Yesterday was my dad's 65th birthday and we all got together for cake last night. I was talking to my sister-in-law about her school year. She is a kindergarten teacher and if anyone was ever born with a calling for children, it is her. I've never seen her not be able to get along with any kind of child, no matter how obnoxious and wild they might be. All the things about small children that make me want to crawl out of my skin, she embraces and loves them for it. Most of us unconditionally love our own children, but she loves all the children of the world.
I asked her how her school year was going and she told me that she had a class of 18, where one particular child has thrown a chair and called her profane names on more than one occasion. I asked if this was just a one-off and if everyone else was pretty good, and she said no, this was the worst child of the class, but that out of all her years in teaching this was the worst group of children she'd ever had. She said she had five good kids, and she said this wasn't just her classroom either, that the entirety of kindergarten students were wilder and more feral that normal. And really it wasn't just kindergarten, but most children in general at that particular elementary school.
Her take: tablets and smartphones
Attention spans are shorter than ever before, children don't understand respect of authority figures or how to take accountability for anything, and this screen that works like crack on our brains is put in our children's hands for hours at a time. Cartoons and music have indoctrinated thoughts and ideas into their minds at a much younger age than their brains can maturely understand.
She said the suggestions she has been given from the school are to sit with this problem student all day long. She has no assistant and this child has no aide. How in the world is she supposed to teach 17 other students to read and do math? How in the world is she supposed to get anything accomplished if she has to personally one-on-one with a single student all day long?
She said this student will tell her directly that he was given medication and spit it out the moment someone turned around. This is a five year old dropping f bombs, hitting teachers and throwing chairs. But inclusion should definitely continue, right?
I shouldn't be allowed to have a say in the public school system, because we do not participate in it, but man has it failed everyone. The kids, the parents, the teachers. No child left behind was a terrible idea, because we are not all the same. We do not all learn the same. Just because we are the same age does not mean we should be learning the same things at the same times if there is some major difference in processes. Square peg and round hole. And especially if that child has emotional and social issues that cause them to lash out unexpectedly or overreact to the smallest changes. A teacher cannot expect to cater to that child as well as teach an entire class of easily distracted children.
Some children need to be in classes with different learning styles while others might need extreme psychological care before they can be integrated with other students.
This post has no point other than how emotionally draining this must be on my sister-in-law. The parents in the class get upset when their kids aren't learning. No one is happy. Maybe someone needs to investigate the parents. If your five your old is already showing signs of being a dangerous child, they shouldn't be around other child. This child has also lashed out others on this bus. At what point do you remove a 5 year old?
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