Teachers Really Don't Get It

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.