Major Incident Day @ school :(

We had a major incident at school last week Tuesday when a lady who is new to teaching, got annoyed with James.

 

An incident occurred on the playground where another boy was hitting and punching James in the head because he’d been caught out by James in a game of handball. James tried to ask this child to leave him alone, but after repeatedly having to deal with being hit, James’s frustration took over and he ended up kicking this other boy.

Of course when this other boy reported James for kicking him, James shut down (he doesn’t like or trust the teacher) She then proceeded to make a spectacle of James by sitting him up front of the class. James’s nervous ticks kicked in and he ended up tapping a ruler on the desk – this annoyed the teacher who then made him sit on the floor by the door of the classroom where he continued to take his finger against the door. 40 minutes later the teacher had had enough and sent him to the deputy principal’s office (whom he likes) where he managed to calm down and told her what had occurred.

In the phone call to discuss this incident, the teacher failed to mention that she had spent the better half of an hour yelling at James at the top of her voice (loud enough for children from the next classroom to peek through the windows to see what was going on)Several friends (parents of children in the class) also rang me to re0tell what their children had told them that evening. The part that particularly broke my heart was when he was telling me about the teacher making him sit on the floor by the door, his words were "then she made me sit on the floor by the door like a dog!"

The next morning I was in the school office at 8am wanting to speak with the principal who was unfortunately not in that day so I had to see the deputy principal. I was extremely angry that James had been treated in this manner and demanded some sort of action from the school. They then agreed that this new teacher does require some extra training on how to handle children with ADHD. We worked through a plan of action for the classroom and for James to cope at school – After a few hours, I felt satisfied that they now understood my view on the type of education they should have been offering my son.

The unfortunate issue here being is that the department of education does not identify ADHD as an Autism spectrum diagnosis for which the school can obtain the learning and teaching resources they would need to assist James. So I do have an ulterior motive to all this reading and research.James needs help and the only way he will get the kind of help he needs is if we can somehow fit him into a category that the DOE will recognise as needing assistance.