The "More" Child

I thought I had laid the groundwork well for C.’s return to what I had come to call “The Love School.” I wrote a letter to the principal explaining our decision to return to our neighborhood school and describing C. and her learning style. I had spoken with Mrs. M, the Amazing Enrichment Teacher, who “got” C. My understanding was that Mrs. M sat in when placement decisions were being made and I was confident she would lobby for the best on C.’s behalf. And I was right. Before school started I learned that C. would have Mrs. B, an experienced teacher who reputedly was very strong on language arts and writing and got the strongest students. C. and I were even able to visit and sit in on her class while C. was still at the Center.

And then of course the unexpected happened.

A day or two before the start of school Mrs. B became ill. The teacher C. met on Friday at the Open House before classes started was gone on Monday and would be out for several weeks. . Not good. C. was already understandably nervous about returning, and so knowing who her teacher would be was very important. And now she wasn’t there. Thrown into the breach in her stead was the 5th grade teacher who taught advanced math. A heavyset, very brusque woman. Not. Good.

The first week of September I sent this note to a friend: “C. is happy. Misses the cool girl posse, but is making friends and will be under the wing of Mrs. M.”

A few months later I would write:

Most significantly this fall has been major issues (again. I’m sure you’re all bored, so feel free to skip) with C. …it’s like job in itself, navigating the whole teacher, school thing…conversations, meetings, emails follow-up emails. … Unfortunately things got off to a bad start, particularly with her math teacher, and it’s been a downward spiral for the past three months. A kid who is a despondent, emotionally fragile mess because she doesn’t feel respected or validated, (“Put down your hand C., you might learn something.”), who has been told she’s arrogant, rude and is at time bored to tears. As a parent wondering, did I do the right thing by bringing her back? How much of it is the kid, how much the teacher? How much is it a function of the kid’s giftedness, how much the kid’s personality, and can you even separate them. Onset of puberty? How much does she have to change who she is, and how much can/should the school accommodate her? How do I advocate for my kid without seeming like the psycho mom from hell who just thinks her kid is special?

So what happened? To begin with, things did get off on the wrong foot with the substitute/math teacher. She had a demeanor that was aggressive and condescending and just plain mean (the following year there would be a huge uproar over her unprofessionally labeling some kids “stupid.”) She purposely placed C. at a table with some problem kids, rather than, say, at the same table as the other boy who left the Center too, or one or two other bright kids. And, as is often the case, the year started off veeeerrrrryyyy slow as the teacher assessed, reviewed, retaught this large, very heterogeneous class. One day after school I popped into the class to ask a quick question and the teacher essentially asked me, “What is with your kid?” I struggled to explain, that she was a “more” child, about our experiences at the Center, but clearly it was going to be a long year in this woman’s class.

After a few weeks Mrs. B recovered from her illness and returned to the classroom…but things didn’t get better. For example C. complained bitterly to me about the WordlyWise vocabulary book that the “advanced” students in her class were using–she already knew every word in the book. I made a few calls and discovered that it was two levels lower than the book her peers at the Center were using. So I went in to talk to the teacher about it, asking (diplomatically) if there was some way that we could kick the vocabulary up a notch, and possibly have C. work in the same level book the Centers were using since it was an area of strength. I was worried that this could be awkward or just difficult in terms of grading something for just one child. Mrs. B didn’t seem to think that different words or separate grading would be an issue. So what was the issue? We were talking but clearly not communicating. “Well, this is the GT book for 5th grade,” she finally said. And then a light went off. It was an issue of the book–she didn’t have any other books! Duh. I jumped and said that I would be happy to order the book from Amazon that afternoon. Which I did. But had I not said anything, C. would never have been given vocabulary at her appropriate level, because in their eyes she was getting the “5th grade GT” materials. End of story.

Another sore point was Time for Kids, a bowdlerized version of Time magazine. Every week the entire class would read TFK and answer the simplistic accompanying questions. It was maddening. Here there was a child who was reading–by the school’s own MAP-R testing–at the 11th to 12 grade level (I checked in with the reading specialist), and yet week in and week out she was made to do TFK.

I started jotting down C.’s comments to me:

• “She [the teacher] dislikes that I can do the work faster, impairing her perfect plan.”
• “I’ve said it’s too easy, but she doesn’t listen.”
• “They don’t want to acknowledge that I can finish fast. I do it faster and I’m usually right.”
• “She doesn’t like me because I speak up and corrected her.”
• “I’m afraid I am going to get yelled at.”
• “Do not leave me to stare at the fly on the wall, give me something to do.
• “I never get called on.”
• “I’m brushed off when I talk about stuff I shouldn’t know.”
• “I am so sick of reading and taking notes and doing worksheets.”
• “I’m talked at, not with.”

C. started asking if she could go back to the Center…or more precisely saying wistfully that she wished there were a way for her to attend both schools, or somehow smoosh both schools together. She wrote in a note that I found, “I wish I could go back. I could be shuttled. I just really miss people.”

We attended Open House night. All the children had left fill in the blank sheets at their desks describing what they were doing in various subjects, what they liked doing. C. had written some jumble of letters in her blanks. I asked her about it at home and finally figured out that it was code for The Same Old Boring Stuff That We Always Do.

Her weekly conduct reports dropped alarmingly into the Needs Frequent Prompting range. She stopped turning in homework for math. Her interim report came home informing us that she was getting a “C” in math and all the boxes were checked…indicating that she wasn’t “engaging in learning tasks,” wasn’t following instructions,” etc. etc. By the box “uses feedback to improve learning” the teacher had added the note “when she agrees with the feedback she will use it, but not if she doesn’t like it.”

Things came to a head at the parent conference where although her grades were good actually, save for math, the whole soft study skills side was definitely not. Now usually the teacher leads in with a few positive things and then gives you the ol’ but-we-have-to-work-on-these-areas routine.

We didn’t get any “nice.” Just that C. was clearly underachieving. And had we thought of returning to the Center? Plus lots of talk about how C. was often uncooperative. “She seems angry that she’s not a grown-up,” said the teacher. She asked about our homelife. How did we discipline her? I didn’t really know how to answer. We just, well, talked to her. Reasoned with her.

As for returning to the Center, of course we had thought of that. And in retrospect I deeply, deeply regret that I didn’t get on the phone with the Center principal, with the GT office in Rockville and forcefully make that request. But I was under the impression that once you left, you left. There was no going back. And there was, I’ll admit, my pride. Going back would have meant eating crow, for after all I had been a vocal Center critic. In addition I worried about the message it would send to C.: that at the first sign of unpleasantness you try to change things or leave, that mom will intervene and smooth it over. I felt, misguided though I might have been, that that we had made a decision and needed to stick with it, that there was value in toughing it out.

I thought that if only the teachers had a better understanding of C., could see that she needed greater challenge, that that would help the situation. As I tried to gather the data, I discovered that C.’s entire report card hadn’t made the journey from the Center to the neighborhood school–the 3rd and 4th quarter narrative portions of her 4th grade report card were missing…and the teacher had left teaching, taking them with her, I guess. I also discovered that the testing C. did to get into the Center was not in her “permanent file.” In fact, only the barest of information was in that “permanent file.” Report cards and testing scores. Those lovingly crafted letters describing my child and her learning needs? Nowhere to be found.

In pursuit of information, I made a trek to the Rockville GT office to request that her Center testing information be shared with the neighborhood school. The head of GT programs walked me through C.’s results, stating that C. had scored “off the chart” on the verbal section of the SCAT and in the 99th percentile on the math. C, she predicted, would burn through high school–if we could keep her engaged for the next four years. A very prescient “if.” She also commented that had we removed C. from the Center to attend any other school they would have said something, but that our home school was well-regarded and it was thought they could handle C.

Meanwhile, things got worse. Sundays were miserable, as C. dreaded the coming day. She didn’t want to go to school. She cried. She spoke of feeling “dried up” inside. Of peering “into blackness, nothingness.” At school I was told that–frustrated with the inanity of a writing assignment–she had crumpled her paper and thrown it in the trash, declaring “this is a waste of paper!” That got her put into the hall and pushed to the point of tears by the teacher. Worst of all I discovered a note in her room, saying “If I should die, let it be known that I love you all and will miss you forever. Carry on my dream by starting a foundation supporting woman presidency called Strong Girls. I didn’t want it to be this way.”

Just typing that breaks my heart and fills me with regret. Why didn’t we pull her the next day? I don’t know. My mind was ruled by the box, as in fitting her in.

By this time I had talked to every teacher, the principal, the reading specialist and the counselor individually. My friend with the special ed background had been telling me since September to request an EMT, request an EMT (educational team meeting). But I brushed her off, wanting to go through all the channels first. Now, I finally was ready.