Posted on 06/14/2007 8:18:08 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
INDIANAPOLIS -- Sixth-grader Matt Porter didn't enjoy getting "Most Likely Not To Have Children" and "Sir Clowns-a-Lot" awards from two teachers at his school.
His parents aren't pleased, either.
Matt said he received the awards in front of classmates during a ceremony at the Decatur Intermediate Learning Center at the end of the recently finished school year. His mother and his stepfather have asked the Decatur Township school system to reprimand the teachers, and they want an apology.
"Words cut deeper than any knife could. They hurt," said his stepfather, Joseph Sims. "When you hurt a child like that, you not only hurt him mentally, but it does hurt physically because you withdraw within yourself. That is what Matthew has done."
The certificates were signed by the teachers who distributed them. Matt recalled what the ceremony was like.
"I was standing in the middle of (the two teachers), and they (were) reading them off," he said. "Everyone was laughing."
Matt felt humiliated.
"They (were) putting us down and everything," he said. "That is not what their job is for, to put kids down. They are supposed to teach us."
Amy Sims, Matt's mother, said she met with a school official over the matter but was not satisfied with the response.
"She just told me that the teachers would call and apologize to him, and we've not heard anything at all," Amy Sims said.
Gary Pellico, spokesman for the school system, declined to say whether the teachers have been disciplined. He said system officials regret the incident.
"We don't feel like it was an appropriate awards ceremony at all," Pellico said. "It wasn't part of the school's award ceremony, and it will not happen again."
Amy Sims said her son needs counseling because of the awards. The school has offered it, but an agreement on who will provide it has not been reached, Thomas reported.
“When one stats analyzing figures of speech it is often an indication their argument is breaking down.”
Invariably is a word, not a figure of speech. I’m just saying that end of year roasts are common, and most of them don’t require therapy, a lawsuit, or a newspaper article. This example might skirt “over the line”, but really it all seems a little silly.
Post #246, as I said in my reply to it, is clearly over the line. This one, not so much.
I respectfully disagree. The awards IME were not harmful, but like I previously posted, on the positive side and not the negative (although lots of posters have anecdotally related negative awards). Like everything else in life, in all things moderation.
I would, but then again I didn't raise a whiney insecure kid.
My son won several similar awards. He was and is proud of them - recounts his adventures with pride. He has turned out to be a good man, but he was a handful in grade school - not an evil kid, just a handful. He was mostly bored silly and looked for ways to entertain himself - that tended to get him in trouble.
I would, but then again I didn't raise a whiney insecure kid.
My son won several similar awards. He was and is proud of them - recounts his adventures with pride. He has turned out to be a good man, but he was a handful in grade school - not an evil kid, just a handful. He was mostly bored silly and looked for ways to entertain himself - that tended to get him in trouble.
LOL...I can agree, but tell that to the OTHER eight year olds!
I would like to think you are correct...:)
I challenge you to read through my posts and find exactly where I specifically called the kid a sissy, a pansy, or anything of that nature, or anything at all.
For the last time, I am not defending the teachers.
I never said the parents do not have a valid complaint. They are however being overly dramatic and drawing attention to a situation that could have been QUIETLY RESOLVED without anyone beyond the school community knowing about it.
A word can also be a figure of speech. When I said invariably I did not mean in the literal use. i.e. (always), thus making the word a figure of speech. I assumed the reader would not take it literally. Almost always would have been a better choice.
It doesn’t take much of a insult for a teacher to hurt a 4th graders feeling. It should not be something teachers should be toying around with.
That's really funny since I have students telling other students that they absolutely MUST take my classes. They must like the fact that I use positive reinforcement rather than humiliation to achieve results!
At least they didn’t call him a nappy headed ho...
I get so tired of that stupid expression, especially by those who use it to justify verbal bullying. Just because an emotional hurt doesn't always have a physical manifestation does not mean it is acceptable for an adult to direct hurtful or demeaning words toward a child.
Who ever came up with that,(a) Was never a child and (b)is a Idiot themselves
...and if he'd been screwing around during the announcement, it would have been his fault. What if he was trying to listen, and ten other kids in the class were making a bunch of noise? That's happened to one of my kids. He's had four surgeries to slowly correct his hearing problems. At this point, his biggest problem with hearing is not being able to distinguish one voice from several (imagine an episode of Hannity and Colmes). He missed an announcement last fall because he couldn't hear it over other kids' voices. He asked his teacher, when he had a chance, what the announcement was, and she had no idea. Turns out it was for all the kids riding his bus, to let them know that they'd be picked up in a different parking lot. He went to the usual place, waited and waited, no sign of his bus. Fortunately, his big brother noticed he wasn't on the bus and the driver went and fetched him.
That labs would be closed after school?
Doesn't that essentially mean that the kids who had been planning on using the labs would be left unsupervised for some length of time? I sure hope the janitorial staff at the school had been well screened. That's not mundane. As a parent of young boys, that is frightening.
Do you mean PITA? I've known many PITA kids, but I have yet to meet a kid--a child--who deserves being called a piece of sh!t.
Out of curiosity, what do you teach, and where? (Not specifics, just like elementary, middle, whatever)
I also teach positive reinforcement and not humiliation.
It amazes me you would bash teachers if you are a teacher yourself, as you say. [stunned]
You got the problem with the announcements: other kids talking.
I consider the problems we are having with my son as minor. However, I am also fighting for the school to change because of my daughter. Her problems are so much larger than my son. I would have in her IEP that the school has to give her the announcements every day written down on a piece of paper. I would also have that the teachers have to write down all of her homework assignments. I know it would be this whole legal battle with the school district.
So far, we’re planning on sending my daughters to private school. However, if something happens to my husband’s job we would be forced into going to our public school.
I was pretty mad that my son was left unsupervised. My son isn’t the problem, it’s other people I worry about. There’s been some strange characters around his school (rumors of drug dealers). It’s supposed to be a good neighborhood, but it ain’t perfect. The principal never even apologized for leaving my son unsupervised.
ewww. This just happened at the school my daughter will be going to next year. What gets me is... when it came out in the news, she and other students new about this for some time. The 33 year old female called the boy while he attended a party and told him how much she missed him. Other kids heard the conversation and an adult reported it. The boy was 17. yuck.
I agree with what you said, but I would add that the parents need to have at least one serious talk with that kid about his behavior in school. He wasn’t singled out for those ‘awards’ for no reason.
Kindly show me where I bashed teachers.....I didn’t. I simply said that you were making assumptions about the child that were not in the article.
As for what and where, I teach computer software (any and all) at 2 colleges. I also do private corporate computer training.
My teenage daughter came home in tears because she was voted "Most shy" by the students for the school yearbook. I told her she wasn't a chatterbox and didn't feel the need to push to be the center of attention, but apparently she was popular among the students and they wanted to give her a special place in the yearbook. I think that made her feel a little better, but she was voted "most shy" several years in a row and I don't think she was ever really happy about it.
But, as you said, "Least likely to have children"...? That is just not right, even more so coming from the teachers. I definitely would have had something to say to the teachers and school if they gave my child an award like that.
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