Kenders' Musings

A five year old boy was voted out of class for the day by his classmates after two behavior referrals in one day. His teacher, Wendy Portillo, a future winner of the Educator of the Year Award or we're a spotted possum, stood her young charge in front of the class when he returned from the office and had the class tell him what they thought of him and how they felt about his behavior.

The boy had been in the middle of being tested for Aspergers Syndrome, a type of high functioning autism, and had just been diagnosed with "an autism-spectrum disorder and attention deficit disorder." The bulk of children that get tagged with ADD are white males from affluent families between the ages of 8-14. I don't completely buy into the whole ADD thing, as we here in the states use 90% of the ADD meds and the chance of us actually having 90% of ADD afflicted kids on the planet is probably close to nil, but that's not the point here.

The point is that this teacher made this child the center of attention and made him the object of abuse, scorn and ridicule. If he does suffer from these afflictions, and I think in this case he just might, that's even more cruel and very irresponsible. Not only does he have to deal with ADD and who knows what else, he must deal with the fact that his classmates despise him. Forget coming back after one day, I would understand if he never wanted to go back at all.

The teacher has been placed in a non teaching position as of this writing, but the damage has been done. How one can justify humiliating a five year old, especially one that may possibly have some form of autism is beyond me. This teacher should not be allowed near children, but will probably be back in the classroom next week.

You know what really scares me? The old saw that says "Those that can do, those that can't teach."

Let's at least hope that this woman never breeds. Can you imagine how she would treat her kids?