I live in Japan and my son (7) is about to start second grade at an English-speaking missionary school. He has very probable ADD, but no official dx (unofficial one from educational specialist).

The school is woefully underfunded and can't afford educational specialists or other extra help. So I wasn't all that surprised when they recommended that 4 kids out of my son's 16-child first-grade class be held back -- including my son. They didn't feel they had the resources to take care of them. Three kids from that class had been held back from the previous year.

Fine and dandy. We took some steps on our own and worked with the summer-school teacher, and my son did fairly well.

So I put my foot down and made sure my son got put in 2nd grade. I can be fairly convincing when I need to. :) And I know he can do the work.

Well, after I convinced them, back in the office the teacher started spouting off all sorts of stuff, like "he has no business in the second grade" and she was not going to give him any "special treatment."

I'm sorry, but WTF? :confused: First of all, you should realize that it's a small school and small community, things like that are going to get back to me. Secondly, the matter is decided, why are you setting up my son to fail from the get-go?

I went in and confronted the teacher over this. She said she has a lot of experience teaching second grade, and she guaranteed he was going to struggle. I told her struggling was one thing, but I wanted a teacher who assumed success from the beginning, not failure. She agreed to my demands, but I am having some severely bad vibes about this school year. And this teacher has earned a spot pretty high up on my **** list! The principle is not much better (just more judicious in choice of words).

At this point, I've decided that if things start looking bad I'm going to pull him out and home school him.

I don't have any advice, and I'm very new to this board, but I wanted to tell you I feel your pain and I hope everything goes well this year.

I don't have any advice, and I'm very new to this board, but I wanted to tell you I feel your pain and I hope everything goes well this year.
Thanks a lot for the kind words, Beck. Rather than antagonizing this teacher I am going to make it my mission to turn her around.

Oh yeah -- and make her eat her words by the end of the school year! :)

WOW, the nerve of that teacher to say those things, how much negative can she be! And to think that she's a teacher! She needs to find another occupation! That would have burned me up too!

This story sounds VERY fimilar to me. I had my Son in a private school from Kindergarten, which he went through twice, then first and second grade. We'll first grade we started seeing the ADD, plus the school was starting to have financal problems. Then come second grade, which I'll never EVER forget, the worst he has ever had! That's why your story caught my attention, second grade, school underfunded, and a **tch for a teacher!


His teacher wouldn't do anything, and I mean anything extra for him, she wouldn't come out and say she wouldn't, but that's how she went about it. And here we were paying this expensive tution. Most of the kids there were from rich families and could afford it, but we are far from rich, so we had to struggle some for him to go!

After lots, and lots of talks with her she would "act" like she was gonna help and cared but it was all "talk"! She never went out of her way even a little bit for my diagnosed ADD son, even with a class of only ten! Also, she admitted that both of her two children which were highschoolers there were both ADHD, so you'd "think" she'd be more understandable!



She was all the time getting onto my Son for not staying on task and paying attention, plus complain to me,and this was when we were we first trying meds for him, trying to find the right one. The school was still going through alot financially at this time, even to the point of almost shutting down, so I knew he would never get any help at this school, that he needed.

To this day, I have talked to some people on their board, they are still struggling financally, they have even raised their already high tution, but the kids have gotten NOTHING extra at all! Also another reason I got him out of there is by law the private schools don't have to do anything extra at all for your child, which is my main reason he is now in public school, which is only a little better (another gripe there).

Cody's self-esteem started to plummet, he was aying things like "how much he hated his life" this coming from a second grader! His Pdoc had a private talk with him alone one day, I returned back to the room they were in, he immediately said "get him out of that school!" We drive by the school occasionally, and he still talks about that school how much he hates it, and that teacher, and that was three years ago,yes it did leave a scar thats for sure!


Your doing the right thing, volunteer, as much as you can, till that teacher just gets sick of you! :D I did this with his second grade teacher too, I was there as much as I could possibly be,the kids probably thought i was an aide or something!:P, I could tell the teacher didn't like it alot of the time. I was there mainly because of her and her negative attitude towards him.

Is there any other school in your community that is english-speaking? I know it's a small community, and that can make it hard to find schools, and you don't have much to pick from. Maybe even driving some out of your town would help, I had thought about that. Just keep at it girl, camp out there out side the class room door if need be! :D sorry so long, just brought back bad,ugly memories, I just had to vent :mad:!

Good luck, Please keep us posted!:)

Tracy

This story sounds VERY fimilar to me. I had my Son in a private school from Kindergarten...
Wow, sounds like you've had a really tough time with your school too. I really admire your perseverance, though. Even just in second grade I often just feel like chucking it and homeschooling -- with the problem of how I will accomplish that a minor detail to be handled. :)

This current teacher is one of those behavior mavens. Also, she gave this big handout to all the parents at open house, with what she expects of the kids. Taking up 1/3 of a page is

C
N
B

Clean, Neat, and Best Work

I'm thinking great, all she cares about is just what my kid is worst at. She also gave us this "information sheet" that we are supposed to fill out about our kids. Mine was on my desk awaiting my attention, when the wind blew it onto the floor. As I'm rolling my chair around to get it, I ran over the paper with my chair.

So now the information sheet has this big caster track running down the middle of it. I hope she doesn't mark me down for turning in dirty/messy work! :D

Is there any other school in your community that is english-speaking?
There are a couple alternatives.

There is one other English-speaking school, but it is not accredited. That's not such a big deal for elementary school, because when you go to another school they will usually just place the kids according to their age. But beyond elementary it wouldn't be an option. Also, the students are mostly Japanese and their level of English ability is not on a par with native speakers.

The other option would be putting him in a private Japanese-language school that has 1 hour of English instruction per day. That's pretty far down on my list though, because I am very set on raising my son to be bilingual (living in Japan, his Japanese doesn't need help. His English needs to be tended, though).

We live on an island, so driving to the next town is kind of hard! :)

Due to these problems at school, we are actually thinking pretty seriously about moving. It's too late for this school year, but we were thinking of moving to Guam for a couple years, then coming back and putting our son in Japanese school after his English had a chance to really take root.

sorry so long, just brought back bad,ugly memories, I just had to vent :mad:
Not at all -- thanks for sharing! :)