How to respond to daily reports of bad behavior from kindergarten teacher?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was teaching and new, I did this and was asked by my principal to stop. I did not realize that it was demoralizing to the parent. I am glad that I was told. I would advise that you email everyone on the IEP team weekly and say that you understand that there were X instances of whatever behavior happening this week and then say what should have happened as a result according to the plans.

You should ask the teacher to email you so you can find out what you need to know when you are ready to hear or, or she can use a daily communication sheet. Explain that it is hate to hear every day, just as you have here. She is likely overwhelmed and it makes her feel better to be passing the information on, but that’s not your problem. Ask to hear good things, too. I also imagine your kid is hearing all this negative information being passed on and that’s not okay. He’s doing the best he can.

At the end of the quarter insist on an in-person meeting to go over the placement. Go up the chain of command if you get stonewalled. Principals hate for central office or school board members to get involved.

I had the opposite experience teaching- I was told by my administration to document everything.

Similar experience here. The parents had asked for more frequent updates so I started sending home daily emails. Then about two months later we were in a meeting and the dad asked me to stop and said it was too much every day. I wasn’t a parent at the time and didn’t realize how my emails were coming across to them. If you feel like you can approach the teacher about how she communicates this info, I would start there. She probably has no idea how this is impacting you. I’m sorry and hope things improve soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was teaching and new, I did this and was asked by my principal to stop. I did not realize that it was demoralizing to the parent. I am glad that I was told. I would advise that you email everyone on the IEP team weekly and say that you understand that there were X instances of whatever behavior happening this week and then say what should have happened as a result according to the plans.

You should ask the teacher to email you so you can find out what you need to know when you are ready to hear or, or she can use a daily communication sheet. Explain that it is hate to hear every day, just as you have here. She is likely overwhelmed and it makes her feel better to be passing the information on, but that’s not your problem. Ask to hear good things, too. I also imagine your kid is hearing all this negative information being passed on and that’s not okay. He’s doing the best he can.

At the end of the quarter insist on an in-person meeting to go over the placement. Go up the chain of command if you get stonewalled. Principals hate for central office or school board members to get involved.

I had the opposite experience teaching- I was told by my administration to document everything.

Similar experience here. The parents had asked for more frequent updates so I started sending home daily emails. Then about two months later we were in a meeting and the dad asked me to stop and said it was too much every day. I wasn’t a parent at the time and didn’t realize how my emails were coming across to them. If you feel like you can approach the teacher about how she communicates this info, I would start there. She probably has no idea how this is impacting you. I’m sorry and hope things improve soon.

Ugh, quoted the wrong person! Meant to quote the “when I first started teaching” poster.

[Anonymous]

I was in a situation where my child did not have an appropriate placement.
I am not sure if the teacher was trying to help me build the case that was blocked by the Special Education Coordinator - but I took the gift.

After every pick send an email acknowledging the quick conversation. This will help you see when you have a critical mass of behavior and so the school can't say they were unaware and needed time.

I would also hit my phone memo button before pickup to record the conversation. This way I had solid memory of the exact conversation. I would use this for my email that went back to the school and then delete the audio.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd follow up with an email to the teacher, case manager, and special ed coordinator. "Thanks so much for telling me about X on Monday and Y on Tuesday. Could you please tell me how she responded to [interventions required by BIP]? If the BIP is not currently effective, please let me know when the school can meet to discuss revisions."

This. There was an awful year where the teacher had awful behavior reports all the time. But nothing about what we could do or what they did. We came to learn the teacher wasn't just new to the school but also to teaching, let alone accomodations and differentiated instruction. Once we took approach of previous poster, was a lot better. Initially we certainly felt demoralized and then on edge at every school interaction.

[Anonymous]

I know how bad this feels having gone through it myself. But it really is a gift. If you want a different placement and the team is not supporting you, it will be up to you to make it happen. You are being given a ton of evidence to support your request without even asking for it. Find a way to document it and organize it so that you are ready next time you meet with your IEP team.

FWIW, it took probably six months to get my son’s placement moved once it became apparent that gen ed was not going to work. But once it changed, the daily reports stopped. Special placements recognize how traumatizing it is to get bad reports.

[Anonymous]

You need to get the principal to step in and come up with an intermediary solution while a different placement is being worked on. This is not good for your kid to be constantly not meeting expectations. There are all sorts of solutions. They can send an extra person into the classroom to help manage things, like a student teacher or the school psychologist or assistant principal. They can make your child principal for the day, and have them shadow the principal, to give them a break from the classroom environment, which sounds to be stressful. Or gym teacher for the day. They can pull your child out of the classroom if there is a particular time of day or triggering event that is difficult, perhaps having the school psychologist spend one on one time with them. They can brainstorm and come up with new and better figits, if that’s something that may be useful. These are all things that our public school did when DC was having behavioral problems in elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd follow up with an email to the teacher, case manager, and special ed coordinator. "Thanks so much for telling me about X on Monday and Y on Tuesday. Could you please tell me how she responded to [interventions required by BIP]? If the BIP is not currently effective, please let me know when the school can meet to discuss revisions."

Great answer.
It's positive and helpful. I would avoid giving the teacher advice about how to communicate. That will just make things worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to get the principal to step in and come up with an intermediary solution while a different placement is being worked on. This is not good for your kid to be constantly not meeting expectations. There are all sorts of solutions. They can send an extra person into the classroom to help manage things, like a student teacher or the school psychologist or assistant principal. They can make your child principal for the day, and have them shadow the principal, to give them a break from the classroom environment, which sounds to be stressful. Or gym teacher for the day. They can pull your child out of the classroom if there is a particular time of day or triggering event that is difficult, perhaps having the school psychologist spend one on one time with them. They can brainstorm and come up with new and better figits, if that’s something that may be useful. These are all things that our public school did when DC was having behavioral problems in elementary school.

It depends on what you mean by misbehaves. If your child has a BIP seems like most incidents are disruptive somehow. Can you elaborate? Are you seeking a new placement?
These are good stop gap measures but first you need to figure out yourself what you think of the current placement and what your goals are here. Your goals cannot be to just stop the emails because obviously there's stuff going on that the teacher feels compelled to write about. Either the teacher needs help, your child needs help or your child needs a new placement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know how bad this feels having gone through it myself. But it really is a gift. If you want a different placement and the team is not supporting you, it will be up to you to make it happen. You are being given a ton of evidence to support your request without even asking for it. Find a way to document it and organize it so that you are ready next time you meet with your IEP team.

FWIW, it took probably six months to get my son’s placement moved once it became apparent that gen ed was not going to work. But once it changed, the daily reports stopped. Special placements recognize how traumatizing it is to get bad reports.

If you want a new placement - I agree, use this as leverage. Let the teacher continue to document the failed placement and her inability to implement the IEP.

But our problem was that we did not want a different placement (because there was really nothing appropriate for our particular kid in the school district or even private). So the frequent messages about bad behavior were upsetting and useless. Useless because they truly just seemed to be an opportunity for the teacher to vent and complain to us, and they failed to give an accurate picture of how he was doing overall. Because of course you never get a message for the 90% of the time things are going well so you never have a real understanding of what’s going on.

Everything changed when we got into a school with an administrator who actually got it and ensured that all communication filtered through the teachers to her, then to us. It wasn’t always perfect but she was able to discuss how the BIP was implemented. That freed teachers up to send POSITIVE messages from time to time about good things they saw happening. I suspect the administration suggested the teachers do that. I can’t overstate how that was just pure gold to hear good things. Not that I wanted to bury my head in the sand, but that I truly could not understand how the placement was working out if I didn’t have a balanced understanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd follow up with an email to the teacher, case manager, and special ed coordinator. "Thanks so much for telling me about X on Monday and Y on Tuesday. Could you please tell me how she responded to [interventions required by BIP]? If the BIP is not currently effective, please let me know when the school can meet to discuss revisions."

Great answer.
It's positive and helpful. I would avoid giving the teacher advice about how to communicate. That will just make things worse.

Why would you avoid that? It’s not giving advice- it’s telling them to implement the BIP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m so sorry. She does not need to do this. It’s pretty useless and just makes you feel awful. Who is it helping?

I’d say, yes, this is an inappropriate placement for him. We are working on getting him a better one. Every time. In a nice, non-commital, sunny voice. Smile. Repeat.

Yup, this!

Personally, I might be tempted to say, "Maybe if your followed his BIP and IEP, his behavior would improve." But that isn't going to help so the first one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to get the principal to step in and come up with an intermediary solution while a different placement is being worked on. This is not good for your kid to be constantly not meeting expectations. There are all sorts of solutions. They can send an extra person into the classroom to help manage things, like a student teacher or the school psychologist or assistant principal. They can make your child principal for the day, and have them shadow the principal, to give them a break from the classroom environment, which sounds to be stressful. Or gym teacher for the day. They can pull your child out of the classroom if there is a particular time of day or triggering event that is difficult, perhaps having the school psychologist spend one on one time with them. They can brainstorm and come up with new and better figits, if that’s something that may be useful. These are all things that our public school did when DC was having behavioral problems in elementary school.

It depends on what you mean by misbehaves. If your child has a BIP seems like most incidents are disruptive somehow. Can you elaborate? Are you seeking a new placement?
These are good stop gap measures but first you need to figure out yourself what you think of the current placement and what your goals are here. Your goals cannot be to just stop the emails because obviously there's stuff going on that the teacher feels compelled to write about. Either the teacher needs help, your child needs help or your child needs a new placement.

OP here. The reported behaviors are:

-used glue stick as chapstick and put it all over his face
-ate play doh
-went into girls bathroom
-throwing paper towels on the ground
-scribbling on desk
-drawing on self
-taking another child’s food and/or water bottle
-drinking the teacher’s coffee
-repeatedly touching the classroom TV
-refusing to sit down at his desk or join circle time
-tearing his papers instead of turning them in or doing them
-putting hand soap in his water bottle and shaking it in order to create bubbles
-opening and closing the window in the classroom
-wanting to play with blocks instead of doing the classroom work

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Telling a parent verbally at pick up isn’t documenting. The school is doing this to avoid documenting how they are failing your child.

This. I would record the verbal reports in a summary email to the teacher and IEP case manager, and then ask the teacher to start keeping a log. If the teacher doesn't have experience with a BIP (not all K teachers have done these), suggest that the school psychologist or a central office Special Ed staff member advise and support them.

But the point of communication should be to move forward - to bring you into the loop, to increase service hours, to change school placements - whatever your child needs. Just know that these daily reports aren't going to get you there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to get the principal to step in and come up with an intermediary solution while a different placement is being worked on. This is not good for your kid to be constantly not meeting expectations. There are all sorts of solutions. They can send an extra person into the classroom to help manage things, like a student teacher or the school psychologist or assistant principal. They can make your child principal for the day, and have them shadow the principal, to give them a break from the classroom environment, which sounds to be stressful. Or gym teacher for the day. They can pull your child out of the classroom if there is a particular time of day or triggering event that is difficult, perhaps having the school psychologist spend one on one time with them. They can brainstorm and come up with new and better figits, if that’s something that may be useful. These are all things that our public school did when DC was having behavioral problems in elementary school.

It depends on what you mean by misbehaves. If your child has a BIP seems like most incidents are disruptive somehow. Can you elaborate? Are you seeking a new placement?
These are good stop gap measures but first you need to figure out yourself what you think of the current placement and what your goals are here. Your goals cannot be to just stop the emails because obviously there's stuff going on that the teacher feels compelled to write about. Either the teacher needs help, your child needs help or your child needs a new placement.

OP here. The reported behaviors are:

-used glue stick as chapstick and put it all over his face
-ate play doh

Wow, this sounds bad. I understand the teacher wants to inform you.
-went into girls bathroom
-throwing paper towels on the ground
-scribbling on desk
-drawing on self
-taking another child’s food and/or water bottle
-drinking the teacher’s coffee
-repeatedly touching the classroom TV
-refusing to sit down at his desk or join circle time
-tearing his papers instead of turning them in or doing them
-putting hand soap in his water bottle and shaking it in order to create bubbles
-opening and closing the window in the classroom
-wanting to play with blocks instead of doing the classroom work

[Anonymous]

Wow, the behavior sounds really bad. I understand the teacher wants inform you.