The next few years were difficult
at best. We tried to work with the teachers and the principal but to
no avail. They told me to medicate him. I was at the school
constantly. One problem that seemed to define a lot of the issues of
school happened in the fifth grade. The class was assigned to make a
map of the United States which involved tracing a huge shape of the
US and then cutting out individual states, gluing them on and
labeling the state and capitol. Todd worked hard to do this
assignment. I was so
impressed with him. Todd put his heart into it and spent hours (which
was almost impossible) to complete it. He was so excited the day it
was due. A few days later he came home devastated. He had received a
C. He didn’t understand why and frankly neither did I. Everything
was correct. It wasn't pretty but all the information was there, even
if it was messy and rumpled. I was furious. I wanted the teacher to
have some idea of how this affected Todd. We set up a meeting and she
told us that it wasn’t “A” work. She then proceeded to show us
the maps of an “A child”. I begged her to understand that even if
it wasn’t neat and perfect, that if she understood how long Todd
had worked on it and how excited he had been, that the self esteem
for Todd was devastating. Wasn’t there any way to up his grade,
because he had done it correctly. She simply didn’t understand.
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