or "MTSS" has been put in place. It doesn't matter how many times the teacher has to evacuate the room or whatever. Most schools are getting push back because they are referring too many kids to sped and one way to reduce the referrals is to make the interventions so consuming for the teacher, she essentially just waits the kid out til the end of the year. (Example, kid throws things in the room. Sped team meets with teacher. Tells her to take data on the incident, what precedes and follows it to find out why it is happening. 6 weeks pass. Now there's data on the why. Then the sped team suggests, "why don't you try a chart with stickers?" Teacher has to implement that for 6 weeks. Oh and by the way, this is all while meeting every other need in the classroom, teaching content, and dealing with the out of control kid. 6 weeks later, problem is not solved. "Have you tried moving his seat near you?" (Omg, no, that never occurred to me! Thank you for your wisdom because this is my first rodeo!)
And on and on and on and on.

However, when OTHER parents complain, sometimes this speeds up the process. The school probably won't listen to anything the teacher says.

Good luck. I'm sorry this is happening to your daughter. I'm always very worried about how one or two kids can affect every single other child in the room in major and negative ways.

This so excellent advice, from another teacher. Some schools are very good about moving SpED referrals along. Others, due to lots of pressure from above, push back again and again on teacher, essentially blaming her for what anyone can see is an inappropriate placement for a kid. I have seen parental pressure from other parents make a difference, if this is the case. Affirm your child’s teacher and everything she has done all year to make it a positive learning environment in which your child has thrived. Contrast that with now. Be very specific about how many times your child has come home in tears, what she has said, etc. in detail. If you talk with other parents in the class, you might mention it, too. The only times I have seen dramatic improvements in supports and placement have been when parents of affected children really sounded the alarm about how bad it is.

To the extent that your kid is suffering, I guarantee your child’s teacher is suffering even more. Here she is thinking she is a good teacher and then WHAM, a disruptive child is switched to her class and nothing she tries is helping. She sees the other kids hurting and can’t help. She starts to dread coming to school, dear waking up in the morning, dread Mondays all weekend. The sad thing is, that child might thrive in another environment, like a self-contained ED class with a 3-1 student teacher ratio, much more positive behavior supports, a behavior regulation teacher, a calm down room, literally minute-by-minute reinforcement of his pro-social behaviors, art therapy, music therapy. With the experience of success with all these additional supports, he may grow in readiness for mainstreaming. Where he is now sounds like a torture to him, too, even if he doesn’t know it.

Lastly: this child’s parent may have no idea how bad it is. One year, I saw a 1st grade student be this destructive and disruptive, and even though the teacher was making daily calls home and doing a daily behavior chart, etc, the parent must have thought she was exaggerating or that it was within the range of normal until she invited a grownup of classmates to the child’s birthday party and no one rSVP’d yes. When she asked one parent she felt safe to ask, that parent kindly confided that her daughter was afraid of him because they so often had to evacuate the classroom when he would have a tantrum. The parents seemed not to register that the child’s behavior wasn’t just preventing his learning but was preventing him from having any friends at all, or anything positive. They went in to have him evaluated and did a trial ADHD medication that was immediately and dramatically successful…allowing the child to participate and engage like never before. The effect on the classroom was dramatic. This may be an outlier example and I don’t mean to suggest to call a parent unsolicited and be that frank, but it is possible that the parent doesn’t fully understand how miserable their own child may be.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another perspective here. I'm sure this must be hard for your daughter, but it's also a chance for her to gain some resilience. Camps, playgrounds, and other activities outside of school will have situations like this with disruptive kids, and it would be good for her to learn to tolerate it. Caveat - if this kid is hurting her in some way, that's obviously unacceptable, and needs to stop and be addressed. But it sounds like that's not the issue here.

Two strategies: one, you can reassure your daughter that she can do hard things, like tolerate this kind of disruption; and two, a little empathy. You can give her the perspective that while she experiences this as a periodic disruption to her classroom, this kid is living with a disruption inside of him or her all the time, and he or she is struggling. You can tell her that she is lucky that her mind and body is peaceful most of the time, because his or hers clearly is not.

Just my 2 cents on the situation, and I agree that it will help get this kid what he or she needs if you 1) talk to the teacher and 2) talk to the administration.

I think that it's important to message this to a child. We can't always have ideal conditions and we still need to get the job done.

BUT, kids have a very narrow time window to learn certain things, or at least learn them well. Things not learned this year (because of whatever reason) makes it that much harder to stay on track going forward and problems can easily compound. So if the situation with the problem child is, in fact, preventing other children from accessing learning that would otherwise take place, that's just damage done and there is no silver lining of "lessons learned" that can compensate for that. Perhaps outside enrichment and tutoring can, but there is no "gritting" out of this situation.

The sad reality is that it's much easier (incentive structure-wise) for school administration to allow one child to ruin the educational experience for 20 other children than it is to do right by those other kids by removing the child until his/her issues are addressed. And in many situations, many of those other kids are at-risk themselves, and really cannot afford to have a single school day squandered by foolishness. But, alas, those who can least afford to suffer must suffer some more in the name of "equity" or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was disruptive kid moved from another class into your daughter's? Or is the child moving into the school new?

If he was moved from another class, then they know he/she is a problem and your daughter's class is now stuck with the problem the other teacher could not handle.

+1

It’s literally in the subject line and then repeated in the OP.

[Anonymous]

Is this child bullying her? If not, she needs to toughen up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can certainly talk to the teacher and administration, but I would have some specific examples to relay. If your child is seated close to the disruptive kid, ask for her to be moved to the other side of the room. You can also ask to not be with this child next year.

Don’t expect he teacher to tell you anything about the disruptive child. They are not allowed.

This. You need specific examples and you should manage your expectations about what they will tell you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this child bullying her? If not, she needs to toughen up.

Seems like the child is bullying the entire class. Also seems like the child isn't being served either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this child bullying her? If not, she needs to toughen up.

STFU. I sincerely hope you are a troll or some high school kid. #worstparentingresponse

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this child bullying her? If not, she needs to toughen up.

STFU. I sincerely hope you are a troll or some high school kid. #worstparentingresponse

Could be the parent of a problem child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this child bullying her? If not, she needs to toughen up.

Seems like the child is bullying the entire class. Also seems like the child isn't being served either.

If the child has some type of disability they are not bullying the class, they are unable to control themselves and that leads to disruptions to the class. I get that people are worried about all the students in the class but try not to be so callous as to not understand that most kids do not want to disrupt everything around them. Whatever is happening, it is likely that the child is struggling with dysregulation and needs help. It is scary for the other kids but it is not intentional.

The posters who are suggesting that the child was moved to a different class as part as the schools process to evaluate and record what is happening so that the school can move the child to a more appropriate environment are probably spot on. It is not as simple as noting some behaviors and moving a kid, there is an entire process. It is a pain in the butt for the student, the classmates, the Teachers, and the Administration.

And it sucks for the OPs kid. which is why the OP emailing the Teacher with a message about how her child's education is impacted is important. It gives the Teacher additional info to provide the Administration about the child's impact and can help the process along. But the email needs to focus on the experience of the OPs child, her responses to the disruptions, and stay neutral on the other child.

It sucks for all. It really does. OP should be focused on her kid and is doing the right thing but there is no reason for adults to be referring to a kid who is out of control for god knows what reason as a bully and assuming that the disruptive child wants to be behaving like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please go talk to the teacher.
Here's the reality though. My guess is the teacher is taking "data" on the disruptive kid because no evaluation can happen for months or even years until several rounds of "RTI" or "MTSS" has been put in place. It doesn't matter how many times the teacher has to evacuate the room or whatever. Most schools are getting push back because they are referring too many kids to sped and one way to reduce the referrals is to make the interventions so consuming for the teacher, she essentially just waits the kid out til the end of the year. (Example, kid throws things in the room. Sped team meets with teacher. Tells her to take data on the incident, what precedes and follows it to find out why it is happening. 6 weeks pass. Now there's data on the why. Then the sped team suggests, "why don't you try a chart with stickers?" Teacher has to implement that for 6 weeks. Oh and by the way, this is all while meeting every other need in the classroom, teaching content, and dealing with the out of control kid. 6 weeks later, problem is not solved. "Have you tried moving his seat near you?" (Omg, no, that never occurred to me! Thank you for your wisdom because this is my first rodeo!)
And on and on and on and on.

However, when OTHER parents complain, sometimes this speeds up the process. The school probably won't listen to anything the teacher says.

Good luck. I'm sorry this is happening to your daughter. I'm always very worried about how one or two kids can affect every single other child in the room in major and negative ways.

Wow - as a teacher this is really disheartening to read because it's exactly how things seem to run at my school with the "student support team" that is completely unhelpful. I thought we were unique. My grade level team is going through this right now.