Why I Am Finally Going To Homeschool My Children

or... the straw the broke the camel's back.
or.. letter to the superintendent.
Or...whatever the hell you wan to call it, posted here for my own remembrance.

May 31, 2007

To Whom It May Concern,

Yesterday, my son A was supposed to serve in-school suspension. Why he was going to serve this punishment is not clear to me, as I didn’t hear anything from anyone at the school about what he did to receive this punishment or when/how it would be served. A told me that another student fell against him during an assembly, and he (A) protested loudly. This happened, he said, in a moment of silence, so he got in trouble. This is not unusual with A, as he has been “in trouble” with the school authorities and teachers fairly consistently all school year, and last year as well. Honestly, A can be an outspoken, fairly argumentative person who asks far too many questions and does not respond well to arbitrary rules. He clashes often with the authorities at the school, questions the rules, especially the ones that don’t make sense to him, and argues loudly when he feels it is called for. I recognize that A’s attitude can be seen as disrespectful at times, and it is not the punishment itself that I am writing about today. I must add, however that it is annoying to say the least that I am not always informed about these episodes of “misconduct”. Since I have been notified on some occasions, but not all, I am confused as to what the criteria is that determines whether or not I am to be informed of his behavior and subsequent punishment. I thought when an action such as detention, suspension, etc. was enforced, that the parent of the student was to be informed. D. Town school district must have changed this policy, because I no longer receive communication from the school in any circumstance any longer.

I suspect that when it became clear that I wasn’t going to “gang up” on A and accept everything said about him without question, agreeing with the various punishments handed out to him frequently, the school decided to give up on informing me when he incurred a punishment. As I said, I am not writing about the punishment itself, however. It is the events that followed that concern me greatly.

Previously, A has been forced on occasion to serve his in-school suspension in the elementary school. Let me state that this is not acceptable to me. My son is six feet tall and in no way fits comfortably in a small, elementary-sized school desk. He can balance the desk on his knees while sitting with feet flat on the floor. To me, forcing him to sit in such a desk for eight hours is unreasonable punishment. Aside from being extremely uncomfortable, it smacks of shaming-type punishment, similar to placing a cap on his head that says “dunce”, forcing him to sit in a tiny desk for eight, long hours. It is simply not reasonable. It is no surprise to me that when he was told to go to the elementary school to serve his “time”, A balked. According to A, he then went to the high school, where there is an in-school suspension room in the library, and he found it empty. This is curious to me, since I don’t know why he would be sent to the elementary school if there was space available in the “size appropriate” area of the school. He says that he then sat quietly in the room and was working on a math assignment when Mrs. L appeared, accompanied by a police officer. He was escorted by the officer from the school, placed in the back of his patrol car, and was told that he was going to be taken off the grounds, supposedly taken home. I say supposedly because I do not know. In fact, had A not called me on his cell phone to inform me that he was sitting in the back of a police car, presumably in “custody”, I would not have known, since no one from the school called to inform me. Luckily he had a cell phone, or I might have received the news from him when they got him to the station and gave him his “one call”. Incidentally, he had his cell phone so that he could call me if he became ill. He suffers from migraines and had one in the morning. I want him to be able to keep in touch with me when he is ill, and I cam certainly glad he had the phone yesterday.

I immediately drove to the school and intercepted the police vehicle as he was driving down the street from the school. The officer said yes, he did have my son in the car, but disturbingly, he could not tell me why, when I demanded to know what my son had done that merited police custody. The officer told me that as far as he knew, A was not in the library he was supposed to be in, and because he wouldn’t “listen”, he, the officer, was called to take him off the school grounds. I insisted that he release my son immediately, and the officer complied, then drove away. I am curious what his report might say on the incident.

At this time, I was admittedly furious, and I am not much happier now. I went into the office of the elementary school and asked to speak to Mrs. L immediately. I was told by the secretary that she was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. I then requested that she phone me as soon as she was out of the meeting, to discuss why she had not called me before calling the police on my son. The secretary then told me that Mrs. L hadn’t had anything to do with the incident because she had been in the meeting all morning and probably didn’t even know about what had happened. Since it was Mrs. L herself who brought the officer to A, I can only assume that the secretary is sadly misinformed of Mrs. L’s schedule, or she was deliberately lying to me. Tonight, a full day and a half after the incident, no one from the school has called me to discuss this, offer an explanation, or apologize.

I question not only the procedures that would allow a school official to have the police physically escort a minor from the school, in a police vehicle, without informing the parents of that student, but I also question the legality of such an action. I question the motives behind such a decision, and the thought, or lack of thought, behind choosing not to call me first, and then not to call me afterward, even though I strongly requested an immediate explanation.

In view of the lack of communication on the part of Mrs. L, or anyone else at the school, I have no idea what A’s status at the school is currently. Is he suspended? Expelled? Is he expected to attend class and be given detention for using his cell phone without the officer’s permission? Does he need to now come to school and serve some in-school suspension in the closet of the principal’s office, and because they will provide him with a flashlight, this will be acceptable? Please excuse my angry sarcasm, but this entire situation borders on the insane.

If this police intervention was intended to intimidate A into compliance, it has not succeeded. Instead, he found the entire thing amusing, and the only emotional result of the debacle that unfolded yesterday was mine. It made me very angry, and convinced me that A is probably correct in his feelings of persecution in that school. He has long felt as if the teachers and administrators are just “looking” for excuses to punish him and that consequences for his actions are much more severe than for those of other students who display similar behavior. Indeed, it is hard for me to imagine that calling the police on a student without notifying the student’s parent is the usual school procedure in cases where students go “where they aren’t supposed to”, as the officer said. I asked A if he in any way acted violently yesterday, if he could have been considered a danger to anyone, including himself. He admitted that he said the entire thing was “stupid” but nothing more, and said that he did not even use “bad” language. Under the circumstances, I have to agree with him. This was stupid.

In the assumption that he will now be further punished, I am keeping A home for the remainder of the school year. I no longer trust the school with his safety or well-being. I believe that Mrs. L, or his teachers, or any other adult who comes into contact with him, has developed such a strong dislike of my son that they are not capable of making rational, fair decisions about him, if they ever were. I would ask that his school work to be made available for me to pick up, but I don’t have a high expectation of this being done since there has been a sad lack of compliance with this in the past when he has been suspended from school. Most of his teachers just never bother to respond to such requests. In some or most of his classes, he will probably fail, since he has fallen so far behind, due to missing assignments while he has been on these “vacations”, or as the school calls them, “punishments”. I suspect that they are vacations- breaks for the teachers from A, because they can’t “handle” him in the way they are accustomed to handling the students. In light of all of this, there is no point for him to come to school for the rest of the year. I’m certain the majority of his remaining time would be spent in punishment of some sort or another, and A has had enough ineffective, petty punishments heaped on him to last a lifetime, let along one school year. I no longer wish for a phone call, it is too late for that. Please direct any further correspondence to me through the mail, or email, as I wish to have everything in writing.

I have thought about writing a letter like this for a long time, but I have not done so. Instead, I hoped he could just get through the remainder of the school year here without too much trouble. Obviously, that was wishful thinking and unrealistic on my part. However, I am going to take the opportunity to express my feelings about my son, and the way the school has dealt with him, and me, this year. I expect this will be of some length, so feel free to stop reading when you get bored, if you haven’t already. The amount of attention paid to what I have said about my son this year has been miniscule. It seems to me that the people “In charge” at the school are so convinced that they are right, that there is no room for any other ideas in their minds when it comes to A, and probably students like him. I would be willing to bet that he is not the only “troubled” (or is the politically correct term now “at risk”?) student in his school, and if he is, the administrators should consider themselves lucky! It is my guess that the other “bad kids” like A also have several things in common, like asking questions, expecting to be treated like a human being with a brain instead of a mindless sheep, and the traditional methods of forcing compliance and seeking to intimidate students into behaving in the rigid roles set out for them as “good behavior” probably don’t work well on them.

I am sure that Mrs. L, Mrs. C, and the various teachers who have been involved with A see me as one more parent that is blind to her child’s faults and ignoring what is going on under my very nose, as A rolls down the hill toward more and more dangerous behaviors. All I can do is try to explain to you that I am not that parent.

What I am is a very young parent who remembers exactly what it was like to be a teenager, especially considering I was one when I gave birth to A. I also remember the way adults treated me and the way that I responded to that treatment. I was (am) determined to do it differently with my children and so far, I am happy with the way it has turned out. I am happy with the way A has turned out, believe it or not. He is strong willed, intelligent, and unafraid to stand up for himself and what he believes in, which I see as good character traits that will serve him well later in life. I do recognize that not everyone has this perception, and in fact you very well may have the opposite view of him. We will simply have to agree to disagree on the matter, because I certainly will not change my mind about my son, nor will I begin to see him as dangerous, a bad kid, or heading for disaster. Everything said about him at school is viewed through a skewed perception, in my opinion, and as I have said many times, he is a very different person away from that atmosphere.

Much of this year’s troubled behavior has been his way of acting out his grief over the death of his best friend last year, a fact I tried to discuss on more than one occasion while in conferences about A. My observation and my requests for possible counseling for him, and any other students who were not dealing well with their grief over the deaths of Kyle and John never went anywhere. Please understand that Kyle Hayes was A’s first friend at school, and his oldest, best friend. His death has been unbelievably hard on my son, and he is not “over it” yet. Teachers and others might be surprised to find that this is so, since A is not viewed as having any emotions at all, let alone tender ones. They might have been surprised to see him at the cemetery today, weeping, while he gently placed orange roses (Kyle’s favorites) on his grave, because it is his dead friend’s birthday. Again, their perception of my child is skewed, and he is certainly never going to make an effort to prove differently, as he is not interested in a relationship with any of the adults at the school any longer. Those who insisted they “liked” him (as though this is so surprising!) haven’t shown that, in his opinion.

Even without the loss of a friend early on, the teenage years are very difficult ones, and few adults bear much resemblance to the creatures they were during these hormone-addled time (thankfully). I know I do not. The only thing that I can do as a parent is try to guide my children through this time of “insanity”, as I have often thought of it, without too much damage. I am responding to the challenge in the best way I know, which is to be my son’s ally and an adult he can talk to and be honest with. He has a very supportive extended family as well, including grandparents and uncles and aunts who agree with me. Both of his grandparents are counselors by profession, and they do not agree with the unprofessional assessment that he has “anger management” problems, as I have been told. In fact, his grandmother offered to write a letter to that effect, but as I doubt it would make any difference to anyone in a position of authority, I told her not to waste her time.

I have raised A to know that he can be honest with me, and his father, in all things, and in most cases, he is. I doubt very much there is anything you could reveal to me about him that I do not already know. Trust me. Whether it is “sex, drugs, or rock-n-roll”, I believe my son is far more honest with me than are most kids of his age with their parents, who beam proudly at their “good child” without ever realizing what goes on behind the scenes in innocent D. Town, Washington. As his parent, you will have to leave it to me to worry about how much of his “reputation” is just that- reputation with little truth.

I have listened to Mrs. C, and Mrs. L, when they have spoken to me about my son. I have received offensive letters with implications that I am not an emotionally supportive or loving parent. Trust me when I say that I know A far better than any of the other adults in his life do, especially his teachers, and I do not appreciate their passing of judgment on me with so little real knowledge of my relationship with my son. I have remarked on more than one occasion that he is a very different child at school. He seems angry, withdrawn and sullen, not at all like the happy, smiling, joking son that I know. I have thought long and hard on this manner, as well as discussed it with A, and it remains very disturbing to me. I once tried to explain my thoughts to Mrs. P, but I believe I only offended her. I will attempt to do so with you today, and I apologize in advance if what I say is contrary to your own opinions.

I have raised A to question everything. I have always told him to “Be a wolf, not a sheep, don’t follow the flock” and to ask why, ask how, ask what the reasons are behind things. A has only been in the public school system for three years. Before that he was at the Christian school from kindergarten where he was praised for his individuality and questioning. His questions were not only tolerated, but encouraged, and they were never seen as a sign of disrespect. At home, and with his extended family, A has learned this as well. Question, question, and then question some more. In our family, it is considered a good thing to challenge the status quo, to demand to know why someone says or does something, and to expect an answer that can be argued about, or at least discussed at length.

I realize this has made him a square peg in the public school system. What he is encouraged at and praised for at home, he is punished for at school and called “rude” and “disrespectful” for. What he says jokingly, he is punished for. When he does something that breaks a rule, no matter how small, he is punished, and he is, again, called rude and disrespectful when he questions the fairness of the punishment. He has lost all interest in even attempting to discuss any subject with anyone at school, as it is clear to him that his opinion is unimportant and his questions bad ones. As he says, “There is no point.” And I can see his point. Several months ago, Mrs. C called me about his anger at being given detention for putting his hood up in the hallway. He told me that she didn’t give him a warning, just immediate detention, and yes, he was angry about it. Frankly, I don’t blame him. Incidentally, when I visited the school to speak with Gabriel’s teacher a week later, I counted four students with their hoods on in the hall.

Earlier in the year, I was called in to meet with Jude and Ms. Leid, to witness A signing a contract that basically, boiled down to these instructions:

Stay in your seat

Raise your hand

Bring your pencil to class.

All small things, seemingly inconsequential, but important enough in the eyes of the school to cause him to be kicked out of class for the rest of the year if he didn’t follow them.

It is these small things, the rules that make sense to them and other school authorities, that don’t make sense to A. It is these that cause him problems, that he thinks of as “dumb”, “pointless”, that he is constantly going to be caught in, again and again, and punished for, because that is the nature of this child. This is how he was raised and is no more his fault than anything else he has learned from his family. The only way he is ever going to remember to follow all of the “little rules” without questioning is if he is finally “broken” into the mold of every other kid… and frankly, I don’t want that to happen. The things he might be despised for and called rude for as a child are things that will make him a strong and confident adult.

Please understand, I do not expect the school to change for A. On the contrary, I have encouraged him to try his best to fit in, to go along with the rules, to remember all the little things he is not supposed to do. The result makes me terribly sad. A now views school as a place where he is under unfriendly surveillance, a place of arbitrary rules and constant punishment. He sees school as a place of contradictions where someone is always just “waiting for him to mess up next”. He has ceased to show any interest in learning, and at this point he has ceased to care about breaking the rules either. He is to the point of quitting- he feels he will mess up, no matter what, even if it is as small as putting his hood up on the way out of school for the day or as “big” as questioning his teacher without raising his hand or going to the “wrong” library. My fear is that by the time he reaches an age to attend college, he will have come to view school and learning as something so bad that it is a punishment that he will run from, instead of look forward to attending.

I am not writing this because I expect either sympathy for A, or agreement with me. I wanted to explain that these are the reasons I am planning to enroll him in a different school next year. However, I sincerely hope that this letter will put your mind at ease that my son is not a child slipping through any cracks. He is a well-loved and respected child on the verge of adulthood who is supported by a family that is proud of him, and we will all continue to support him, love him, and help him make decisions that will lead him to a happy future.

Sincerely,

Mama Kaat

Post Script- 6/4/07 I wrote this letter on the day after the incident and decided to wait for the remainder of the week, just to see when the school would finally contact me. On Friday, Mrs. Leif finally left a message on my voice mail, though no explanation, just an assurance that I could call her now. My call to the school was not answered. I have received nothing in the mail. I still do not know why the police were called on my child and why I was not notified of the fact. I am now sending this email to the superintendent’s office, as well as Mrs. L and Mrs. C, since they are the two who have dealt with A most often.