In which the authorities voted unanimously to return a predator to her hunting grounds:
Wendy Portillo, the Kindergarten teacher infamous for permitting neurotypical students to vote a boy with a form of Autism out of her class, will keep both her contract with the St. Lucie County school district and her tenured status after a unanimous vote by the School Board. Portillo is "overjoyed" by the ruling and hopes to return to teaching.
Alex Barton reportedly has not returned to school since the incident. Shortly after Alex was voted out of class, his mother said he was so traumatized that he was unable to even ride past his former elementary school in a car without screaming and begging not to be forced to return to school.
Oh, you weren't expecting actual justice for Alex Barton and his family, were you? They weren't even allowed to show up and testify against Portillo when her record was being examined, but she was allowed to call twelve character witnesses, some of whom were obviously biased like her own children. Indeed, no conflict of interest there. There are only three offenses for which a teacher may always be fired: having sex with a student, doing anything which offends a protected group or saying anything positive about firearms. The rest is simply negotiable.
School boards, like police review boards, are typically a joke. When they are actually staffed by people who are informed and generally dedicated to public service, they're not empowered to make tough calls that the public needs. They exist to give us a sense that someone is in control of the bureaucracy, and that that someone is a person that We The People(tm) chose. If the system worked as advertised, even if there were not formal safeguards in place to automatically end the career of a teacher like Portillo, the school board would have never even given her a chance to explain herself.
That makes me hurt for that poor boy. How awful that must be for him! I sincerely hope that his parents homeschool him from here on out. While it is unlikely that he will go thru a similar incident, too much damage has already been done to ever even consider putting him back in the lions mouth.
And as for this woman, she needs a cluebat to the forehead. Preferably aluminum.
Amen, Erik. Once upon a time, it was considered proper to teach children NOT to be cruel. Now, their cruelty is aided, abetted and even implicitly condoned by the adults in charge.
First time I've seen the term "neurotypical" used. Is that a fancy way of saying normal when the act of saying normal is not permitted by the Diversity Police?
I stand by my earlier claim...it is tantamount to child abuse to let the public school crazies and dimwits latch onto and brainwash your children.
And as for this woman, she needs a cluebat to the forehead. Preferably aluminum.
I prefer ash, Erik. The 'whack' and 'split' that you get when one busts a Louisville Slugger in two is way preferable to the 'ting' sound that an aluminium bats gives...
Its not the bat I am aiming to split in twain...
I'm sure it would just devastate you--DEVASTATE YOU--if it were split in half in the process.
As I recall from this case, the boy was accused of being a holy terror in the classroom and being completely disruptive and using the Asberger's excuse to avoid discipline (as if public schools do any of that).
I personally like the idea of students getting humiliated by teachers and other students. Isn't that what socialization is? Isn't that part of the curriculum that is so important that Homeschoolers are seen as fringe whackoes who hate their children? The little pansy 5 year old needs to grow up. The school board should get an 8 year old to punch him in the stomach. That will toughen him up. Otherwise, if he keeps getting coddled like this, he is likely to go suicide at 17 when no girls will go to the prom with him.
This is just an example of getting what you paid for.
And the teacher did still get a 1 year unpaid suspension. So I really doubt she will do that again.
There are far better ways of handling this case. I find it very difficult to believe that the teacher was incapable of getting him removed from her class for behavioral reasons. It's not like the schools have any difficulty doing that when there is an actual case of "boys being boys" like drawing a handgun on a piece of paper.
Personally, I would not give her much credence here unless I witnessed it because teachers frequently label any kid they don't like or have difficulty with as a problem kid. I've seen some cases that were enough to convince me that a lot of discipline problems are more with the teacher and school than the student.
Little boys of that age are frequently difficult to handle - my five-year-old would probably be labeled as having behavioral issues if he were in school right now.
It truly does amaze me that a grown adult with children of her own would think this was an appropriate tactic to take with a five year old. They don't have the necessary maturity or reasoning capacity at that age to understand the point of the exercise.
Not to mention the fact that if the kid does have severe Asperger's Syndrome, then he really would have problems relating to the other students and dealing with social situations. If he is outright autistic, then this is flat out unacceptable.
We could make easy comparisons and state the the kid was black and was kicked out because of it. Or in a wheelchair. Those two examples above would have the teacher fired or lynched (and not in that order) and would have the media, community and school board in an uproar, and rightly so. But I guess without the threat of the "Rev" Jesse Jackson marching on your building, doing the right thing is just too hard.
While I dont think that this was handled the best way possible, I believe that something had to be done in this case. I have included a link with infromation gleaned from depositions of the faculty at the school about the behavior issues this student had. It also notes the mother has said she had problems controlling him. Maybe before we lynch the teacher we realize that not all people with all conditions are able to attentd public school without negatively affecting the environment for others. Thost 16 other children shouldnt have had to suffer because of the discipline issue with the other 1 child whether it was due to Asperger's or just bad parenting. While being mean is a bad thing the teachers job is to teach not be a discipline nazi and chase a running screaming or otherwise misbehaving kid all day when she is supposed to be teaching other students.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=18&url=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.tcpalm.com%2F2008%2F11%2F20%2FPortilloConductRpt.pdf&ei=RXs2SozELtuntgf9tvH4Dg&usg=AFQjCNG2wm8K10Ic6ntCttxaFsLidNPMmw&sig2=oMWnBZz8zfALeGhwUaEenQ
Rahlquist,
No one is arguing that the child wasn't disruptive. the problem is the way in which it was handled. This type of behavior would not be accepted in corporate culture, college or anywhere else. There are proper ways of handling things and this teacher went far outside of those ways. She inflicted harm upon this child, who was under her authority, and did so in a way that no reasonable person would believe would reign in the behavior she disliked. That is the issue, not the child's behavior. Unless of course, we are granting her the standard legal status of a child that is so often applied to women, where she has no more responsibility than a child.
The way that she handled it was grossly unprofessional. She could have contacted the parents of the other students and gotten them to complain to the school board and principle. Sixteen angry sets of parents whose kids are being abused and prevented from learning by a disruptive kid with mild autism should be able to overpower the autistic kid's family when it comes to public school politics. At the very least, it would have gotten him removed from normal schools.
One additional comment. In many cases teachers are forbidden from asking the parents of their students for anything outside of school supplies for their own student. They cant ask for donation, they cant ask for involvement or anything of the sort. The reason beign the districts are afraid of scaring parents off and threrby cutting the number of students in the district and the pay.
This is difficult to judge. As a teaching assistant at one time, I worked with a 10 year old boy who was too disruptive to stay in class. He was violent and verbally abusive with other kids, and so we worked on lessons in the library. The following year he was placed in a school which specializes in working with students who have such problems.
Granted, the teacher could have handled it differently, but to lose her career over this? I don't think so.
Pablo, I have to disagree, I think she should lose her career over it.
As a figure of authority, she stood a five-year-old child up in front of sixteen of the child's peers, and told them to tell him what they did not like about him, garnering comments such as "disgusting" and "annoying" and then having them vote on whether or not they wanted him to remain in the class with them. When 14 of the 16 voted against him, he was exiled.
We should not be teaching five year olds that it is acceptable to say things like that to other people, let alone actively encouraging them to do so. If a child is having behavioral issues, it is something that needs to be handled through the parent(s). If the parent(s) cannot control the child, there are ways to have the child removed that would not involve such a cruel scenario.
If the lady is unable to understand why what she did was cruel and irresponsible, she should certainly not be allowed to continue teaching.
Arielle,
Do you think that if that child did something disgusting on the playground with the others that they would hold back their comments? Or would we hear a chorus of "Eeeeew thats grosss!"? If he was flippinga little girls pigtails around would you expect her to not say he was annoying her because he has Asperger's? What if he was poking her, or pinching her? What if he was pounding on the table during silent reading time? You think its wrong of a child to tell him that was annoying?
Welcome to society, where people are more often exiled and ostracized by comments behind the backs of ones hands than to their face. Acceptable or not that is how it is.
As for the comments about there are ways to have a child removed, that is not always the case, nor is it always useful. Did you read the document on the link I posted in the earlier comment? It said the problem child was removed DAILY for an HOUR or TWO! So assuming thats the case figure whatever outburst that caused such exile from daily class life interrupted the class for at least 5 minutes while the student was corrected repeatedly during lessons before being sent to the office. Then assume another 5 minutes to reintergrate the student every time he came back and to get him on the "same page" as everyone else. You are wasting valuable class time and stealing that from everyone.
Also note that at the time of the whole incident the child had not been diagnosed with a problem such as autism or any other disability! Perhaps a convinient after diagnosis. Much like a unverifyable neck injusry after a car crash.
Were the teachers actions harsh? Yes, were they unheard of in this world, no. Would pointing out to the student why his peers felt he was a disruption to their own education have been wrong in a less direct approach? Perhaps.
So far, no one has stopped the public schools from enforcing zero tolerance policies against fighting where they actually victimize the person defending themselves. I find it very difficult to believe that the teacher couldn't have gotten the kid removed from her class if she were inclined to keep a detailed log of his behavior. It's like firing a government employee. The hard part isn't actually letting them go itself, but making the employee's manager keep the paper trail needed to prove why they need to be let go.
My guess is that she didn't want to keep a log of his behavior and then take serious action against him. So instead, she snapped and set a very bad lesson for him. If he's not autistic, nor has asperger's, and is just a bad kid, the behavior wouldn't be an issue for him. The only thing that remains constant in this is that the teacher encouraged her other students to behave in a way that is uncivilized and just not a good lesson for kids to learn about relating to others.
All of this boils down to two wrongs not making a right.
The child was FIVE. The child does not have the maturity or reasoning capability to understand what the point of the exercise was. A child of that age is not capable of going "oh, if that's what people think of me because of how I behave, then I guess I'd better stop behaving that way."
All the boy is going to understand is that his teacher put him in front of the whole class and told the class to say mean things about him, then sent him away.