Fired today as a substitute teacher -- for doing my job correctly

[vi5]

28. Interesting to hear this....I have a story as well.

I am also currently a sub. I lost my job in corporate America after 20 years and decided to use my severance time to go back and get my secondary ed teaching certification. In the meantime with most of my classes at night I have been subbing in my home district which is also where my own kids go to school.

I was subbing for 2 days as a teachers aide in second grade classroom with a primary teacher and another in class support special ed teacher. The class had about 15 kids. Second graders are already easily distracted and rambunctious but most were very good. There was one who it was hard to tell where a mild learning/behavioral disability ended and just being spoiled and never being held accountable began. Over 2 days he did no work. None. Just sat there. He would constantly be yelling and making noise and banging on the table in efforts to get attention. It then elevated to poking a pencil at his face, running around the classroom swinging his arms, crawling on the ground, picking up chairs, crawling under desks. It was horribly distracting for all the kids who wanted to learn.

I have special ed training and my son has been in classes with children all across the spectrum. I am very familiar with the many different types of educational and behavioral challenges that kids have. Most of what this child was doing was knowingly acting out for attention. The few times he chose to he was absolutely fine and lucid and had no issues communicating.

I asked the teachers why they didn't just call the principal or the child study team since short of physically restraining him and dragging him out of the class nothing would get him to stop. They said they had tried many times and were told to just deal with it and that the school wouldn't believe them that it was anything they couldn't handle.

By the end of the second day when the physical risk reached it's height I marched down to the principals office myself and told him what was going on and that I was friends with many parents of children in that classroom and that I would be more than happy to share with them that their child is at physical risk because the school refuses to address the issue of what this child is doing. He came to the class and got the child himself and called his mother. I told him just what level of liability he was dealing with and that I would be more than happy to testify if someone got hurt by this child.

We talked again the next day and he thanked me, but I get the feeling that it was only because I was a parent of children in the school that he realized that he had no choice. It also somewhat insulated me from him firing me as a sub because he'd still need to deal with me as a parent.

But the point is I can relate to your story and your situation. There is so much at stake and so much at risk and administrations hands are tied.