Hi

I know that there are quite a few teachers here on BB, and I would really appreciate some advice on Tayla's school report!

Tayla is 10 y/o, she's in Grade 5, but age wise she should be in Grade 4, she started early. Tayla has had a lot of emotional problems this year with losing her grandfather suddenly, she took a long time to build her confidence again, we have her in counselling and various other things to help her, so I thought we would be okay!

WELL!!!

On Tuesday we got her report. To be honest, I ended up in tears, mainly because I knew that I would have to show Tayla the report and it was soooo horrible. She basically got a C average, about 4 D's but a couple were in areas that we know that she has trouble. The part that really upset me was the comments...the teacher has a semi-positive sentence but then follows it up with she is below average level for Grade 5. This is with EVERY comment! The dots do not match up with the comments AT ALL!

As most of you know the Victorian reports have just changed to the new system. Its taken me a little to understand it, BUT they have a space there to write a parent comment about the report! It took me ages to write, but I sent back yesterday

' We are extremely disappointed with this report. We feel that the report is very unclear as the dots do not seem to match the written section. We are upset with the extreme negativity of the comments made in the assessment of Tayla. We think this is uncalled for and there are NO positive aspects to this report. Tayla is very upset and as she has self esteem issues we feel that this report has undermined all our efforts so far this year'

I thought I was pretty restrained and concise. I feel totally ripped off! Tayla doesnt want to go to school, is now complaining of being sick since she read the report, is hysterical on the way to school in the morning. This teacher knows of all the problems that we have had with Tayla and that she is still struggling with her grief, add to that my uncle is dying and Tayla is freaking out. I would have thought this teacher could have put something positive in her report!

The teacher was horrible to me yesterday, as I told her that Tayla would not be going to school today, she is just too upset and I have a counselling appt for her to help her. The teacher said that my comments were not nice and not what she would have expected. She wanted to discuss them then and I told her that I would wait for our interview on July 3. I mentioned to the teacher that I have an academic assessment of Tayla from Alfred CAMHS, and she said that I should have shown her that before she wrote the report. I deliberately withheld it, knowing that she probably would have matched the report to the assessment.

Tayla has got 92, 88 and 90% on her last 3 Maths tests, yet she is supposedly below average, what the hell is the average then?

I just get the impression that this teacher does not like children that are struggling, she thinks that they are a waste of time.

I also think that this teacher, who is only on contract for this year, may be marking the kids lower on this first report so that at the end of the year, they improve a lot more, and are up to standard, makes it look like she is a great teacher.

How do I explain to this teacher the damage that she has caused? Tayla tries hard most of the time, but I am not saying that she is an angel, she does struggle and is a little lazy in some things, but you would think that she could have praised her on something!