To email this teacher?

[LadyWire]

My DD is 18 and at 6th form college. To avoid dripfeeding she has ASD, depression and anxiety. She is extremely emotionally underdeveloped compared to her peers.

Her a-level English teacher told a tale today about seeing a cat being hit by a car and hitting it with a tennis racquet to "put it out of its misery" before throwing it to the side of the road. He then kept referring back to it throughout the lesson.

DD has come out of college inconsolable. I've emailed the teacher telling him that a) what he did was appalling and b) it's not an appropriate subject to speak to a class about. AIBU to be angry enough to contact him or should I have ignored it? Tbh I'm tempted to report him to college and to the RSPCA.

Dd developed a phobia when she was 8 of something that comes up in a particular subject. It still affected her in year 7 and i emailed the teacher of the subject to let him know. She was given a pass to be able to leave the lesson if she couldn't cope. Could your dd have one of those? The teacher dealt with it well and would give her the heads up if it was going to come up. She doesn't have the pass any more as she has more or less grown out of it/become desensitised to it, in part i think because it was handled well. I don't think your dd's teacher did anything wrong to talk about this, just as it wasn't wrong for the thing my dd had a phobia of to be covered in class.

Also I'm slightly worried about the number of people who seem to think that my DD should be denied an education because of her conditions...

Oops just seen you said she wouldn't want to leave the lesson sorry.

If she was 8 you might have a point but at 18 she will need to learn to be more robust

If they are learning the great Gatsby his story had context. I think you've been unfair to jump on the blame the teacher band wagon. You've probably caused the teacher a degree of anxiety and a meeting with a department head over a story. I appreciate that your daughter has difficulties but that doesn't mean everything that upsets her has been inappropriate.

The great gatsby is a pertinent piece of information in how the lesson was going.

Yes and I suspect the lesson was about recognising the truth of what happened and removing the extra exaggerated information and the danger in doing so. Contextually it makes a huge difference in why he did it (and perhaps the veracity of the story he told)

So there is a lesson link, seeing as they were talking about the Great Gatsby! Right. So it's not a case of some sadistic teacher randomly blurting out an irrelevant story and taking away from teaching time - such a shame that some of the frothers on here can't continue down that path.

Well done Maisy and others on here for sticking to their guns in the face of some ridiculous posts.

It's a pretty shitty link.

So there is a lesson link, seeing as they were talking about the Great Gatsby! Right. So it's not a case of some sadistic teacher randomly blurting out an irrelevant story and taking away from teaching time - such a shame that some of the frothers on here can't continue down that path.

Talk about a drip feed. Very poor form, OP. Of course, now we can see the context.

Can someone please tell me the link? Not a dripfeed as I didn't see any relevance. He told his story then said ok, on with the lesson. Each time he was sidetracked to it he was saying and back to the lesson.

Can someone please tell me the link? Not a dripfeed as I didn't see any relevance. He told his story then said ok, on with the lesson. Each time he was sidetracked to it he was saying and back to the lesson.

There's a hit and run accident in great gatsby.

It doesnt explain him killing the cat. Let's see what he says in his reply

Of course your dd shouldn't be denied an education because of her condition. But no one else should be denied an education because of her condition either. What sort of education is anyone going to have if everything that somebody might find challenging to deal with is forbidden from classroom discussion?

I find the idea that people would prolong the suffering of a dying animal because they are too squeamish/sentimental to dispatch it depressingly cruel.

But if the teacher went on about it I would want to know why.

I am a teacher and have two children with Asd - the eldest spent two years in a psych ward. He completed his education when he came out including a levels.

As much as I disagree with pointless anecdotes in class it happens and we get side tracked. He doesn’t owe you an explanation.

I don’t think you are doing your daughter any favours with your use of emotive language ‘she would rather die than talk to the teacher’ etc. Where do you see these a levels going? I am always there to advise ds1 and he is at uni now but he has to figure out interaction and social nuances himself. You have to see the bigger picture. I am all for advocating if necessary but you can’t micro manage!

I think you’ve misunderstood the context because you don’t know the story of the great gatsby, I wouldn’t be surprised if the bludgening of the cat was a made up example of a response to the situation.

Did the story become more embellished each time. more detail added to it each time he got sidetracked - as someone pointed out a tennis racket nowadays is not heavy enough to do the kind of damage he was talking about.

My instinct would be is that his lesson point was that he started with a true story - finding a runover cat at the side of the road. In order to make the story more he added detail to it, embellished it and he got so carried away by it that in the end what could have been a story of him been kind and heroic turned into one where he comes across is a bad light - he throws the cat's body away. Highlighting the danger of embellishing of adding to a story the way Jay Gatsby did and that in the end you go so far you become the antithesis of what you were trying to do in the first place.

Sorry didn't read whole thread as couldn't be bothered to read anymore barbaric comments

I'm 24 with no sen and this would upset me!

I would email school yes.

Her teacher sounds vile !

She’s 18 not 8....

Perhaps as her mother you should start bolstering her confidence in dealing with these sorts of scenarios.

Who will you/she email when she’s in the real world and encounters far worse?

Do you email the media and ask them not to publish/report a story because she will have such an adverse reaction to bad/ tragic news?

You sound like you have sheltered her... maybe it’s time you get her to understand a bit more about the world, instead of expecting people to tip-toe around her and her needs.

There you go... The embellished example given by the teacher will have been around the brutal death of Myrtle who was hit by a car and left for dead.

Maybe you should read The Great Gatsby to gain an understanding, rather than demanding nobody in your dd’s class should receive an education because Your dd can’t cope with life events - whether they be fact or fiction.

Quartz my suspicion is that you are correct

I'm sorry OP but the tone of your latest post has completely changed from your first. Your now say you politely emailed, yet in your first post it was quite the opposite. You also speak as if you were sat in the lesson, given you seem to think you can give a step by step overview of it to this forum. You have only heard your daughter's side of the story. This is SO typical of parents today - jumping to protect their little angels without gaining a balanced overview first. Many parents also seem to think their child needs completely personalised provision - sadly, your reaction is not uncommon and unless you work in Education, you probably don't realise how difficult this makes our job. I'm sorry, but in a class of 30 children (or adults/young adults in this case), that is just not possible. If you want 1-2-1 then home school your child or look at schools with more specialised SEN care, who may be able to cater to your desires a little more effectively.

So you would all hit a cat (presumable a family pet) with a tennis racket to finish it off as opposed to I don’t know... taking it to the vets?? Emergency Vet Clinics don’t charge. That cat could have belonged to anyone, what an awful thing to do.