A Danny Story

First of all, my meeting with his teacher went pretty good. The reason I had seen no papers from him was because his mailbox was FULL. He had not been taking them home. (I'm not sure why the teacher didn't notice, though.) He has been having speech, mostly in the classroom as a group. The speech teacher did call me and said she had been pulling him out of class for speech once a month but per my concerns, will start pulling him out once a week. As far as the library. In middle school you don't have a "library hour". You just go at lunch or recess or homeroom on your own. The teacher said most of the books are above her students level so she has a "library" in her classroom for them. When I mentioned how much he loves "going to the library" and usually gets nonfiction books, which the school library should have, she said she will start to let him go. They do their "time cards" during homeroom. She said Danny use to take the whole period to get it done but has started to get it done much more quickly so she will use that as an incentive for him to go to the library during homeroom when his "timecard" is finished. He has two teachers. I sent the email with my concerns to both. I have yet to "hear" from the other teacher.

Now for the story. At the meeting his teacher mentioned that they had had speech that morning and related this story:

"The speech teacher came in with wrapped gifts for all the kids. But when they opened them, they were cans of peas, tuna fish, etc. The kids were quite disappointed except Danny. He got a can of green beans. He got all excited and pumped his hand in the air and said, "Yes!!!! I LOVE green beans!!!" Well, the point of the exercise was to teach them gift opening manners. That even if they are disappointed they are to be polite and not let it show. So they took Danny's green beans away from him and gave him some Ramen Noodles. He again said, "Yes, Ramen Noodles are my favorite!!" So I guess it didn't work with Danny"

I chuckled and told her about his past presents of clothes and how unhappy and disappointed he was with them. And of course SHOWED the disappointment. She said she was glad I shared that with her because he obviously did need to learn the "lesson".