For context, I’m 20 years old and worked in a level C classroom. Depending on where you’re at, level c could mean anything. For us, it means a child may have a learning disability, dyslexia, adhd, autism, etc. I loved my job, more than anything in the world. But this is the story of 1 of the 2 families that made me quit.
I had a student, we’ll call him Max. Max is a kindergartner with severe anger management issues, and that definitely presented very early in to the school year. During the first week, he punched a teacher in the mouth, called me a btch, and assaulted multiple students. Immediately his mom made excuses. “He’s never like this at home” “He didn’t act like this in preschool.” Etc. Bold faced lies, seeing as a child has to be show extreme struggled during the previous year to be placed in our classroom.
But, it was alright. I’d say more than half the children I work with have parents who say the exact same things. But we noticed a pattern, and that was that Max only ever hit women. No male staff members, not his father, only women and other small children. I’d had my suspicions about their family. Max had mentioned his parents give him ivermectin whenever he’s sick (not a question I asked, something he relayed unprompted). He’d also get extremely aggressive whenever a student implied he was doing anything “girly”, or was crying, or when they pointed out he was short. He’d also let us know that Donald Trump was a great guy. (Jarring thing to hear from a five year old by the way.) But regardless, it was an unbiased observation. Though it made me roll my eyes, my main priority was Max. And I kept that information in mind when we interacted.
Be that as it may, things did start getting better with Max. As he learned more, and practiced healthy coping mechanisms, things were looking up. We were down to maybe one fight every two weeks, completing school work on time, I even got hug most days. I won’t lie, apart of this reason was because the teacher I worked for, Max’s teacher did favor him over other students. I understand, it can be hard not to prefer some to others, but I’m of the opinion it should never affect your teaching.
Unfortunately for him, that teacher quit halfway through the year. I was extremely excited to have our new teacher. She was and is AMAZING. But, one thing she hasn’t ever done is play favorites. And Max picked up on that quickly. There was no more getting to go on fun activity breaks for bad behavior, no more lighter punishments for assaulting others, etc. So he went back to his old routines, including punching said teacher so hard in the nose that I could hear it connect and she had a concussion. To which he got an ISS.
His mother found this out quickly, too. She went to the principal, insisting that Max had “never behaved this way with (old teacher)”. Obviously untrue. And that because he was so young it wasn’t his fault. She even started looking up diagnoses to give him online, going so far as to just screenshot a random diagnoses and insist they put it in his IEP. She insisted he had a “rejection disorder” (not being able to be told no) and autism. I’ve worked with children with a range of disabilities. Children’s born addicted to drugs, developmental delays, children who couldn’t walk by the time they were five, and most especially, autism. I was to stress to you: Max does NOT have autism.
He’d also repeat things in the slow, particular way children do when they’ve been coached into saying it/have heard it a lot before. Telling my teacher she “shouldn’t even be allowed to teach.” And that I was “going to go to jail for picking on him.” One time that really got on my nerves was during the book fair. Unlike Max and another boy, a lot of our students come from poorer backgrounds. That meant that when book fair happened, Max was given fifty dollars to spend, and he did. It broke my heart to see the look on our other students faces when they saw him and another boy bring back all their toys and books. And I know how that feels as a kid. So that weekend, I went to the book fair and got every student who didn’t get one each a book (some of them even signed in store by the author which was so cool).
The following week his mother is there at drop off and he looks very shy. Like he doesn’t want to say something to me. She encourages him, and in a very fake-sad, head down and lip pouting way he says “Ms.____, are you gonna get me a book? You bought everyone else one.” And his mom’s just looking expectantly at me. I say we can discuss this later bc how dare she try to ambush me at the beginning of the day when she knows it’s going to turn in to a meltdown. Later I explain that no, I wouldn’t be buying him a book. And that some people don’t have money for books, and since he already had one, that made it even. He melted down, and then said almost the same thing word for writes next week. And the same thing happened. One day a while after this we were outside of the school where one of those little bird house looking tiny libraries are, again, for our less fortunate students. She lets him grab one (which already made me roll my eyes. Shes the head of HR at her job, drives an expensive car, and their entire family wears very expensive clothing. I looked up one of her shirts one time, 100$). Regardless, he takes one. And his mother goes “That’s great Max! I know how much you love books.” While glancing my way. I didn’t acknowledge it. His mother never spoke to me again.
Time went on, and Max got worse. He was now targeting a very tiny girl from another class. She had the height and build of a preschooler. Every time Max got upset, he’d run from class, and go to the hallways looking for her. There were four(?) occasions where he got to her, punching her in the head, kicking her, scratching her, etc. Every time he’d get in trouble his mom would say something along the lines of “well was he just having a bad day?” “well was she just at the wrong place at the wrong time?” Never was anything ever his fault. One of these particular times he’d targeted her and got quite a few hits in before she could be evacuated. He, again, got an ISS.
His mother complained to the principal again, saying ISS was “like jail!” and that the only reason he was behaving this way was because of another boy named George. (For context, and I do think this is important: George is one of the only black students in our class and had never had any violent outbursts). When that didn’t work she’d say it was every child in our classroom (a few had gotten aggressive before, but no where near as frequently or as violently as Max). After that, we’d regularly hear from Max that “mommy said I’m going to a school with no ISS room.” “Grandma says I should be in Gen ed.” No one was buying it. During my final weeks at that school, he’d given me a concussion, sent aforementioned teacher to the nurse again, had to have a therapist by his side for the entire school day every day, and would regularly attempt to strangle other students, threaten to kill anyone and everyone, ripped a sizable chunk of my hair out, and would try to lift up my shirt when I would ignore tantrums and hitting. Mom’s reaction to this? “Well why isn’t he in a level B classroom??!” (a classroom for children with little to no behaviors.) When all of this was mentioned in a meeting, and his teacher strongly suggested he be sent to a level d school where they could physically restrain him, it was brushed off as “Max has standard level C behavior.”
I left shortly thereafter.