<p>I loathe artificial sweeteners. They leave a bitter aftertaste. I prefer to dump sugar(tm) in my coffee in the hopes that the elixir will prevent me from raiding my wife's secret candy supply she doesn't think I know about(in a shoebox in the closet). Sometimes, I will omit the sweetener altogether so as to experience the real nature of my morning cup. I like an occasional glimpse of the dark secret resentments that lurk beneath the pleasant surfaces we mostly maintain. When however these views into human nature become too real and unmodified, I smuggle a donut for comfort. But for the general public, I will call it a croissant. Not that being a donut is a bad thing.</p>
<p>i would probably first thank the teacher for being concerned enough to feel that she needed to say something. sometimes teachers see a side to a student that the parents totally miss. we are running wild with comments against the parent and/or teacher. you can say he's "good" and you can say he's "quiet" but i wonder what the teacher has noticed about his behavior that prompted him/her to make such alleged comments. </p>
<p>what is "good" and what is "quiet" and why is your son having to see TWO therapists over this little incident? I would have talked to my son and told him that he was lucky to have someone notice his quietness and that he was lucky to have someone who cared enough to ask some tough questions--and lucky enough to have someone who cared to instigate a conversation to see if this kid was "good" and "quiet" but was somehow begging for someone to talk to him so he could open up. I say this kid is lucky--and it's up to parents to calmly handle this whole thing. </p>
<p>this seems to have been blown way out of proportion over what i would have assumed was a caring teacher trying to reach out to someone. sometimes teachers are more tuned in to student behavior and personality that you might guess.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sometimes, I will omit the sweetener altogether so as to experience the real nature of my morning cup.
[/quote]
Hah! But the real nature of your particular morning cup is probably not all that bad. I am thinking about the cup my son makes from time to time
Yowsa! Uh... Sometimes, ya just need to add a little something to make it work.</p>
<p>entomom: C'mon now. This topic has a lot of use, I think. I'm just really interested in keeping it from collapsing into this "kick a person around the house" kinda thing. No need for that. Plus, you know, it can help to see all the different opinions folks have about this kind of issue.</p>
<p>Hey, but if yall wanna fight. Go for it. There are other interesting threads...</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with being an introvert, obviously.</p>
<p>I think the issue is more of being able to handle oneselves in a variety of circumstances and being able to deal with a variety of people</p>
<p>Extroverts "seem" able to deal with situations and people more readily than introverts, but that is a perception that is not always true</p>
<p>The other thing to think about is the difference between being painfully shy and being introverted...they are not the same, but can be seen that way</p>
<p>When my Ds were little, one was the talker, and one was the watcher and listener, so the second seemed "shy", she may have been a little, but she was taking everything in, and figuring stuff out, and her older sister was just blabbering away...</p>
<p>But, on the other hand, there are some kids that are really shy and do need some help with that</p>
<p>Shyness can come from insecurity- of not lookng or being perfect, of being afraid of making an error, of looking bad</p>
<p>That is different from someone who is an introvert- who may just be quiet and introspective</p>
<p>isn't one of the special delights of catholic school, the notion that they are permitted to take a less dainty approach to moral concerns than your run of the mill public school. Don't they make your kids surrender a few 'rights' that public school kids would never do without? They believe you want them to intervene sometimes a bit aggressively into the soul of your student. I suppose they are often heavyhanded and too authoritarian for the average parent but the appeal of these schools is that they are willing to act without fear of ruffling feathers because I suppose they are more certain of their position than your average nihilist. They don't whomp knuckles(though they probably miss that form of argument) but in the effort to save a soul or two, it is understandable that a teacher might get carried away and loose-tongued. For instance, they will not flinch to punish an entire class for the wrongdoings of a few even when those few are caught. As in the dance is cancelled because little O'leary made a joke about drugs. Also, I realize I would not last a day at any school before offending every student and his parents and the Pope who probably never 'got offended'(the real Pope, the one who is with us in body no more) So I have sympathy for the foot in mouthers.</p>
<p>After Xmas, he got a new English teacher (a touchy-feely poetry PhD). Recently, this teacher took him aside and told him that she is worried about him because he reminds her of two students that she once had. One student had a nervous breakdown and can only do menial jobs and the other went to college and got drunk at frat parties and is now disfunctional.
Couple things I am getting from my perception of this teacher
control freak- has noticed that she can make big impact on students by small changes in behavior. Likes that power.</p>
<p>If she was really worried about him- professionally- she should have gone to the parents/principal before approaching a child with strong emotional statement that she was not competent to make.</p>
<p>That the principal and staff- are backing up teacher rather than addressing concerns is a concern in itself.</p>
<p>My kids ahve both attended private schools, but secular.
I am getting feeling that Catholic schools, when not overseen by outside organizations like PNAIS, may overstep what is good judgement.
Just yesterday, I was talking to a mother whose son had attended the "top" catholic high school in the area. As part of a Christmas assembly last year, "Santa claus" gave a hispanic girl a "green card" and a african american girl a "machete" so she could hack her way out of the jungle. This apparently was indicative of the climate at teh school. Her son and several others transferred out, as it was not a case of being an isolated incident.
I agree that sometimes you need to overlook isolated incidents, but the administration should be very sensitive to parents concerns, we always had good response from the administration, although our issues were with one or two other students, not teachers.</p>
<p>I was glad to see I picked up this thread after the result had already occurred. However, I wanted to comment on a few other things.</p>
<p>First, there has been a lot of back and forth on whether or not reporting problems, etc. is teacher bashing. I am a teacher and come from two parents who were both teachers at the university level. Your defenses DO immediately come up when you hear people criticizing teachers. However, I had some poor teachers coming through school and I always think of teachers at schools where I teach in terms of would I want my child or a friend's child placed in that room. At the school where I teach now there are not many that fall into the do not place category, but that has absolutely not been the case at other schools where I have taught. Just like I have encountered bad banks and bad doctors, there are bad schools and bad teachers. Incompetence can be found in every profession and I don't think it's reflective of the profession as a whole. Teachers do sometimes get a bad rap as not being as intelligent as many other professions, but I just let my actions speak for themselves. I would never have chosen a more "prestigious" career just so people would think I'm smart. Heck, I grew up in Mississippi. They'd probably think I was dumb and backwoods regardless. =)</p>
<p>As for the teacher's actions, they were not ok as stated. If there were concerns, they could have been addressed with the parents or through the counselor at the school. If the teacher chose to address the concerns with the student, then the word suicide should not have been used. It should have been conducted in more general terms such as "Is there anything you want to talk about?" or "I've noticed you've seemed kind of quiet and down lately. Is everything ok?"</p>
<p>I agree with wbow - this sounds like a minor incident which may be based on a valid observation and a potentially beneficial comment made to the boy. If he can't roll with the kind of comment originally posted (which, I agree with anxiousmom, is likely somewhat exagerated in itself) then I can see a need for multiple therapists, although not due to what is perceived as an inappropriate comment by the teacher, but simply because a teenager should be able to process that kind of input without becoming psychologically disturbed by it. I have a hard time believing that his upset over this is due to the teacher's comment and not his parent's blowup over the whole deal. Teachers should be free to have that kind of personal interaction with high school aged kids without the parents going all "Little League Mom" on them. Different teachers are likely to give students different perspectives on life; isn't that all part of the "learning experience"? Who knows, maybe she was right, and the boy would benefit from lightening up a little. Kind of hard to say from here, but given the vehemence of the mom here it's hard to ignore the possibility that this boy does feel under a lot of pressure to perform.</p>
<p>Teach2005 - there was no reference to suicide in the first post on topic.</p>
<p>Umm, some Catholic schools are the opposite. Schools in the liberal, Jesuit tradition, are frequently more "whole child", more freedom of speech, more social consciousness than your usual public school. Just putting in $0.02 for the glorious revolutionary Catholic tradition, which is frequently overshadowed by the conservative tradition.</p>
<p>One student had a nervous breakdown and can only do menial jobs and the other went to college and got drunk at frat parties and is now disfunctional.</p>
<p>this is what the original poster said the teacher commented upon...the teacher didn't bring up suicide--the poster or therapist brought up that term, i believe.</p>
<p>My kids Catholic high school is not perfect, but it is a more accepting and tolerant place than the local public high school. Let's not paint all the Catholic schools with the same brush!</p>
<p>Emeraldk--the incident you described is bizarre and troubling.</p>
<p>The teacher's remarks are still totally unacceptable IMO. It is one thing for a teacher to make a mild, friendly comment to a student. Here, however, we have a fundamental questioning of the student's entire prospects for the future. The teacher is in no way qualified or situated to share such a sweeping and negative judgment with the student.</p>
<p>The coments are also IMO utterly inappropriate as therapeutic gestures. Therapy as I understand it begins with unconditional acceptance of the patient, not with a fundamental assault on the patient or the patient's prospects disguised as concern.</p>
<p>Whether or not the student 'should' be able to weather such comments is immaterial, a "blame the victim" defense IMO. The teacher should not be intervening in such a manner, nor should she be defended on the grounds that students ought to be able to take it. </p>
<p>If the teacher physically assaulted the student, it would be no defense to say that the student should have been tough enough to endure the harm. Nor is that line of reasoning sufficient to defend a psychological assault.</p>
<p>it is not "immaterial" at all. We will all hear mean comments, and rejection our whole lives. And if ONE conversation "damages" a student to such a degree that the parent feels the student needs counseling...one conversation...then that parent should be concerned...its the REACTION to the comments as much as the comments themselves that needs to be addressed</p>
<p>If I let my D feel awful about herself because of her jerky teacher, what benefit would that have brought to her? She needed to toughen up, not take someones comments to heart and to trust in herself...the teacher was still wrong obviouslly, but my job was to gauge the reactions of my student and steer them in the right and healthy direction</p>
<p>In a way, it shows some validity to the teachers comments....that sounds harsh, but if the junior was so disturbed....and the parents reaction, still, can cause even more doubt in the son's mind...lets prove them wrong by getting reports from therapists...that is not the best approach</p>
<p>I said the teacher was wrong in what she said and how she said it...there are better ways to handle a student, especially if the teacher feels the student is "delicate", however, to have such an emotional and vehement reaction to what seems a brief conversation, needs to be addressed</p>
<p>another question, do you think the student will feel great if the teacher sneaks behind his back about issues and goes to the parents without including him in the conversations</p>
<p>that is for 7 year olds, not for juniors in highschool...the counselor is there for a reason</p>
<p>I know for a fact that my Ds friends have all gone to their conselours for very personal reasons, sometimes parents called in, other times, not</p>
<p>But to have a HS teacher have private conversations about a student would say that the parent does not trust the student to handle school</p>
<p>The teacher, if so concerned, should go to the counselor, who can then call in the student, get a feel whats is going on, and contact parents if warranted</p>
<p>Sometimes parents make matters a lot worse for the kid, IMO</p>
<p>ADad, I'm with you. I understand some of your points Citygirlsmom, but I think your missing a big piece of this. In today's climate, with issues of teachers overstepping boundaries in both public and private schools, teachers should be very careful about going through proper channels. I'm sure there is a documented procedure somewhere about how to bring a concern about a student's mental health to the attention of parents or the administration. For an unlicensed, untrained person to address a student about personal matters seems to really cross a professional boundary. Your questions about how the parents respond is a different issue, and I also feel you are taking a "blame the victim" stance with how the student felt. It probably bothered the parents more than the student, but that doesn't excuse the teacher's behavior.</p>
<p>I agree that speaking to a school counselor would have been an appropriate step for the teacher to take. </p>
<p>That would have amounted to referring a possible problem to someone who is professionally equipped to address it, or who can be expected by their profession to know what the next step should be, and to have the authority to take that next step.</p>
<p>I am not going to address whether or not the parents or student overreacted, or whether there is any validity to the teacher's comments. I have no way of knowing that, and to do so would IMO be doing just what I criticized the teacher for--which is, as a nonprofessional, making a sort of psychological diagnosis based on incomplete information and in an inappropriate setting.</p>
<p>IMO the possible validity of the comments does not matter for this discussion. Whether there is any validity to the comments or not, IMO it is a serious mistake for a classroom teacher to make that type of comment directly to a student.</p>
<p>*My kids Catholic high school is not perfect, but it is a more accepting and tolerant place than the local public high school. Let's not paint all the Catholic schools with the same brush!</p>
<p>Emeraldk--the incident you described is bizarre and troubling.*
I didn't mean to say that all religious schools have an altered perception of reality. Even though the principal of one local Catholic school apparently makes anti Semitic & sexist jokes to visiting parents according to a friend, they also had "the Laramie Project" as their school play.
But this other incident, jsut seemed really bizarre to me, I mean this is Seattle!- We have many, many mixed families, many of the students who attended that school, and either the school was totally clueless to how offensive they were being, or they didn't care- neither of which sounds too good.
It is hard however to know everything, even if you are experiencing it.
At my Ds high school, for example, two friends seperately transfered out, one because of racial harrasment, one because of sexual harrasment ( by students). They were private incidents, and while I heard about them from the parents, and they concerned me, we hadn't seen, or experienced similar issues. D actually was harrassed by one boy, but we were happy with how the school handled it, and nothing else came up ( as far as I know)</p>
<p>One thing I have found, is that even though it seems like teens don't listen to adults- they really do- and if they are feeling badly about themselves- they may even exagerate in their own minds ( not saying that is what your son was doing), the harshness of the criticism, even if we think it is very mild.
But that is why anyone who deals with kids- really needs to be so circumspect in their interaction. They don't have as many memories for incidents to get lost in, and a comment may stay stuck in their mind forever.
( unless of course it had to do with - taking the dog out, or cleaning under their bed- or turning down the stereo- then it never makes it to their frontal lobe, let alone their memory banks)</p>
<p>I realize it is difficult for people who deal with kids, in working with ESL learners, I am not only trying to encourage them, even if their progress seems slow, but I have to deal with other students * in their own class* making derogatory comments.
But we need to keep in mind- no matter how grown up they seem- they are children- in many ways, and any concern that a teacher has, should first go to the parent.</p>
<p>If one more person does the "blame the victim" thing with me...</p>
<p>Once again, I never said that...omg</p>
<p>What I AM saying is that we need to work with our kids to learn to deal with mean, awful people...and for a student to be so disturbed by one conversation seems like a warning sign to the parents that they need to give that student some tools and inner resources to cope</p>
<p>When did I excuse the teachers behavior...I never did...</p>
<p>I would never blame the victim, but I do point out that it is our job as parents to work with our own children to teach them how to handle assualts, physical or mental. </p>
<p>Life can be tough, and we will not always be there to help them. We need to give our children the inner resources to brush off the hurtful words ( and I am not saying to not do anything else about it, read my posts )...but if we DON"T give our children tools to handle what garbage is thrown at them, those internal tools, they will be lost as adults</p>
<p>I have taught my girls physical as well as emotional defense...does that say blame the victim, hardly, it says there are some creeps in this world, but you can't let them get to you, as a parent, i will do my best to protect your from the creeps, but I can't always be there, and you need to know that you can handle life</p>
<p>When my D complained about her teachers, i DID do something about them, but I ALSO worked with my D- one does not exclude the other</p>
<p>One girl in my D's class had a horrid time in 5th grade with her teacher...the mom just focused on the teacher's behavior, and not her Daughters reaction to it..it took the daughter several years to move on, but if the mom had given the girl tools to deal,maybe she would have recovered sooner</p>
<p>Adad, I'm questioning whether we read the same post. This is the situation, as stated in the OP:
[quote]
Our S is a junior in HS. He is very quiet and NEVER gets into ANY trouble at school. He is very self-motivated about his grades (straight A's). He does care about his grades but is NOT someone who frets over every point that gets deducted from a paper.
After Xmas, he got a new English teacher (a touchy-feely poetry PhD). Recently, this teacher took him aside and told him that she is worried about him because he reminds her of two students that she once had. One student had a nervous breakdown and can only do menial jobs and the other went to college and got drunk at frat parties and is now disfunctional.
[/quote]
Now, I'm not going to assume that the OP "sugar coated" the situation, based on later posts. So what I take away from this setup is that the teacher took the boy aside and suggested that he "lighten up" and told him about some previous students that she felt were too focussed on school to the detriment of developing other parts of their lives. (Remember, it would be unreasonable to assume that anything the teacher said or did was, or should be interpreted as, anything worse than the literal words written by the OP.)<br>
Your take is:
[quote]
The teacher's remarks are still totally unacceptable IMO. It is one thing for a teacher to make a mild, friendly comment to a student. Here, however, we have a fundamental questioning of the student's entire prospects for the future. The teacher is in no way qualified or situated to share such a sweeping and negative judgment with the student.
The coments are also IMO utterly inappropriate as therapeutic gestures. Therapy as I understand it begins with unconditional acceptance of the patient, not with a fundamental assault on the patient or the patient's prospects disguised as concern.
[/quote]
"Fundamental questioning of the student's entire prospects for the future?" "a sweeping and negative judgment"? "fundamental assault on the patient?" I don't get any of that from the OP. Where do you see it? "Therapy?" What are you talking about?
[quote]
Whether or not the student 'should' be able to weather such comments is immaterial, a "blame the victim" defense IMO. The teacher should not be intervening in such a manner, nor should she be defended on the grounds that students ought to be able to take it.
If the teacher physically assaulted the student, it would be no defense to say that the student should have been tough enough to endure the harm. Nor is that line of reasoning sufficient to defend a psychological assault.
[/quote]
I'm not "blaming the victim". I'm saying that a teenager should normally be able to hear the comments made by the teacher without being traumatized, and if he was, that's a basis for concern - not because of the comments, but because the reaction to the comments is not healthy. Saying "I'm worried about you because you seem to take your studies so seriously. I had a student once who was like that in high school and he ended up getting drunk at fraternity parties in college*, " is hardly the equivalent of physically assaulting the kid.</p>
<p>*Am I the only one here who is wondering what the teacher actually said about the two prior students? Fraternity parties? disfunctional? And just what are those "menial jobs", anyway?</p>
<p>"I'm worried about you because you seem to take your studies so seriously. I had a student once who was like that in high school and he ended up getting drunk at fraternity parties in college,*</p>
<p>I disagree-
this is why
a pretty serious- quiet student, may very well be depressed, but telling him that an adult is worried about him, is not going to get him the help he needs, instead it will validate his fears that something "is the matter" and could push him further inward.
While a student who takes things lightly, is not necessarily going to take in as hard what an adult in a position "of authority" says, the teacher should have first went to parents or at least to counselor if there was a concern.
To compare this student to other students who have "messed up" isn't necessary, and again is not likely to motivate most students to seek help.
I don't think the student was "traumatized", but a similar comment to a different student, may have provoked a different response, and for a teacher , especially one who is new & doesn't have a lot of experience it sounds like, is going off on the wrong track if she wants to "bond" with students</p>
<p>To any of those overreactive (mostly teachers) posters who think that I may have "exagerated" the teacher's words to my kid, please remember, the teacher recounted her words to the principal and to my H and me and her retelling of the story was WORSE then the story that our son told us (which is why she won't be teaching that class any more AND why the principal chewed her out after we (the parents) left the meeting. So...... I think a few of you owe me an apology for accusing me of "overreacting" or misstating the teacher's words! </p>
<p>We do not want this teacher fired - we didn't even want her removed from the class (that was a complete surprise to us -- that may have been based on something that she said to the principal after we left and/or based on other complaints from other parents about issues that we do not know about (conjecture, I know). All we asked was for her to apologize to our son for her words -- and she FLATLY refused. One simple "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to take my words as you did. I think you're a great kid" would have been fabulous to us (since she is a role model/authority figure). We always thought her "intentions" were "good" (just grossly misguided). We never considered suing or anything like that. Maybe the principal was just annoyed that she refused to put this "to bed" with a simple apology.... we'll probably never know. </p>
<p>Drossel: This is pretty much par for the course on CC. Anytime anyone says anything negative (or silly) about something a teacher/school did, the whole "CC faculty" goes ballistic as if a post has ANYTHING to do with THEM or as if a few "bad eggs" is somehow a reflection of themselves. (Hey, guys, it's not all about you! (And I'm a former teacher -- I am thrilled that I didn't do some of the nutty things posted on this or other threads! )) </p>
<p>And yes, we all agree with some people's posts and disagree with others. I try not to carry my opinions of one person's posts on one thread to other threads. So..... to those I disagree with here, no problem for me when I "see you" on other threads. Best to you all.</p>