Yet again, I am at a loss as to what to do about Katie. It's not so much her school; I think what she's getting is as good as you can possibly expect from a public school. It's the situation she's in right now.

Her teacher the first week of school was a lady who has two kids in middle school. She elected to drop down to part-time (I'm guessing) in order to spend more time with her family, which I can totally appreciate. But they replaced her with a lady who was six months pregnant at the time. Now, the whole staff knew she was going to take maternity leave. If I were in charge, which I'm not (thank goodness), I would have tried to replace her with someone who looked more like a permanent proposition. Katie was pretty upset when the first one left; I wondered what was going to happen when the second one split. But I liked the new one; she took no bullshit from anyone and she has a master's degree. She began to go into labor two weeks ago; over a month early.

I truly, really hate badmouthing people on the internet, but the substitute who is now in charge of her class? Is a flake.

She didn't seem to be holding it together at all to begin with, but last Thursday when I picked K up, she had a welt on her forehead. I asked her what happened and she started to tell me that another child in her class was doing cartwheels. Now, I assumed that K meant that they were outside during recess when this went down, but a boy who overheard us told me that this was in the classroom, and that the kid had kicked Katie and that Katie was crying and her friends were comforting her.

Now, I don't know what kind of dingbat lets a kid do cartwheels in her class, but it's a safe bet that a normal person would feel really, really bad about an incident like this. If a parent came into the class and asked, "why is there a bruise on my daughter?", an intelligent person would at least pretend like she gave a shit and apologize and smooth things over as best she could. Not this one. She totally got defensive, saying "I dunno. Nobody said anything to me".

So I mentioned that this had apparently happened while the kids were in the classroom--a room approximately 20 feet by 10 feet--and she knew NOTHING. She didn't notice a kid doing gymnastics in the shoe box that passes for a classroom; she didn't notice Katie crying; she didn't notice the three little girls sitting in a circle around her.

That's when I started to yell. I don't like to yell. I hate conflict. But you send my kid out of your classroom with a bruise, you better have something else to say besides "I don't know".

Since then, I've talked with other mothers who feel this woman is not up to the job. Every day for almost two weeks now, she's missing papers or books or something she needs to complete a task. I don't know what the problem is; she always came home with the correct materials before. I suspect this substitute just really doesn't care and isn't doing her job. It may be intentional, but I think she's just not prepared and doesn't want to know how to be.

And I hate that I'm getting my panties in a bunch. Other parents are okay with their kids' schools; why can't I be? I was only truly happy with the charter school she went to last year. Everything else feels like a compromise.

If I didn't have to spend two hours on the road everyday getting her to and from the old school, I would do it in a second. I was happy with what went on there. She wasn't...

bored.

Listen to me. I'm so convinced of her brilliance that I think she's bored.

Posted by: pam u. at November 24, 2004 11:56 AM

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