<<<<WARNING!!!>>>>
Full On Rant Ahead....

It's just after 5 am here, and i've be up all night absolutely agro at my daughters teacher.

We had our parent teacher interview last night and had a few thing that needed to be addressed. we wanted to make sure that we could do it tactfully so first we took our concerns to the councillor/child psychologist that we've been working with. she gave us the tool necessary to ask the questions in a way that would be "non threatening" to the teachers work/ability. she also advised us not to take our daughter with us. it's not fair to create that triangle between the teacher parents and child.(a little background in fo, the teacher is the most scatter brained teacher i've seen in a long time. she can't even keep track of her students! there's 19 in her class and she's overwhelmed by it, she won't admit it but anyone who can read body language can see it.) so when we got there we fond out we were supposed to bring gabbie!!! bloody heck!!! We asked our questions regarding our concerns, some of that being how we can help our daughter keep on track at school, reitterating that she needs a lot of redirection and structure. NO answer, just that she has a hard time keeping her deskk organised, so maybe we should eliminate some of the things in her desk. i also mentioned that she does need specific instructions,(she's in grade 1. 90% of kids need specific instruction, you can't always give a vague command of clean up your desk, and expect that every child knows exactly wha tyou are asking for!). We also asked about her assesment that we've been fighting to get since kindergarten adn apparently in SK, they can take as bloody long as they want! apparently my daughter is onlu on the cusp of possibly needing an assesment. and according to he rteacher she has attention difficulties. No spit sherlock! I told you that since day one!!!!! the very first day of school i let her teacher know that she had a few problems in kindegarten and we were working to correct them but we needed the teachers help as well. and attention was one of those things. We addressed her about concerns about our daughters reading. there is heavy heavy LD"s on her dads side of the family and on mine, espcially with dyslexia and the teacher actually had the cajones to tell her dad that if you're dyslexic that you wouldn't be able to recognise letters or any sight words! her dad is so incredibly dyslexic it's amazing that he's been able to do some of the thing that he has!. So she basically told him HE wasn't dyslexic because he said to her whne i was young i knew my alphabet and i knew how to recognise letters and some words but as soon as i put them into other words, that's where things went wrong. So after the whle "dyslexic" (apparently she knows NOTHING about different types of dyslexia, <why worry about that, it's the resource room teachers job!>) thing she asks if he ever took any meds she asked specifically ritalin for his LD's (including dyslexia, dysgraphia, discalcula, and ADHD) and he told her yes, and they weren't as good as everyone thinks they are, at least for him and his family members. (3 ppl in his family all used ritalin and all had nasty side effects) and obviously she's not up to date on current research which now shows that even iof you do not have ADHD that ritalin will still help you focus. she was quite shocked when i told her about parents who want their kids to remain A students and ask the docs for ritalin for their kids. she siad that she thought ritalin only worked if you had ADHD. Hmm lady, have you never heard of ppl selling their pills to make money so others can get high??? there's a reason it's a restricted medicine!!!! Holy hockey Puck batman!!!!

So all in all we had NONE of our questions answered about what we can do to help, it was less than 15 minutes and she was trying to push us out the door, and basically for whatit was worth we could have stayed home and read her report card because we didn't get any answers at all! we just got alot of run around adn really saw her ignorance! <beats head into kepyboard> at least her K teacher saw there were more than just attention things going on and was willing to help! <beats head in to keyboard again> ARGH!!!!!

rant over, still fuming.....

Alora