The dread meeting with teachers

Today's story is about the day the pre-school teachers called me in for a meeting to talk about what was "wrong" with Marcus. It's a story I tell my pre-service teachers as an example of what never to do! I know the teachers and pre-school staff were well intentioned, but it counts as one of the most hurtful school experiences I’ve had with Marcus.

He was attending a Head Start pre-school, after just having left a school where the teacher hit him (but that’s another episode). The director was a friend of mine who had developed an innovative early childhood science program that Marcus really liked. We had been struggling with some of his behavior and since we did not have his diagnosis yet, it was a quandary as to why he was behaving this way. He was aggressive to other kids, often refused to participate in activities, and was doing a kind of walk-drop to the floor thing. He would also drop and pick up an object repeatedly. On the positive side, he was the king of the dress up area. His imagination is extraordinary and the scenes he would set up kept kids playing for a long time. He was bossy, though, and sometimes his aggression would scare people off.

So the day in question, I was called to school for a “meeting” about Marcus. I walked into the classroom to what felt like a dozen adults arranged in a semi-circle on one side of the room facing an empty chair on the other side. That one was for me. I felt like I was in a spy movie and this was my interrogation room. I sat down. I remember my friend saying something like, “there is something wrong with Marcus”. My heart sank. They proceeded to list all the issues and the things they thought were wrong. Evidently they had “tested” him and they believed he had a pragmatic language disorder. What?! Had they spoken to him? They went on to say that they were concerned for his safety since he developed the walk-drop to the floor thing. Maybe he had epilepsy? What?! My mind was reeling and my anger rose. I don’t remember now what I said in response but I do remember crying. I know they loved Marcus and were only trying to help but that didn't stop me from feeling horrible.

I left really upset. Was there something wrong with Marcus? Why was he doing these things? I immediately set about getting an appointment with a child neurologist and searching the web for information about epilepsy. I read over the symptoms and some made sense but I still wasn’t seeing Marcus. I don’t remember how I found the Tourette’s page but there it was. Tic disorder…motor and vocal tics…hitting, jumping, tearing paper, snorting…there he was.