Adjunct teacher who attacked son's 10-year-old bully jailed

[RadX]

edited for wider audience !!  

 

muahahahaha...nbz.....i dun disagree    

[BenTong]

Let me share from a certain perspective. We human beings most of the time see things from a wide spectrum. Some sees it from holiness perspective while some sees it from practicality perspective. Nothing right or wrong. Some parents would say “let the kid go to mainstream school” he is no different and we should give more resource to manage these kids in main stream schools. Some will say come lets be pragmatic, lets put safety first.. pool resources into one place, a special needs school, in that environment he or she will be protected and will learn more.

 

Which way is the right way, i am still exploring and still figuring out..my only conclusion thus far in this journey..for main stream schools please include, for special needs school don’t exclude.

 

For us as a society, be pragmatic, a SN kid or adult is no different from a family member who is diagnosed with a disease like cancer. We need to include him in our joy and sadness, our lunches but we must exclude him or her when we have the flu..

 

Makes sense?

 

Btw ESN = Enrolled Staff Nurse?

Edited July 29, 2019 by BenTong

[Victor68]

Nowadays more and more special needs kids are integrated into main stream education. It's also the aspiration of the parents to make them as "normal" as possible. It doesn't help that class sizes are still as large and education budget can't support a more favourable student-teacher ratio.

 

I am not saying the special needs kid is always disruptive. More often than not they are the ones end up ostracised and bullied

While we should try to let special needs kids integrate, schools must have specialist to handle such students. How to ensure such integration will not disrupt or cause unnecessary hardship on others. We don't want to protect 1 section but end up affecting other students.

[Kusje]

Teachers ‘forced special needs child to make a list of his faults’

 

A 10-year-old boy with special needs who complained of bullying was forced by staff to listen to classmates listing the reasons they didn’t like him – and had to write these on a hand-drawn poster that was then stuck on his classroom wall.

 

In a case that campaigners say highlights the need for specialist teaching resources, Damian Lightoller’s son, who has traits of autism, ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder and is on the special education needs register, was told by his peers he needed to “stop shouting”, “stop annoying us” and “be happy, not sad” if he wanted to have better relationships with them.

 

The incident, which occurred last year at Allenton Community Primary School in Derby but was only recently discovered by his parents, followed the boy (whom the Observer has chosen not to name) telling the school’s behaviour mentor that he was being bullied. “[My son] approached his behaviour mentor and said he was being bullied and was upset the other children didn’t like him,” Lightoller told the Observer. “So, to try to tackle this, his [behaviour mentor’s] idea was apparently to find out why the other children didn’t like him. So he sat [my son] down, asked the other children why they didn’t like him, and tried to tell [my son] to change those things.

 

“My son sought help from a teacher, and rather than discipline the other children for bullying, [the mentor] blamed the victim and said ‘well you need to not do this, this, this and this’.”

 

According to Lightoller, the school’s headteacher, Jon Fordham, described the session to them as “restorative justice”. He questioned “why we’d bothered to raise it and why we even had an issue with it in the first place”, Lightoller said. Gillian Doherty, the founder of SEND (special education needs and disability) Action, which campaigns for children with special needs, said: “No child should be singled out and made to feel unwelcome at school. We’re hearing of many children with SEND experiencing mental health difficulties, developing anxiety about school attendance and being excluded from education.

 

“It’s vital schools seek early specialist advice on how best to support children with special needs without undermining their self-esteem.”

 

Funding for special needs education has been squeezed in recent years, with the sector engulfed in crisis. Council overspending on “high needs” education budgets trebled in the three years to 2017/18, with many cutting services or raiding other school budgets – which hits provision for children with special needs and disabilities in mainstream schools.

 

Despite the list having being drawn up in November, the boy’s parents knew nothing until he brought the drawing back from school towards the end of term, two weeks ago. They fear it may have increased the bullying of their son, who had an at times fractious relationship with his classmates. “We’ve had a few more incidents of bullying this year than in the past, so it could have made things worse,” Lightoller said. “Early this year another student threw a bottle at my son’s head. That resulted in him needing to go to A&E to have part of his eyelid glued.”

 

During the year, the boy mentioned some of the children’s complaints as things he disliked about himself. “We had no idea, obviously, that he was getting reminders every day when he went to school about the things children dislike about him,” said Lightoller. “We had no idea where it was coming from – we just thought it was a child that was having a few issues.”

 

As soon as they saw the picture, the parents had a meeting with the school’s behaviour mentor, who works with perpetrators and victims of bad behaviour, and with Fordham, who is credited with having turned around the school’s performance since taking over, and with whom they had had a good relationship. But the description of the session as “restorative justice” left them “furious, upset and hurt”, said Lightoller.

 

He added: “A friend who’s a primary school teacher at another school in Derby said she’s familiar with this activity, and you are supposed to sit the child down and you ask their peers to list positive things about the child, and you try to get the child to focus on those positive things. [instead they] focused on the negative.”

 

Fordham did not respond to a request for comment. Transform Trust, which sponsors Allenton school, refused to comment.

 

I'd be more sympathetic if this was a special needs school because then the teachers should have known better. I don't blame the children at all because they are only ten years old - what do they know?

 

In Singapore, I've seen parents insist on sending their obviously special needs child to a normal school to avoid stigma. In such cases, you can't expect any special treatment from students and teachers can you? Especially since the whole point of doing so is for the child to grow up in as normal an environment as possible. Well, in a normal environment, people who are a PITA won't get people willing to befriend you.

[BenTong]

While we should try to let special needs kids integrate, schools must have specialist to handle such students. How to ensure such integration will not disrupt or cause unnecessary hardship on others. We don't want to protect 1 section but end up affecting other students.

I agree about the resources part but specialists part.. sometimes we just need to train existing staff. Having specialists makes these special needs kids not normal.

 

Go to any special needs school, their favourite Teachers are their PE Teachers. The whole gang will listen and pay attention. You put him/her with a specialists, they hyperventilate.. and then the specialists will say “wa Leow the kid is hyper ventilating”..

Edited July 29, 2019 by BenTong

[RadX]

I agree about the resources part but specialists part.. sometimes we just need trained staff. Having specialists makes these special needs kids not normal.

 

 

concur

 

the training is not difficult.  It's all about understanding the behaviors and patterns generally exhibited by these kids AND the emotional baggage that may/may not manifest. 

 

Whatever it is, just be mindful that they behave differently and being able to see it from that perspective already helps a lot

 

 

that said, I have reconciled to accept that some MCFers here may be of special needs BUT may not know it themselves.  This is purely based on the patterns of their post and their interactions with others here.....this is purely MY obbservation.

 

anyway, it is not uncommon for a 50yr old to suddenly learn he is on the spectrum.  

I dont wish to compartmentalise but occupational hazards as it is, leads me to think that way of some of the folks here

[Sosaria]

concur

 

the training is not difficult. It's all about understanding the behaviors and patterns generally exhibited by these kids AND the emotional baggage that may/may not manifest.

 

Whatever it is, just be mindful that they behave differently and being able to see it from that perspective already helps a lot

 

 

that said, I have reconciled to accept that some MCFers here may be of special needs BUT may not know it themselves. This is purely based on the patterns of their post and their interactions with others here.....this is purely MY obbservation.

 

anyway, it is not uncommon for a 50yr old to suddenly learn he is on the spectrum.

 

I dont wish to compartmentalise but occupational hazards as it is, leads me to think that way of some of the folks here

LOL ... in my office also and perhaps everyone's office, have "special needs" staff, both high and low

[RadX]

LOL ... in my office also and perhaps everyone's office, have "special needs" staff, both high and low

Honestly, with this knowledge it helps one to understand them better and know the angle at which to interact in order to gain more meaningful results

[SiLangKia]

LOL ... in my office also and perhaps everyone's office, have "special needs" staff, both high and low

 

My AMDK manager confirm special needs 

[RadX]

My AMDK manager confirm special needs

Eccentricity should be in a DSMIV category of it’s own hahahhah

The other thing I learnt is those kids on the spectrum would have had it inherited and when this was mentioned to the parents, finger pointing starts.

 

When we meet parents, most times we can see where the kid inherited it from and makes our understanding of the situation better in terms of management

[Victor68]

For schools, we are dealing with children. So, not just teachers, special care how to bridge this.

[RadX]

the SEN specialists are there as counsellors to the school as well.  they handle the more difficult cases. 

 

TEachers are taught and empowered to handle the basic and so too are the allied educators.  

 

Honestly, this is already a good start as prior to this, NIL support nor awareness of these issues were in place.  MOE realised only recently the need for this support network in the schools, IHLs and the like