My year 7 DS is colour blind. He is useless at colouring things and even worse being creative with his hands. He has done DT for 4 years at his previous school and is keen, but totally useless - no matter how hard he tries.
For homework he created a poster which I had to print out. I was in a hurry and it printed out slightly to one side. He got a 4C (in a range from 3c to 7a) because it was not centred.
He then tried to create a design for a spoon. He tried really hard, but it looked like a 3 year old had done it. He got 4C for that as well. And told he had not used enough colour.
Today he was given detention because he had not done the above properly. I am happy with the concept of detention when it is deserved. However (there is always a however), the lesson finished at 1.30pm and then it was lunch time for an hour. His detention was approx half an hour which should have given him half an hour to get his lunch. But, because his first lesson after lunch was hockey, he had to walk down to the hockey pitches at 2pm. With over 1000 children at the school trying to get their lunch at 1.30pm, he ended up having absolutely NOTHING for lunch today, otherwise he would have been late for the hockey lesson.
I am furious with the DT teacher. Firstly because he is picking on a child that is clearly totally useless at DT - it is NOT that he is not trying - he is just cack handed when it comes to anything creative. Secondly, he is the teacher, and he should be responsible for finding out if a detention is likely to stop an 11 year old child from having food at lunch time. Thirdly, there was no warning for the detention - he just decided that the table of children who had not drawn a coloured line around their poster were to be kept in for half an hour.
I don't know what to do. My instinct is to send a snotty email to the school. But then, presumably, I will be told my son was to blame. I actually do not care. I expect my DS to be allowed to get lunch EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. It is not up to a teacher to decide whether my DS should or should not be allowed to eat. However, I don't want to make things worse for my son. So I suppose I will just have to leave it.
I am keeping the pieces of work that have been marked and will be taking them to the school parents' evening to discuss as I do not believe that being discouraged in the first two weeks of senior school is conducive to my DS improving. I cannot stress enough how untalented he is with pen and pencil. He is pretty creative in his head, and does have good ideas, but cannot put them down as a design.
Oh well - whaddya think?