To be annoyed that our Teaching assistant might not be included

[MaLopez]

My son is in Year 3 and is autistic with a Teaching assistant. When we do class collections, we collect and split between all the staff, teacher and 2 teaching assistants.

Due to collect for Christmas (I know, we are early) and I hear some parents are not happy that they are donating for my son's teaching assistant. The teaching assistant, even though he is our one to one, works with other children in the class as well.

Am I being unreasonable to be a tad annoyed. I think it might be sadness that I am hiding under the anger that once again, we are on the sidelines. Just wanted your opinion xx

Dd's support looked like that in Primary but probably only because there were three TA's, a teacher, a student teacher (sometimes two) and 26 pupils so whilst dd had a 1 to 1 it was a team effort because of the high staff ratio,
In secondary it's not really feasible dd has five different teachers every day so over the course of the week she probably sees upward of fifteen teachers. It is vital to her support that the two TA's provide continuity. Her teachers plan her curriculum as she sometimes has a differentiated one, mostly she is in class alongside her peers sometimes with resources prepared by her TAs. Generally less than three hours per week she works 1 to 1 with a TA when she can't manage what is being taught in class or when she is preparing for what is being taught next or reinforcing what has gone before. Two hours of that time is free due to adjustments to her timetable to accommodate this.

That can't be what is going on in the OP's classroom though can it, as the other parents are huffy about 'the 1:1' being included in 'the class staff' collection and the OP continually refers to 'my' TA.

Not much teamwork going on around that child in that classroom.

That is what I think is sad.

But do parents know what happens in the class?
In primary no one was really certain who the 1 to1 TAs were attached to, I think they were considered class TAs because all through school there were high numbers of TAs in each class.
I obviously knew which TA was dd's TA but I wouldn't have been surprised to see her working with the other TAs in the class or with different TAs in different classes as she moved classes and teachers for different subjects.
I might have called the TA dd's TA but I wasn't naive enough to think hat she didn't work with other children too.
As for Christmas gifts now in secondary I send biscuits to the learning support base even though dd only has two TAs supporting her and from what I see other parents appear to do the same.