*#&$#^$%%@
Something happened in my niece's class today that has my sister, mom and me all fired up.
At Paige's school, Thursdays are Popcorn Days--students can bring a quarter and get a small bag of popcorn. All year, Paige's teacher's policy has been that if a kid forgets the money, he/she doesn't get popcorn--the teacher doesn't loan them any money. (And for the record, I understand her policy during the school year as a whole--a) you want to teach responsibility and consequences of forgetting your money and b) even if you only put in like a dollar or two every week for the kids who forget, that CAN add up from August to June. And trust me, public school teachers have to use enough of their own money for school supplies as it is.)
Since this is the last week of school, though--and the last Popcorn Day of the year--my sister wanted to make sure that all the kids in the class got popcorn. Therefore, Katey sent an extra $2.00 to school with Paige, so that any kids who didn't have their quarter could still get popcorn. Even with this extra money, however, the teacher was still 75 cents short.
So what does this teacher do? Instead of reaching into her pocket on this, the second to the last day of school, for the extra money to make sure that her whole class gets popcorn, she uses Katey's money to purchase exactly 8 extra bags of popcorn...
AND THEN MAKES PAIGE DECIDE WHICH 8 KIDS GET POPCORN AND WHICH 3 DON'T.
As an aunt, I'm irate. As a future teacher, I'm even MORE pissed off. YOU DO NOT PUT A SECOND-GRADER IN THAT POSITION. If she was dead-set on NOT chipping in the extra 3 quarters, fine. (Although again, since this was the end of the year, and because a parent made the effort to ensure that all the kids WERE included, I don't think that this one time would have killed her.) But even so, there were still other options; namely, taking the popcorn that Katey's money bought and splitting it up among all the kids who didn't have any. Instead, three kids had to sit there while EVERYONE ELSE ate their popcorn. And PAIGE had to decide who those three children were.
So...am I overreacting? Or did this teacher suffer from a severe lapse in common sense and compassion?
4 comments:
Not an overreaction at all! While I can understand the teacher's policy of not contributing her own money....in this case she certainly could have made an exception, or explored other options. To put a child in that position is just plain wrong. And as a teacher she has an ethical responsibility to do what's right for the students in her class. I would be speaking with her principal...
Thanks, Erin!
I actually suggested to Mom that Katey contact the principal, but Mom doesn't know if the principal would even say anything to the teacher; she (who used to be a teacher, too) seemed to think that Katey would be better off approaching the teacher directly.
Now that's total crap! From what I've always known at the end of the year a teacher kinda does like a party or whatever. You mean to tell me this teacher couldn't make one exception to her rule just so all the kids could have fun in one of their last days in class? Not only that, but how messed up is that to put a child in that type of a situation? Katey should definitely say something to the teacher, although I doubt anything will come of it! I hope Paige wasn't too upset by it.
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