However, at that time, P.'s diagnosis was still uncertain. And so it was that in 2001, at the age of seven, she started out in a special education classroom at Eisenhower Elementary within the Cupertino Union School District. From the start, there were a number of deeply troubling incidents.
Our daughter had not been there a week when she came home and told me, "Mommy, my teacher hurt me and I couldn't breathe." She had a bruise on her hip, and the front of her body was reddened. Needless to say, Craig (my husband) was in the classroom the next morning asking for an explanation. The teacher, Karen M., explained that P. had been "restrained" for refusing to stop wiggling a loose tooth while secluded in a timeout cubicle. Apparently being in timeout meant the child was supposed to be punished by boredom, which meant nothing to read, no writing materials, and no tooth wiggling. The teacher's description of the incident differed from P.'s, and she assured us that what she had done was legal and appropriate.
We were stricken. Nobody had explained to us that children could be restrained in that classroom. Was this P.'s future? A diminishment of rights because she was disabled? We were sad and worried but ... this was the Cupertino Union School District. We had assumed, when we moved to the Bay Area from central Europe, that Silicon Valley was an enlightened and progressive place and that CUSD, with its high test scores, would be a leading light of advanced and sophisticated pedagogy.
As uncertain as I was about the teacher, there were three teachers aids in the classroom, and I trusted them to keep P. safe. One of them, Mrs. R., seemed particularly kind and attentive. One day, she disappeared from the classroom.
"What a shame Mrs. R. left," I mentioned to the teacher. "She was so nice!"
Karen M. froze and glared at me for several seconds.
Perhaps a month later, Craig was at the grocery store when who should approach him but Mrs. R., who also happened to be shopping there that evening. She warned him that Karen M. had lied when she explained how P. was bruised during a restraint. Karen M. had said she held P. against the wall of the timeout cubicle; Mrs. R. stated that Karen M. had conducted a prone restraint, forcing P. face down on the floor and sitting on her. She implored him to remove P. from the classroom immediately, saying that the teacher was physically and psychologically abusive to children in the classroom and that she herself had been bullied for trying to address the situation. I met with Karen M. and the principal Liz A. the following day.
Initially, when I began asking about restraints and questioning their application in the meeting, the teacher and principal looked a little puzzled. However, as soon as I mentioned Mrs. R., the meeting erupted. Karen M. absolutely exploded in rage. Red-faced and shaking with fury, she yelled, "I will be speaking to my union!" Liz. A. was soothing and reassuring to the teacher and sprang to her defense.
"Mrs. R. has no credibility. NO CREDIBILITY WHATSOEVER!!!" she roared. Again and again, she repeated the same refrain.
Finally she turned to Karen M. and said apologetically, "I have to report it -- I have to protect myself."
Protect herself and not P. or the other children? That should have been my warning. I was ready to believe Karen M. was a problem. Back then, I could not have believed that Liz A. was complicit. It seemed impossible to me at the time that a principal who worked for the much-vaunted Cupertino Union School District would be as callous and self-serving as she later proved to be. If Karen M. had worked in the district for years, didn't that mean she was well-respected? Liz A.'s reaction must have been rooted in righteous indignation, right? She clearly saw Mrs. R as untrustworthy and a trouble maker, and wouldn't she be in a position to know?
Besides, Liz A. was going to "report it." In fact, as I learned 15 months later, as a mandated child abuse reporter, she had to report it. That meant it would be investigated and, if a problem was found, appropriate action would be taken. Wasn't that the way it worked in a professional environment? Back in an ethics class I took while working for IBM, I was told that the correct way to address personnel issues, at least initially, was to talk to one's manager only and to leave it at that -- no gossiping to fellow employees and no prying into the fate of the object of one's complaints. In my career, I had generally found that to work very well. On the one occasion I did complain about someone, the problem was resolved almost immediately. I never felt the need to intrude or disrespect anyone's privacy by enquiring as to exactly what actions had been taken. When Karen M. remained in the classroom, I assumed some sort of due process had been followed and her actions had been deemed justifiable.
Besides, I was feeling very uncomfortable. My complaint had caused indignation and upheaval. Had I besmirched a well-meaning and hard-working teacher doing her best in a challenging situation? The principal certainly seemed to think so, and wouldn't she be best-equipped to know? I only learned much later that Liz A. had not reported that bruise to anyone.
With hindsight, it was clear that I should have been much more aggressively interventionist. But we had had all sorts of terrifying diagnoses, nearly all of which thankfully later turned out to be inaccurate, and I was feeling enormously insecure. How had I failed my child so badly that she had such serious "issues"? The teacher and principal were professionals. Surely they knew much better than I did? In fact, weren't they saving my child from my parenting failures? I no longer believe that, but those are the sort of thoughts that plagued me at the time.
Going forward, Craig and I visited the classroom whenever possible and tried to forge relationships with other parents, the teacher, the teachers aids, and the program therapist and behaviorist. We worked with all of them as best we could and in good faith. However, we continued to have some concerns ...
Karen M. and P. got into a power struggle over P.'s math worksheets. P. flat our refused to complete them, for which she was repeatedly placed in seclusion. On two further occasions, she was again restrained -- both times for refusing to do her math. P. was becoming increasingly rigid in her resistance, and Karen M. was becoming angrier. When I arrived to collect her at the end of the school day, my three younger children (all under six at that point) in tow, I would find the teacher angry and exasperated.
"She's not going home until she's finished that worksheet!" she would thunder.
Initially the younger children and I would wait for up to an hour outside in the heat while P. and her teacher tussled. Eventually I said to Karen M., "This isn't going to work. I'm on a schedule." Surprisingly, that seemed to satisfy her. I would take the offending math homework with me, and P. would later knock it off quite happily in about five minutes.
There was a poster on the outside of the classroom door that made me uncomfortable. It contained the following quote from W.C. Fields: “There's no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.” One day, as I was leaving for coffee with a couple of the other moms, I commented, "Replace 'child' with any other minority group, and that message is kind of offensive." The poster was gone the next day.
The presence of another parent, Colleen N., also puzzled me. I tried to visit P.'s classroom as often as possible, and Colleen N. was almost always there when I dropped in. Often she and Karen M. would be sitting side by side on the floor, leaning against the wall and deep in conversation while the aids tried to control the children. When I entered, they would instantly stop talking. Mrs. M. would, after a pause, greet me breezily, and Colleen would look down at the floor, sullen, resentful, and depressed. She never once made eye contact with me in the entire time I knew her.
We continued somewhat uneasily for a few more months. I was immensely grateful for many of the resources the classroom offered. For example, a behaviorist and a therapist worked with the children in the two multi-age classrooms -- P.'s, which was for children in kindergarten through third grade, and the classroom next door, which was for fourth and fifth graders. I appreciated their expertise and involvement.
One day I visited P. around lunchtime to find her in the timeout cubicle, pacing back and forth, like a tiger in the zoo with an expression of resigned desperation in her eyes. The classroom was in chaos, and the noise was deafening. Heather D., the young behaviorist, looked quite desperate. She was telling me something about P. Her eyes snapped and her mouth opened and closed, but I could only make out the occasional word.
"How long has P. been in here?" I yelled to make myself heard.
"Since she arrived this morning," she shouted back.
"Four hours? I'm taking her home right now!" I cried.
The following day, I went in to collect P. at about midday for an appointment. She had a blue mark on her nose.
"I told her to get up and she refused," the teacher tried to explain. "So I tipped her chair slightly forward, and she fell and bumped her nose on the desk." Sandy J., the therapist, stood beside her looking anxious and defensive.
That didn't seem right. The bridge of P.'s nose rapidly darkened into a deep bruise. Craig was furious and went in to speak to the teacher. This time, she explained that she had tipped the chair slightly backward, and P. had somehow fallen forward and hurt her nose. When we got home, P. told me her wrist hurt. She said Karen M. had grabbed her hand and shaken it when she was hand-flapping (a common behavior in autistic children when they become anxious) and hurt her wrist.
"We have to escalate this," Craig insisted.
I called the principal immediately. Unfortunately, she was out of the office for the day. The secretary assured me she would call back as soon as she got in. I called again the following day. Yes, Liz A. would call back as soon as possible. Was she still out of the office? No, she was back again. She would call soon. My message had been passed on. I kept calling and calling -- so frequently that the secretaries were becoming impatient with me. They assured me the principal had received my message. She would call back. When? Soon.
She didn't call back for five days. She waited until the bruise on P.'s nose was no longer apparent. In the meantime, I mostly kept P. home from school.
"I'm supposed to call you," Liz A. said in a mocking voice when we finally made contact. "I hear it's oh-so urgent, and I'm supposed to call you immediately." She gasped melodramatically for effect. Another silly, hysterical mother being an inconvenience and wasting her precious time.
I explained to her what had happened. The bruise. The hurt wrist. The changing description of the incident.
Liz A. sighed heavily as I spoke. I imagined she was rolling her eyes. When I finished, she sighed deeply and said nothing. I waited. Nothing was forthcoming on the other end of the line. I felt shaky and unsure of myself. Was P., at seven years old, relaying information correctly? Was I, the terrible mother whose child needed to be in a special needs classroom, being reasonable?
"Look, I am really worried," I pleaded. "This isn't the first time P. has come home bruised. Mrs. M. gave my husband and me inconsistent stories about how she was hurt, which is troubling. I am seriously worried about P. and the other children in the classroom. I am very concerned that Karen M. has the kind of temper that would cause her to hurt a child."
I went on to describe some incidents I had observed in which the teacher had lost control and yelled inappropriately, in one case at a child who was not even in her classroom and had committed the cardinal sin of dragging a trash can along the ground rather than picking it up and carrying it. Karen M. had surprised me by becoming red in the face and screaming at him.
More heavy sighing. No words. No reassurances. I waited again before continuing.
"And then there was Mrs. R.'s warning. I ..."
At the mention of Mrs. R., I at last got a reaction.
"Mrs. R. has no credibility. No credibility whatsoever!!!" Liz A. interrupted me. Finally, she seemed animated and engaged. "No credibility. WHATSOEVER!!!!!!" she yammered on. She spent some time emphatically repeating herself, all the while sounding indignant and aggrieved.
"Well, what are you going to do?" I asked when I was eventually able to get a word in. More heavy sighing. Was she going to intervene or help out in any way at all? I was becoming annoyed.
"This is not acceptable," I said more firmly. The principal continued to sigh in exasperation. It was time to bring out the artillery.
"If you cannot assure me that my child will be kept safe in that classroom, I will have to start looking at all of my options." I snapped. I intended that as a veiled threat. It was a euphemism for "I'll sue your ass," and I think Mrs. A. understood that. At that time, the idea of actually pursuing a lawsuit against a school district was absolute anathema to me, but I felt it wouldn't hurt to hint at the possibility. I was feeling helpless and frustrated and wondered what else it would take to get the principal to react?
Liz A.'s attitude changed immediately. "I will call Cathy S.," she replied, a note of respect creeping into her voice (Cathy S. was the SELPA representative), "and I will tell her exactly what you have told me. We'll have a meeting about this in about a month. I'll let you know what time works."
A month? This was unsatisfactory. Liz A. did not once enquire as to how P. was doing or how she felt about attending school. She displayed no empathy or concern. She seemed contemptuous of my anxiety. I was puzzled.
During P.'s next weekly session with the program therapist, Sandy J., I tried to sound Sandy out about the situation and to share my concerns.
"I'm not going to play that game," Sandy responded indignantly.
Again, I was very puzzled. What game was I supposedly playing? I was genuinely extremely concerned. In retrospect, I suspect Sandy was afraid of getting caught up in any repercussions. She was probably concerned that she could be implicated in a possible investigation. And, if she tried to help P.? Well, she had the example of Mrs. R. before her.
Feeling defeated, I called Craig at work.
"I'm ready to pull P. out of the classroom right now," I told him. "She can't stay there for another month while Liz A. faffs around."
"I'll be in the classroom tomorrow, and I'll talk to the teacher," he said reassuringly. "You're so busy with the three little ones. You can't manage P. as well at the moment."
I called my mother later that day. As an immigrant to the United States, I was not familiar with the workings of American school districts. I didn't understand the hierarchy within every district, was unaware of the existence of a superintendent, and I didn't know the real function of the board members, whom I thought of as a glorified Parent-Teachers Association.
"I don't really know what to do," I told my mother. "Who would you have gone to if you one of your kids had a problem at school and you were dissatisfied with the principal's response? Who was next up the food chain?"
My mother thought for a while.
"I don't think there was anybody," she replied.
Craig did indeed speak to Karen M. quite directly, and presumably the principal did too. After my previous attempt at intervention, the teacher had clearly felt resentful and insulted.
"Of course, we pull the wings off the backs of little children the minute their parents' backs are turned," she would tease me slyly after that early meeting.
This time, however, was very different. The teacher seemed completely reformed and was on her very best behavior -- she was suddenly cooperative, respectful, and ... almost humble. P. was much happier at school. Nonetheless, Craig and I visited the classroom daily and sometimes several times a day to keep an eye on the situation. At every instant, the teacher was absolutely charming and appropriate. By the time our planned meeting rolled around -- about a month after the incident in which P.'s nose was bruised -- we were starting to like and trust her. Had we perhaps been too quick to judge her? Had we misread the situation?
The meeting, when it finally happened, was packed. The principal, Liz A., was there, as were the teacher, the program therapist, the behaviorist, the SELPA representative, and several people I didn't know. We kicked off rather hesitantly. Craig and I were a little apologetic. Child abuse is a very uncomfortable subject, and nobody wants to make accusations thereof unless they're 150% sure. I felt uncomfortable sharing my perspective with people I didn't know. Shouldn't this be handled more confidentially? We all hemmed and hawed for a little while. About five minutes in, Liz A. gave me a long, calculating look. Her eyes narrowed slightly as we made eye contact, and I suspect she was assessing me as "a sucker." She then excused herself. Clearly she had something more important to do than concern herself with possible child abuse in her school.
After she left, we all rambled for a while. Finally I burst out, "I cannot have P. come home hurt or bruised again!"
There was a very long silence. I glanced around at the assembled group. Everyone was looking down. Finally, 24-year-old Heather D., the behaviorist, looked up nervously and gave me a self-conscious but encouraging smile. Nobody spoke for several seconds. Karen M. eventually broke the silence.
"It wasn't my fault! She jumped up and then she fell!" She looked around the table smiling, and then added, "I am a teacher." She would repeat that sentence -- "I am a teacher" -- several times throughout the meeting, apropos of nothing in particular.
Cathy S., the SELPA representative, restored sanity.
"Now come on," she said gently but firmly, "Mr. and Mrs. G. need to know their daughter is safe in the classroom."
Once again, there was a long pause.
"I can't have her injured again," I stated emphatically, "and I'm also concerned about the amount of time she's spending in the seclusion cubicle. Shouldn't timeout be one minute in length for each year of age? Is it reasonable for a 7-year-old to spend several consecutive hours in there? I would think seven minutes would be more appropriate."
And then it all became very easy. There was nothing the assembled participants would not agree to. By the end of the meeting, we had everything we wanted. P. would not be restrained again. The teacher was not to touch her. She was to consider P. to be surrounded by a bubble and not to intrude within it. And if any problem arose that the teacher felt necessitated a restraint? We all agreed that she would call me, and I would come in immediately and take P. home. P. would no longer spend hours each day in timeout. All of this would be written into P.'s IEP (or Individualized Education Plan).
Now I am not opposed to restraints under extreme circumstances. The issue for us was that we didn't trust Karen M. to restrain children appropriately. Craig and I occasionally restrained P. at home when she became too hyper or too aggressive toward a sibling. We called this a "hug timeout." We would hold P. tightly in our laps for a short while until she calmed down, as she usually did when enveloped in a close hug. Pressure is often soothing to autistic children. We had never been trained in restraint techniques, as the staff at Eisenhower had been, and yet we never bruised or hurt her. The child barely weighed forty pounds. A supposedly trained teacher should have been able to restrain her safely, and Karen M. had no excuse for hurting her.
After the meeting and P.'s new IEP, which specified that P. could not be restrained or placed in timeout for long periods and that I was to be called immediately if P. became unmanageable, we entered a honeymoon period with Eisenhower Elementary. Karen M. could not have been more gracious. P. was much happier at school, and the teacher became open to allowing the teachers aids to work with her directly. One of the attractions of this classroom was the number of aids present, and I had hoped their presence would allow for some individualized teaching. In the past, however, Karen M., when not chatting to Colleen N., had stood in front of the classroom and talked while the aids passively and politely listened. Now they were being productively employed as active teachers. I brought in books on, for example, astronomy, and sometimes one of the aids would read or discuss them with P. As we refined her diagnosis, P. began to make progress. She was able to get off most of the medications that had previously been prescribed to her, some of which had dulled her mind and made her irritable, and she was healthier and happier without them. She started a new medication for social anxiety, which is very common among people with Aspergers, and it was akin to giving a flower some water. P. positively blossomed.
I began to feel quite approving about the classroom environment and felt almost guilty that I had complained about the teacher. I tried to compensate by praising her to the other parents. She had come a long way. Perhaps our meeting had been a win-win? The teacher had embraced a more positive disciplinary approach, and everyone in the classroom seemed happier and more relaxed. I felt proud to have been an agent of positive change. Karen M. occasionally called me to come in and fetch P. when she was being difficult, and I was always there within ten minutes. P. was safe, she was learning a little, and she seemed mostly happy.
Some months later, our love affair with P.'s classroom was tested. When I picked P. up from school several months after the meeting, Karen M. asked me to step outside the classroom to talk to her. I was puzzled but complied. Once outside the classroom, she hunched her shoulders and looked around in every direction to make sure she was not overheard.
"I am so sorry," she said. "I had a terrible day, and I'm afraid I just lost it. P. was acting up and refusing to eat, and I lost my temper and dabbed her face with her burrito."
She looked so pitiful. She was groveling, and it's painful to see someone groveling like that. Her behavior was markedly different from her usual cockiness. I immediately felt sorry for her.
"So ... you just touched her face with the burrito?" I asked.
"Yes," she responded. "I'm so terribly sorry. I just had a really bad day."
I thought for an instant. I truly understood the challenges of the situation. In theory, I didn't spank my children, but in practice I occasionally took a swipe at a retreating behind in moments of wrath. Was this so different? Should I allow this teacher some latitude to occasionally overreact? After all, P. was unhurt, and it sounded as though the teacher's behavior, while inappropriate, had done no real harm. Also, Karen M. had been on her best behavior for months now. I made my decision.
"I won't take it further," I told her, "but you must understand this can't happen again."
She was effusively, pathetically grateful. I loaded my kids into the car and left.
Later, I tried to talk to P. about what had happened. I realized with regret that I should have spoken to her before I committed to the teacher. P. was surprisingly reticent. She seemed sad and subdued, and I could get very little out of her about the incident. It wasn't until after I had removed her from the classroom entirely that she opened up about it in great detail. She remembered the dress she had been wearing that day, and, to my horror, she described the teacher shoving the burrito against her face and pressing it against her mouth and nose so that she couldn't breathe. But back then? P. remained silent.
I continued to worry, so I called my dear and wise friend, Stephanie, and told her what had happened.
"You have to get P. out of there right now," Stephanie urged me emphatically. "She's being damaged!"
By now, I was feeling very uneasy. However, P. only had a few more weeks in third grade. She would soon be out of Karen M.'s clutches for good. And the classroom had worked for P. for several months. We were happy with the behaviorist and the therapist, both of whom would remain with P. when she moved on to the fourth grade classroom next door. I decided to be extra vigilant and to spend more time in the classroom. Craig agreed to do the the same. We would watch Karen M. closely and nurse Paige through her final weeks with Karen M. We would keep up the gentle pressure that seemed to have changed the tone of the classroom to one that was more positive and uplifting. Perhaps we could work for good for everyone involved.
And then came summer school ...
No comments:
Post a Comment