To ask for help with teacher's meeting

[Sevenbells]

Have NC's for this as it's a bit identifying to anyone who knows me or the situation.

I am meeting my son's teacher on Friday. Long back story but essentially he feels she "hates" him and she's done a few things I'm not happy about.

One is that he was diagnosed with dyslexia last year but she is simply saying he's fine and he needs to read more books.

Two is that he was cold in class (he used to suffer from cold urticaria and really feels the cold) and put his hood on. She said to take it off, so he put his hands over his ears. She then touched his ears and said "Your ears can't be cold, they are red." For the record, he is self conscious about his ears as they do go red and they stick out a little, so I felt this was bullying. I don't want her touching him or commenting on his ears or appearance in general.

I suspect that she is going to do nothing, and I know from other parents that she is a bully and if I take it further ie to the headmaster he will not be at all surprised.

What I want is for him to be given support and encouragement, until the end of the year when we will change his school as we are moving cities. He doesn't want to move before then.

Any tips for handling the meeting? I hate confrontation and she is, shall we say, not a straightforward personality (could use another word but won't.)

@Sevenbells dC also in a school in Europe near a bilingual region.

Teachers will think nothing of touching the child to see if they are cold, happened to my DC when she didn't believe he wasn't cold (wearing shorts in winter), so I don't think that's too unusual.

In our experience, and we were warned by the paediatrician and psychologist who did DS's private assessment:
You can go through the school system and have an assessment. Any findings and recommendations are binding, the school has to implement what the school psychologist recommends and make adjustments for the diagnosis.
You can go privately and get an assessment/diagnosis. Any findings are viewed purely as recommendations and do not have to be accepted and adjusted for by the school. The school can choose to accept and follow (this might be the case for one teacher agrees, the following year the new teacher doesn't) but they have no legal requirement to make any allowances.

If you want school to take note, you really have to get a diagnosis through the school system.

I spent a couple of years at a secondary school which has a good reputation for dyslexia support. We used to get a lot of kids starting at random times through the year when their parents gave up on their previous schools. One of the things a really striking number of my dyslexic friends had in common was that teachers at their old schools had been really vile to them. This was in the 90s when dyslexia wasn't that well known about and these teachers had basically seen a perfectly intelligent child claiming to struggle with basic reading and reached the conclusion not that they needed extra help but that they were being needlessly difficult. Loads of my friends had been told they were lazy or had an attitude problem. I suspect the OP's son has ended up with a particularly backward teacher who doesn't believe dyslexia is a thing.

in line with covid guidance....

I rarely touch children, but gaging their temperature is likely to be an exception - I ask first, but that would depend on the age of the child, most likely

Perhaps your sons behaviour is challenging and he is defiant. Putting a hoodie on and then covering his ears when told to remove it is poor behaviour and you seem to be brushing that off and focusing on the teachers actions.
If I had behaved like that at school, regardless of the actions of the teacher afterwards, I’d have been in serious trouble with my parents for being rude! It seems children can do what they want nowadays and parents will always leap to their defence and blame the teacher. So glad I’m out of that now, I saw it far too much.

or a very highly trained and knowledgeable teacher who understand that dyslexics need to read and write MORE than other children to reach the same standard

I am being a bit devil's advocate here, maybe she is terrible, but maybe she is simply doing her job and your son is getting a persecution complex

Touching his ears surely makes sense if he's putting his hood up - she's seeing if he's as cold as he says. There's no way she'd know he has a thing about his ears, and it isn't acceptable to have his hood up in school.

Agree the focus has to be the approach to his dyslexia, not these other things. She's unlikely to have purposely excluded him from making pancakes and maybe the mix did run out but she didn't remember every detail of who did what when. Shouting - well, it happens sometimes. If the dyslexia conversation goes well, there may be a way to work this in non-confrontationally, emphasising how he responds best to positive encouragement etc. But I think it has to be in that spirit, not with the assumption that she's a bully who has it in for him. You only have to make it work a while longer until you leave after all.

@Nimbostratus100 I'm assuming you're a teacher? So would you, having felt a child's ears, then say loudly 'Your ears can't be cold, they are RED!' (to a child with red ears, which mean kids have commented on in a negative way before, so he is aware of them being a bit unusual.)

I also have to emphasise that he does really suffer in the cold - he breaks out in welts, it's a kind of anaphalaxis and not something I'm making up. So if he's cold, he's cold. He doesn't ever get in trouble for being defiant in class, if anything he keeps his head down, so if he was putting his hood up and holding his ears he was actually very cold. I don't doubt him on that, and he's not going to be in serious trouble from me for expressing his discomfort, the classrooms are freezing.

He only told me she did that very late that night, in bed, in the dark, which is how I knew it really upset him. To me drawing attention to a kid's physical appearance is something I'd expect from another kid, not a teacher.

I've seen her interacting with parents and kids and she's not great with people - no warmth, loud, very defensive, critical and shouty. All problems, no solutions. He doesn't respect her and neither do I (and I say that as someone with relatives who are teachers, and as someone who has had a great relationship with all other teachers my kids have had.)

@badgermushrooms You have described her, I think. She has no sympathy for his reading struggles, and is singling him out. We are probably going to try and get through to the summer and then pull him out, he is being badly affected by her attitude towards him.

I think your best bet is to focus on asking what additional help the school can offer to support the dyslexia diagnosis. What is going to give him greater access to the curriculum? I asked about a private diagnosis because it’s relevant to the report and the recommendations in it. You also say that it’s your feeling that he has dyslexia, which isn’t quite the same thing.

Nevertheless, there’s nothing wrong with asking for further strategies to support his learning.

Thanks bluevelvetsofa yes you're right, I will ask what's available.

I'm already working on a different curriculum with him using workbooks at home because when we move he will have to jump ahead six months so that is more of a priority now we know he will be leaving that school and the system here. The maths is very different so that's another issue, but I think his new schooling will be easier with shorter days.

From what I've seen of her in parent teacher nights and previous meetings she will more or less tell me there's no point in him continuing with bilingual education and the school can't help. But I will ask.

Yes the diagnosis was private. But there isn't an NHS so everything is private really, it's just the insurance that is public or private. We had to use this one psychologist as he was being tested in English.