| My Story... |
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| then another child would mark the test paper, and then another would read out the score. The marks would then be written on a wall chart for all to see. She was so frightened of not being able to keep up with high standards that she couldn't concentrate. This led to poor marks and her being ridiculed. It went on and on, in every subject. When the time came to move up to secondary school her self-esteem was nil, and the bullying which had started at the beginning of school life in village, had got really out of hand. During the space of one day she was beaten up twice just for walking down the street. This resulted in a nervous breakdown at 13 years old. We all went to a family therapy unit to help her to recover. So when my husband, who was at the time working at a chemical plant |
| As a parent, I had no prior knowledge of how to tell good schools from bad. I had no way of judging either at that time. I had really enjoyed having my children at home when they were small. We'd stick, paint, draw, bake, walk, do nature trails, go swimming, make models, make paper mache, visit museums, sew, go to the library and struggle home with 4 books per child, go shopping, the children would help to do the cleaning and we'd make it a game, and so on. When my eldest daughter started school, I felt she'd been robbed from me (as I do all of my children now looking back on it), especially as she would scream the place down every time I had to leave her there. She hadn't done that when she was at playschool (as it was then called). The very first teacher she had completely destroyed her self-esteem, and she had this teacher for two years. The next teacher was very good and had almost restored her self-esteem when it was time for her move up again. This new teacher was very competitive in nature and encouraged the children to be so too. He would give them a maths test by yelling out a number, say 27, and the children had to write down how many whatever's made 27, |
| doing a labourers job, felt he'd like to go into the ministry, we decided we had nothing to loose by moving, and all to gain. At the same time our 2nd daughter who has a totally different personality, seemed to thrive when it was her time to go to school. She didn't have the same bullying as her sister did. She seemed able to give as good as she got, and more besides. Although it did get to a stage at one point where she seemed to suffer a bit. As she was so clever she'd started to do GCSE level maths at 12 years old, and she was picked on for it. So only 6 months later we moved her, it cost us another £100 in uniform, and taking her and collecting her everyday as she was bullied there (and there was no bus anyway). It was a good job we moved her when we did, as by then my husband was candidating for the ministry, and if he suceeded it wouldn't have have been worth it for the months that would have remained before we moved. |
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| Our son never did settle in school, he had never settled in nursery either. At nusery I swallowed the lie that all children do this screaming thing, and they're ok 5 minutes after you've left. I went back early 3 times and he was still crying distraught in the corner. The 3rd time I caught the nursery teacher yelling at him, and I decided that was the last time she would do that !!! Therefore, school was a really frightening experience for him. I had a gut instinct that something was different about him from the girls (apart from the obvious of course!). After a long time, and a lot of fighting with the school, they decided to get an educational psychologist (or whatever the title was), to assess him. Their verdict was that I was a neurotic mother, who was comparing my son with both of my daughters' progresses, and finding problems that weren't there. This was despite the fact that he still couldn't read or write at 7 years old. Mind you, he did have the same dragon of a teacher our eldest had previously been taught by !!!! He had no self-esteem, and was terrified of school. This was the second child that I would deposit at school, and then would be left to go home and physically sick, because of the trauma of having to leave a screaming child with that woman.I decided to offer my help at this stage to dragon teacher, who gratefully accepted it, much to my amazement. What I witnessed still haunts me to this day! She had all reception children, who were so tiny. Some were so terrified of this woman that they bit their nails until they bled! She would yell at them if they couldn't do up their shoelaces, make them stand on a chair with their hands on their heads, and generally humiliated them in every way she could. If they couldn't do up buttons, or anything else as fast as she wanted them to do it then they would incur her wrath. She stood in the way of the blackboard so they couldn't see what she wrote; they were then berated if they couldn't keep up with her. These were tiny, tiny, reception children (4/5 yrs) for heaven's sake! I went all over town for boys velcro shoes so she wouldn't berate my son, I used to do the laces on PE pumps and sew elastic underneath, so he didn't have to try and tie his shoelaces, as he hadn't yet mastered that skill. I had no idea at the time that he wouldn't until he was 11 years old. |
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