You may be saying to yourself that I obviously have my mammalian and reptilian mothering tendencies confused. Not so! It turns out that even though alligator mothers are cold blooded, and don't nurse their babies, I seem to share more characteristics with them than any other animal mother in the whole, wild world. Mother alligators are known to guard their eggs, hatchlings and young from predators many times their size. They are solitary and dedicated. They are considered among the most protective mothers in the animal kingdom. But I'll get back to that in a moment or two.
So, here's what happened.
It has taken me several months to begin to write about what occurred with my daughter at her school. This is mostly because I've felt the need to wait until I wasn't so entangled in the emotional aspect of how badly things went and how far reaching the impact of the stress that affected my family would shape the words I could form around it. The school year is now drawing to a close and a fresh start is right around the corner. We are all so thankful for that.
One day in mid-January I picked my daughter up from school and she immediately told me that her teacher grabbed her by the arms, picked her up out of her seat, shoved her across the room and forced her to sit down in the "take a break" chair.
Because she was talking out of turn. There are two parts of the story that made the most lasting impression on both of us.
First, she was so terrified that while her teacher was shoving her across the classroom by her arms, she reasoned (in her six year old mind) that as long as her feet didn't leave the ground, she'd be OK. She told me that she repeated this to herself like a silent mantra over and over again in the few seconds it took this act to take place. "If my feet can stay on the ground then I'll be OK." Her feet were dragging the ground as she was being held by her shoulders. She said she was being pushed faster than she could make her feet keep up with the pace, and she hoped for making it to the take-a-break chair WITHOUT LEAVING THE GROUND.
The second part of her account which left, for me, no shadow of a doubt in her story was her request that I arrange an apology from her teacher right away. She wanted me to call her teacher as soon as we got home so that she could feel safe returning to school knowing that the teacher was sorry for what had happened. It's quite simple in her mind; Lily lives in a world where people apologize when they hurt someone in order to make amends.
Her father and I met with the principal the next morning. Her teacher had given an extremely different account of the events. We requested that Lily be moved to a new teacher's room and we were told several times during this meeting that moving class rooms during the school year was not the policy of the school. We shared our own certainty that teachers laying hands on children in anger and frustration was also not within the framework of the school's policy. Never at any time was the detail of Lily's account considered as the truth. No one ever asked to speak to her or her classmates to corroborate or negate her story.
Another round of meeting with the principal to reach only the solution we sought-- not a teacher's reprimand, not an investigation, not any disciplinary action against anyone-- failed again. I only asked for our child's right to a public education in a safe and welcoming environment. It was very clear to me that wouldn't be happening in her home teacher's room. So I decided not to betray my child's trust in me to protect her from another scenario like the one that played out in her class. I kept her home. Days passed. Then weeks. I spent entire mornings into the afternoon on the phone, on the internet, reaching out to anyone and everyone I could who might help us.
The most impressionable moment occurred when I spoke with a ranking member of our school's cluster. She said to me that the word of a six year old girl against the word of a well regarded teacher wouldn't hold water and certainly wouldn't warrant an investigation. I should have known then that I was dealing with an institutional bully. The teacher bullied my child. The county bullied her parents.
More days passed and one afternoon I sat at my kitchen table reading a truancy letter from the county while looking at my notice of intention to file as a home-schooler. I had filed for a school transfer request. I had my child evaluated for an emotional hardship. I provided the required documentation. Then our transfer was denied by our home school, the requested school, as well as the registrar's office. I knew that homeschooling was still an option but it wasn't what my daughter wanted and it was within our rights to have her in school and to have our requests met. When I got that last call from the registrar's office, I'm not ashamed to admit that I put my head down on the table and sobbed. I felt so beaten up.
Several minutes into said sobbing, my phone rang for the millionth time that day. It was our home school. The principal's voice was coming through the phone telling me that a place had been found for Lily in a new teacher's room. That this teacher was known for being warm, welcoming and would be a good fit for our child. Those words turned out to be true and I will spoil the ending by going ahead and telling you how incredibly positive the changes have been for her.
What happened to change the trajectory of our situation? Maybe the principal knew that we weren't going away. Maybe it was that I happened to be telling my therapist about our predicament. She happens to be a mandated reporter. That means that she happens to be legally obligated to report cases like ours to the department of family services. Maybe the right ball happened to begin rolling and from the right direction.
This is a happy ending of sorts to really unfortunate story. What continues to bother me about this even a few months after the fact is that we got so much push back over such a very simple request to solve an extremely serious problem. Also, it profoundly disturbs me that the only adults who believed my child's truth were her parents and her doctor.
This is why children don't speak up when adults in their lives are harming them in one way or another. Because they are taught from similar experiences that their truth is considered to be some alternate version of the Actual Truth. Or worse, an outright falsehood, when compared to that of an adult in a respected position of authority.
******************************
Several weeks later, after being in her new classroom, Lily got up the nerve to approach her former teacher during recess. At home that afternoon, she re-enacted the conversation complete with a pep talk she gave herself privately before she initiated the interaction. I sat frozen, listening to her and realized before she had spilled the playground details that she still wanted her apology. She wanted a real world resolution to the the problem that someone else had caused. She expected it. She knew she deserved it. After teaching her the difference between right and wrong for her entire life, I had to explain to her that not everyone's rules are as fair and right as the ones by which she lives. Her teacher will never apologize to her for what happened that day and she knows that now, and the worst part is that she knows why.
My now seven year old daughter learned from this experience that different rules in her world play out in different ways. The rules of school mean that the best possible resolution to her problem is that she won't get an apology but she will get to spend the rest of the year in a new teacher's room. She knows in life that the golden rule means to treat others as you would have them treat you. And now she knows that the rules of nature and motherhood mean that you defend your nest, eggs and hatchlings to the death.
She knows that because she's a baby alligator.
