Really, Life? Really?

[amberfocus]

Am I just doomed to jackassery amongst public school PE teachers forever?

Why, yes. Yes, I think I am.

Taking my daughter to the doctor's office now.

Comments

[auntiesuze.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Now what??? (most PE teachers are utter assholes - got my 1st grade one fired for calling me "porkchop"...the bastard...)

I hope R is okay!

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

She will be after a 3 week course of antibiotics. Hopefully. Damn PE teacher made her go outside in 40 degree weather today when he knew she was fighting an infection and against my express note saying she was not to participate in P.E. today and was to stay inside because she was fighting a severe infection. But apparently he knows better about the cold not affecting an illness! Not in my kid with her compromised immune system.

She ended up having to come home from school, whereas if she hadn't been forced to sit in the cold for an hour and a half she would have made it through the day, but the cold made her cough move into her chest. Rose gets sick too easily to stay home every time she is ill or she will not meet the school attendance requirements. The thing that really pisses me off is that this is a basketball and volleyball only P.E. class and has them outside playing softball. The whole point of our choosing indoor P.E. was so she didn't get exposed to the cold mornings of first period P.E. Too bad she doesn't have it last period when it had warmed up to 75.

He got a very strongly worded email that he has not responded to. She is going to try to go to school tomorrow, but I am letting her stay home for first period tomorrow which is P.E. and then she won't have P.E. again until Friday. If she really needs to she will stay home all day. We want to try to limit it now so that when she really gets sick during the winter she can have her sick days then.

[auntiesuze.livejournal.com]

What the hell is wrong with your school system??? Geez! I am so sorry you're having to deal with all of this. I had severe constant migraines when I was her age and remember the fights regarding attendance requirements (guess who got to do extra work even though she was totally caught up and had an A average? Uh...yeah...bastards...). UGH. I hope that she feels better soon and that PE teacher gets his head out of his ass! GRR.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

I really don't know, but I'm getting very tired of it.

I always hated attendance requirements as well. I had straight A grades but because of attendance they got marked down. It didn't matter how many doctor notes I had. I couldn't help it that I was ill so much. I got the work done and did it well and that should have been what counted. Instead of graduating with the 4.0 I had rightfully earned, I graduated with a 3.4. Even the teachers were kind of ticked because they knew what a good student I was and hated marking me down for it, but "rules were rules." No wonder society is falling apart. If they're meaner to the kids who like school than the ones who don't but can sit in the chairs for more hours...

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[jessalrynn.livejournal.com]

You know, there is a point in time where parents should be justified in b*tch-slapping their kids' teachers. What in the WORLD?

*hugs* Oh, honey, thinking hoping thoughts for you and Rose.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Yes, there really is. I am just so sick of P.E. teachers who think they know better than me about one of my kids. Or you know, about myself. I'm still bitter about the P.E. teacher that knocked me down running bases in P.E., landed on top of me, dislocated my knee cap and refused to believe anything was wrong with me. I went to the nurse's office anyway, hopping, and insisted they call my mother right that second. He should have freaking carried me. He really didn't believe anything until I showed up at the school the next day with my knee wrapped, on crutches, and with a doctor's note. He never apologized. Thus began a life of knee problems at age 9.

I have never had a good P.E. teacher. My kids have only had one good one between them. If it weren't for my mother, I wouldn't believe that good P.E. teachers existed (she was one and she's gotten mad at every single one that I've gotten mad at, too).

[jessalrynn.livejournal.com]

The teacher who bullied me was a middle school PE teacher, so I'm sorry, but I don't think I believe in them either.

At my high school, one got suspended for being too harsh, one got arrested for feeling up the girls, and one accidentally committed suicide by rather disturbing means. No improvement there.

I'm glad to hear you knew one. Maybe you should set your mom on him? ;-D

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

LOL, only if he doesn't straighten up. There are still teachers in that school that remember my mother!

[auntiesuze.livejournal.com]

Most of mine have been indifferent at best or horrific at worst. I did have one decent PE teacher when I was in high school, though. Ms. Fitz is probably the only reason I don't curse the entire profession. She was willing to work with me, my schedule, my limitations, while still encouraging me to do my best (and being a decidedly non-athletic kind of person, that took quite a bit of doing! LOL). She could be a hard-ass, but she was fair, and I wish there were more PE teachers like her.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

I wish their were, too. I didn't take PE in high school. I had it waived after 7nth grade so I could take double music classes, but it took some doing. My middle school PE teacher ended up being a pedophile. Not good.

[jer832.livejournal.com]

I had similar problems with my daughter's school. I got two originals of a letter from the doctor, gave one to the principal to put in her file and one to her home room teacher.

If you do it, make sure to get everything acknowledged and corroborated in writing. Give a cc to the PE teacher. It helps to be on good terms with the principal, but threatening to go to the board or the police is always an option. How sad is this! Good luck.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

I'm just really tired of it. We spent months on the issues with T at the middle school and I just really don't want to gear up for another battle with the high school.

[jer832.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, amber! It never stops. My daughter had mono in the second term of her junior year. The district is required to provide tutoring and make-up work after an illness, but her AP English teacher was having her kitchen remodeled and going to France to avoid the mess and didn't want to be bothered, so she tried to flunk my daughter. It really never ends, Until you're the grandmother. I'm sorry. But there will also be wonderful, amazing teachers.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Oh, we've had wonderful, amazing teachers in many categories, just not P.E. This is actually the first teacher my daughter has complained about at all in high school and she's a junior. She gets on so well with all of her teachers. She's such a good student and gets on well with adults, she even normally likes this one, but this was a bad stunt for him to pull, blatantly ignoring a note from a parent.

[jer832.livejournal.com]

Your daughter has been very fortunate with her teachers. That's wonderful to hear.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Yes, she has, thankfully.

[susanb03.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry. I know some wonderful PE teachers and I dont understand why you dont have them!

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they must exist. And like I said my kids had one good one between them. But so many of them are just...bullies, in my experience, or else know-it-alls.

[angelfireeast.livejournal.com]

Oh no!:( I read your comments about what happened. That's horrible. I don't get it with PE teachers. They know your child so much better then you do with the whole hour plus a day they spend with her. *rolleyes*

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

He's had her before, too. It's not like he doesn't know how sick she gets during the school year!

[bloose09.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry you are having to go another round. Hopefully this time the school will be more cooperative and responsive to your issues. I hope R improves quickly!

*hugs*

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a different school at least, just same district. So far the high school has been a really good experience, but this kind of behavior from a teacher is not on and I will not put up with it.

[bloose09.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't have to put up with it and neither should anyone else. Good for you for standing up and protecting your daughter. Go get em'!

[valiant-queene.livejournal.com]

This is the kind of person we entrust children to? Blegh. My prayers are with your whole family! I hope your daughter recovers quickly.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I hope so, too. As it stands she won't go to school tomorrow, but at least she has antibiotics now.

[yumimum.livejournal.com]

OMG! There is something seriously wrong with that school (or more so the idiots who teach there)

[ageless-aislynn.livejournal.com]

PE teachers were the bane of my school existence as well. Grass would trigger an asthma-like reaction in me when I was in junior high and I had doctor's note after doctor's note telling the school to NOT put me out on grass. So the PE teacher, who clearly thought I was a huge faker, :S made me run on the blacktop right next to the grass. To which I'd end up wheezing by the time I was done and he would smugly say, "But you didn't have an asthma attack, did you?"

One year of school I missed more days than I attended but I kept up with every assignment (though I was consistently behind on having to stand up and give presentations that the rest of the class had done two weeks previously :S ) and got A's on all my tests and such. Even still, my Spanish teacher informed me that he was not going to "give" me an A, even though I'd earned it, because I had missed so much school. My mom duked it out with him via a conference call with the principal and the principal agreed that if my work had earned an A, then he wasn't "giving me" anything. So I did get the A but he gave me the stink eye every day for the rest of the year. :S

Anyway, so sorry that you and yours have had to go through more of this! I hope everything is okay by now and that things will just calm down and be better for everybody. *good thoughts, prayers and many hugs* ♥♥♥

[develish1]

oh no! I can't believe you and R are going through something like this, so soon after all the that nasty business with T

*hugs*

give em hell love

[crimedoc1.livejournal.com]

Only just saw this whole post - so sorry you're going through stuff AGAIN with the stupid school. What is it with PE teachers? I had one in junior high who called us all "turkeys" - she thought it was funny but to a bunch of preteen girls it totally wasn't. She scared me to the point than I couldn't do any gymnastics stuff (vaulting box, balance beam) when she was the spotter - I completely could not trust her enough.

And then in high school I had to stop doing gym partway through 9th grade - that's when all my physical problems began appearing - my leg gave out, I'd fall down flights of stairs, not fun. I was actually upset about this, because it was a modern dance class (my school started out having all sorts of different types of gym - that didn't last!) and we were going to put on a show at the end of the semester. I had plenty of doctors' notes but since there was nothing visible, my gym teacher did not believe there was anything wrong with me. She made it quite clear that she thought I was faking it, probably deliberately to make her life difficult, since she had to find some way to give me a grade even though I couldn't actually DO gym.

The "turkey" gym teacher is now a real estate agent and was actually the one who sold my parent's house a number of years back. She remembered me (it is so weird how EVERYONE remembers me - apparently I was a memorable kid - is that a good thing?) and made a number of comments about how much fun we'd all had back in junior high. Um... yeah... no. Not so much, thanks.

It must be all the sports balls hitting them on the head, makes all gym teachers crazy or something!