This happened some time ago and I just ran across the notes I made leading up to the meeting with the offending teacher and principal. A copy of the letter was put in her personnel file. Transcript below (excluding names and identifying details)"On May 24th, I received a phone call from my daughter. She was in obvious distress. She said to me "Mom, I got in trouble on our field trip tod.." She was interrupted by a teacher in the background who was very loud and obviously very upset. The teacher said "You tell her what I told you to say, you tell her that you stole sugar and a cup at the restaurant"I was shocked, unsettled and perplexed by her tone of voice. It seemed incongruous with the problem at hand. I said "Go ahead and tell me what happened" My daughter started again, "While we were at the restaurant..." The teacher interrupted again, "Tell her what I told you to say!" From the sound of the teacher's voice she had moved closer. I asked my daughter who was with her and she told me her teacher's name. I asked her to put her teacher on the phone. When the phone switched hands, I said "Hello, now what happened?" The teacher, with many pauses and gasping for breath (I assume from anger), proceeded to tell me that my daughter and some other students had taken more than their one allotted cup at the restaurant, resulting in another teacher being forced to purchase more meals with her personal credit card and that my daughter had also filled her pockets with sugar packets.I stopped her at that point, because she was sounding louder and more indignant with each sentence. I said "I need you to take a deep breath and calm down." She audibly huffed and told me that she had just wanted me to know that my daughter had embarrassed her and the school and that she had been a poor example for the other students. I responded by telling her that I would be at the school shortly to sort this out.Upon my arrival at school, I paged my daughter to meet me at the office and explain to me her side of the story. She told me that she had taken the sugar packets, but she didn't know that it was wrong (we sometimes let her take some when we go out to eat.) She said she had taken one cup to fill up at the fountain and when she returned to her table, discovered another cup at her seat. She said she had tried to explain to the teacher.We went back into the office and were immediately approached by another teacher who had been on the field trip with them. She apologized and said that it was her fault. She had assumed that my daughter didn't have a cup and got her one, placing it at her seat. She, also, tried to explain this to the offending teacher and was, also, not listened to.I asked to speak to the offending teacher and the principal and was told that neither were available at the moment. I left a note for the principal to call me, and took my daughter home with me.When I got home, I called the restaurant and spoke to the general manager, who was also the cashier for my daughter's school's students that day. He informed me that, although he couldn't remember who purchased what at the time, he would gladly assist me in any way he could, including security footage, if needed. He also informed me that the busboy on duty while they were there saw an adult grab a child (he physically described my daughter) by the shoulder and lean into her face, yelling at her. My daughter has confirmed that this was her and the offending teacher.My daughter has spoken to me multiple times this year about the offending teacher. She told me that she was "mean" and that she "didn't like her." My response was to tell her that there will be teachers that she doesn't mesh well with and that she should do her best, socially and academically, regardless of her personal feelings about a teacher.The evening of this incident, my daughter told me that the way she spoke on the phone was the way she spoke to her every time there was an issue between them at school. This and other times she has shouted, spittle hitting my daughter in the face, stomped her feet, red in the face and waving her fists.I've asked for this meeting today because I want you both (principal and offending teacher) To understand the gravity of the situation. The extreme anger and interruptions during my daughter's phone call, the scene you made in the restaurant in front of her peers and strangers, loud enough to draw the attention of employees, the breathless condemnation of my daughter being a thief while on the phone with me and grabbing her shoulder and anger are all displays of an attitude of superiority and unchecked disdain to a person YOU are responsible for modeling the behavior of a responsible, respectful adult. In that respect, you are a poor representative of your school and adults in general.'A bully uses Force, threats or coercion to abuse, intimidate or aggressively dominate others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power, which distinguishes bullying from conflict.' -WikipediaBy not giving my daughter the chance to speak on her own behalf, by humiliating her in a room full of people, by interrupting her repeatedly while on the phone with her one safe person, by laying hands on her in anger, by telling another teacher she was a thief without finding facts, you were an adult bully to my child.If you look at your behavior from the perspective of trying to educate about proper behavior and model how an adult should handle difficulties, you begin to see the thousands of reasons why this was the wrong way to handle the situation. Your control and power over these children children necessitates your ability to refrain from abusing that power.Starting from the beginning, I like to go over your reasons for what you did. 1 What exactly was my daughter in trouble for? Theft? Being greedy? Making a mess? What is the protocol for those infractions? Is a librarian taught classroom management skills? If not, why was she eligible to chaperone this trip? 2 How would you react if someone humiliated you, called you a thief and grabbed you in anger in a roomful of your peers and strangers?How about if it were a person almost twice your size and your boss?What would you do if you tried to walk out of this room right now and I grabbed your arm to make you listen to me? Would that be assault?3 Speaking of assault, let's talk about other forms of assault. Where did you grab my daughter? I don't know you, and sexual assault has happened this way in the past. When a teacher "accidentally" brushes a hand across a student. I don't believe this is what happened in this case, but when you go touching students, this is what you open yourself up to.Then we have the emotional assault you subjected her to when you repeatedly battered her with your words, using your authority to lean over her, spitting in her face while you spoke, humiliating an 11 year old girl who has never so much as stolen a piece of candy. A responsible adult with their emotions in check would have asked why she had two cups, why she had a pocket full of sugar packets, and then listened and heard her responses. And regardless of her guilt, how you chose to handle the situation created a hostile climate that is indefensible on an academic outing or in an educational situation at all; it undermined her perceived learning environment and her ability to trust and / or confide in current and future educators. You've taught her that it's okay to humiliate, degrade and physically abuse people who are smaller or weaker than you and you've put the question in her mind that she may actually deserve to be treated and handled in such a manner.Short of harming another person, no child deserves to be publicly ridiculed or to be handled in a way that would make them fear the person in control.A child who fears and feels disrespected by the adults in his or her life is more likely to turn to rebellious and / or self-destructive behavior and depression. This mindset is furthered by other adults not defending him or her and thus, tacitly legitimizing the educator's mistreatment. By allowing this yelling, ridicule and aggressive touching to go buy unpunished, this school itself is tacitly saying that this is okay.This behavior in public leads me to wonder: A) How long has this behavior been progressing that it has come to a point that you felt comfortable grabbing and humiliating my daughter in a public place? B) What goes on in your classroom when no one else is looking? What other ways do you intimidate the children in your care? C) Does our financial / religious / familial status have to do with your overreaction in this case? Is this a form of discrimination? Do you dislike her for some other reason? Would you ever react to the same if she were wealthy, attended your church, or were a boy?My daughter has only ever been in trouble in the school one time in her six years here, and that was in defense of an animal that another student had killed in front of her on the playground. She is a very bright child who sees and interprets the nuances of adult interaction so accurately that, after knowing her for her entire life, she still amazes me with her empathy and insights. I know that she sees me defending her and, therefore, will grow up knowing that she has me in her corner when she is right, just as she knows I have a firm hand when she is wrong.For some children, the teachers here are the only examples they have of adult interaction and one bad example outweighs a million good ones in their memory.According to my research, teachers who bully children often use these defenses to justify their behavior;they disguise their behavior as "motivation" to do better,they disguise abuse as an appropriate disciplinary response to unacceptable behavior by the victim,they try to convince the target that they are overreacting or paranoid, or that they've misperceived or misrepresented the behavior in question.It is also common to impugn the motives or performance of students and colleagues who register a complaint. This shifts the attention from the inappropriate conduct to the other's motivation for complaining, suggesting to a bystander that what is at stake is a "personal difference" rather than a systematic abuse of power.Whatever the reasons behind this behavior, I will rest easier knowing that the offending teacher knows that a written record of this incident exists in her personnel file, creating a paper trail back to this school year, so that she will hopefully consider: A) how her behaviors affect the children in her care now and in the future And B) if she should ever exercise such poor judgment in dealing with these or other children again, everyone involved will know it is not the first time and, will be at that point, a chronic abuse of power. A sincere apology to my daughter, the other teachers involved and I would also go a long way toward mending the various social fences that have been damaged in this business, along with showing my daughter how an adult behaves when they are in the wrong.For the record, I would also like to say here that at no point from now to the end of her school career do I ever want the offending teacher to be alone with my child."After much thought and many many rewrites to eliminate biased and possibly hurtful language, I'm pretty proud of the way I handled this situation. I hope that if anyone else has a similar issue, this may help you in dealing with it in a productive and satisfactory manner.Edit: I also offered to pay the other teacher for my daughter's extra meal.TLDR: fifth grade teacher abuses her power over my daughter and her classmates and I rip her a new one in a meeting with her and the principal. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/37yqsbh
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