Teacher, Teach Me

My mom picked up Maggie from school today. My mother saw Maggie for one minute and noticed her arm. It was bloody. "What happened to her her?" she asked me.

I looked at Maggie's elbow and was shocked to see a deep abrasion with a significant amount of dried, caked blood. When I asked Maggie what happened, she shrugged her shoulders. Classic Maggie. This is the child who only speaks when spoken to, and then only if she's comfortable. When she opens Christmas presents, she grins shyly and slides the gift to the side. At the heart of it, Maggie does not like to draw attention to herself.

At this age, Maggie has a responsibility to herself and her body. She should have told her teacher what happened to her arm. She should have asked to go to the nurse. But this is a child that suffers in silence. . For the cut to have dried over implies to me that Maggie ran around school for quite some time, long enough to have gotten blood on her pants. What really bothers me is how Maggie's teacher failed to notice the blood.


Maggie's kindergarten teacher was a wonderful woman. She read a book on "Selective Mutism," the type of shyness Maggie seems to exhibit. She challenged Maggie to read in front of the class, and gave her the lead in the school play. Complete with microphone. She was not content to let Maggie be a recluse. We had Maggie observed by the school psychologist. The therapist concluded that as parents and teachers, we were doing everything right to bring Maggie out of her shell. By the end of the year, Maggie was speaking aloud in class. I will forever be indebted to Ms. Kindergarten for her love, guidance, and determination to hear Maggie's voice.

This year, Maggie got the rodeo queen. Her 1st grade teacher is no-frills, and no-nonsense. Over Christmas break, the woman broke her arm tripping over the family pig in the kitchen. I embraced the change in teachers, knowing you can't pick favorites for everything in life. We won't always like our teachers, bosses, and colleagues, but we can learn something from time spent with them.

The first parent/teacher conference of the year didn't net much for Scot and I. Rodeo woman told us that Maggie "doesn't speak much " and that when she does, needs to speak louder. We were told she excels academically, but doesn't have excellent social skills. Duh... For every negative thing we heard about our daughter, we weren't given any options or ideas of how to deal with it. At the end of the meeting, I requested a visit from the school psychologist, and was promised by Maggie's teacher that she would contact him and arrange an in-classroom observation.

Today, Maggie came home with the bloody elbow. My child is not an idiot- she's 7, and scared shitless (and bloody) of the big, bad world out there. I needed the village to come to the aid of my daughter at school today. And they didn't. It was time to call the school principal. I wasn't ratting out Maggie's teacher, I was just being my child's advocate. Two months have passed and Maggie hasn't been checked out by the psychologist. For the Christmas play, she was given three words to say. Maggie is bored. She is silently crying out, "please, challenge me. Make me talk!" "See what I can do!"

This teacher is skating. There is no passion. She does not care. In an excelling school, she is doing the bare minimum.

I am pissed.

And don't worry, I'll keep you posted. :)