{"id":756,"date":"2010-11-05T13:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T13:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2010\/11\/the-lie-that-teachers-tell.html"},"modified":"2014-08-22T15:50:24","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T20:50:24","slug":"the-lie-that-teachers-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2010\/11\/the-lie-that-teachers-tell.html","title":{"rendered":"The Lie That Teachers Tell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\u201cWe love #3 and want him to learn and succeed just as much as you do<\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I\u2019ve lost count of how many times I\u2019ve been told this during this school year.\u00a0 It is the stock answer to any complaint I make, on the rare occasion that someone actually replies.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t believe it at the beginning of the year, and now it\u2019s just starting to p*** me off.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Here\u2019s the reality:<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n
I have a child with an anxiety disorder.\u00a0 The disorder manifests itself in his chewing of hard substances.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter to him whether these items are food or not.\u00a0 He has been hospitalized for this.\u00a0 It is a well-documented fact of his life, a fact of which the school district was made aware <\/span>3 1\/2 months prior to his starting school.\u00a0 We offered an easy remedy, ice.\u00a0 His preferred thing to crunch and chew is ice.\u00a0 We spoke with his teachers the day before school began and were promised that he would have it at all times.\u00a0 We breathed a sigh of relief and believed them.\u00a0 We were wrong to do so.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
At the end of October, I got a frantic call from the school nurse.\u00a0 My son had eaten the erasers and metal deals off of seven pencils.\u00a0\u00a0 He was never given the promised ice.\u00a0 We should have checked up on him.\u00a0 We were naive.\u00a0 The Computer Guy and I live in a world where people give their word and mean it.\u00a0 His teacher promised ice.\u00a0 We had no reason to doubt her.\u00a0 Except for the fact that she lied.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Once his health had already been put in jeopardy, I was told all of the \u201creasons\u201d why she never followed through\u2026they boil down to she didn\u2019t want to mess with it.\u00a0 Without an IEP in place, she wasn\u2019t legally required to provide this basic safeguard for our son, so she chose to risk his life in the name of convenience.\u00a0 It took a threat of legal action, numerous phone calls, and emails to the state superintendent of schools to get him temporary<\/i> permission for a cup of ice.\u00a0 In order to make it permanent, we have to have 2 meetings, a letter from his psychologist, letters from both of his MD\u2019s, and be able to prove that not having it would be an impediment to learning.\u00a0 Who knew that ICE was a controlled substance?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Everyone I speak to on the phone gives me the same lie, \u201cYou need to remember, Mrs Frech, that we care about his health and safety just as much as you do<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
He is struggling in school.\u00a0 He has significant learning disabilities including dyslexia and double vision.\u00a0 Colored overlays help.\u00a0 Printing worksheets on colored paper help.\u00a0 Printing things large with space around them to compensate for the overlap caused by double vision help.\u00a0 The schools know.\u00a0 The teachers know.\u00a0 The director of Special Services knows.\u00a0 He gets none of this.\u00a0 There is no IEP in place yet, so they are not legally required to hand him a piece of blue plastic to help him read, so they don\u2019t.\u00a0 Even though I\u2019ve brought them one.\u00a0 Even though I\u2019ve provided enough blue paper for the whole class.\u00a0 Even though he\u2019s failing every subject.\u00a0 They\u2019re not legally required and so they don\u2019t.\u00a0 Helping him learn is a bother and an inconvenience.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
When I can actually get hold of someone on the phone or in person they lie to me and say, \u201cYou need to remember, Mrs Frech, that we want him to succeed in school and to learn just as much as you do<\/i>.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I\u2019m offended by the lie.\u00a0 They do not care for his safety and his education as much as I do.\u00a0 If they did, his teacher would , come in an hour early, stay 2 hours late, talk him through every math problem, coach him through his handwriting, and just help him every step of the way.\u00a0 They don\u2019t, which is okay.\u00a0 I don\u2019t ask them to do this for him.\u00a0 It\u2019s my job because I\u2019m his mom, but if they\u2019re not willing to do it, then they do not want it just as much as I do<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The truth (and I\u2019m not sure why they don\u2019t just state it out loud, because I have no problem with the truth) is that this is a job for them.\u00a0 Teaching my son is their job.\u00a0 His teacher went to college and majored in education for whatever her reason was.\u00a0 She might like children, think she\u2019s good at teaching, want the summers off\u2026.I don\u2019t really care what the motivation was.\u00a0 She goes to the school every day and attempts to teach 28 third graders because it is what she gets paid to do.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t want to jump through extra hoops because they are a pain in her a** and she\u2019d rather not unless she has to.\u00a0 That\u2019s fine with me, just be up front about it.\u00a0 I would have kept him home until this semester was over and the IEP was in place.\u00a0 We would not have begun this adventure without it.\n

Parents need to be told the truth and not pretty-sounding lies.\u00a0 If they had just said to us \u201cWe will teach him if we can.\u00a0 We will do the minimum (in our opinion) required to keep him safe. We will help him all we can as long as it\u2019s not an imposition on our time and we feel like it that day.\u00a0 We will do nothing more unless you come with a lawyer, a court order, and copious amounts of medical records.\u201d\u00a0 His father and I would have given them whatever they asked.\u00a0 Because to us he\u2019s not a bother or an imposition.\u00a0 There is nothing too great for me to provide it for him.\u00a0 There are no obstacles I won\u2019t master in pursuit of his best interests.\u00a0 I would give everything that I am and have to help him thrive, learn and succeed.\u00a0 If they can\u2019t, won\u2019t or unwilling to meet that high bar\u2026then they should stop lying to me.\u00a0 Until they are honest with me, we\u2019re not on the same team.\u00a0 We\u2019re adversaries, just as they seem to want us to be.\u00a0 <\/p><\/div>\n

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\u201cWe love #3 and want him to learn and succeed just as much as you do.\u201d I\u2019ve lost count of how many times I\u2019ve been told this during this school year.\u00a0 It is the stock answer to any complaint I make, on the rare occasion that someone actually replies.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t believe it at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Lie That Teachers Tell<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""We love #3 and want him to learn and succeed just as much as you do."I've lost count of how many times I've been told this during this school year. \" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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