My daughter has had trouble in school this year.  She has a hard time remembering stuff she's taught, and she clearly has an anxiety disorder just like Dad.  When I was a kid, my anxiety debilitated me socially… I couldn't get along with others.  With my daughter, it debilitates her educationally.  Socially she is fine, but if she becomes anxious, her educational performance goes downhill fast.  Earlier in the year I had warned her teacher about this…

TEACHER: “She had done so well on that test and I was so proud of her, I had her come up to the front of the class and asked her to tell me what a noun was.  She couldn't.  She couldn't say 'person place or thing', I was flabbergasted.”

ME: “You see?  You put her on the spot.  With Lynnea it's all about frame of mind.  If you can keep her in the proper frame of mind she can do fine.”

Apparently Lynnea isn't the only one for whom stuff isn't sinking in.  Lynnea's grades were in a continuous downward spiral and the teacher continued to express fear and concern.  And it's fairly obvious to me that Lynnea picked up on the teacher's fear and concern, and became fearful herself, and of course, this led to a further degradation of her performance.

Finally Neya said to me one day “I'm probably going to have to stay back.”  I'm not sure where she heard that, but it could have been her teacher.  In my conversations with the teacher I kept hearing the same things:

“I'm just worried sick about her.  When she gets to third grade she's going to be in trouble if she can't manage this material.  She's going to have to face MCAS in third grade.”

This is one thing I hated about school when I was a kid.  “If you can't master algebra then you're going to end up collecting garbage for a living.”  “If you can't tell me what a homonym is you're going to be in real trouble when you get to third grade.”  “This sixth grade social studies material is vital, and if you can't learn it then you are going to have serious problems later on.”

Fear is not a great motivator for children, particularly those that have anxiety disorders like myself or my child.  It really bothers me how all through school I repeatedly got the message “this is crucial, if you can't learn this then your life is over”.  Lynnea is getting that message, I can tell, and it is not helping.

So we restructured Lynnea's home environment and completely cut out TV on school nights.  We had always worked with her on her homework, but I had noticed Lynnea was relying on us to check it for her.  So now if I notice a problem on her homework, I simply say “something's wrong, check it over and fix it.”  Before I would say “you got the answer to number 6 wrong, do that one again.”  That was no good, and I had to patiently explain to Neya that in school the teacher wasn't going to give her a test back and let her correct the errors before grading it.

Another problem we had was Lynnea's weekly vocabulary test.  The teacher would send home some sentences on Monday that included a list of words that Lynnea needed to learn.  Lynnea was to copy the sentences into spaces provided and return them to the teacher the next day to be graded. On the test which was given on Fridays, the sentences would be dictated aloud and Lynnea would lose points for any mispellings.  For example the vocabulary word might be “MAKE” and the sentence might be: “Please ask Bridget to make me a sandwich.”

So having studied the vocabulary words Lynnea might write: “Please ask briget to make me a sanwich.”  Lynnea would lose 6 points here, 2 for mispelling Bridget, 2 for mispelling sandwich, and 2 for not capitalizing Bridget's name.  In case you missed it, she got her vocabulary word correct.

So what's the big deal, just study the sentences right?  Well despite repeated requests, the teacher often chose not to send the graded sentences back home so that Lynnea could study them.  The list of vocabulary words would come back home, but not the sentences.  WTF?  If my daughter is expected to learn words like “Bridget” and “sandwich” then they should be on the list so she has something to review!  Eventually my wife and I got tired of this and simply made a photocopy of Lynnea's sentences each week.  Then on Thursday night and again on Friday morning we would review the vocabulary words with her and dictate the sentences to her.  Any word mispelled or any other error and she would be retested on the error.  Basic errors like punctuation and capitalization she is expected to identify and correct herself… if we see any problems there its “something's wrong, check your work.”  We gave Lynnea a mantra to say to herself every time she wrote a sentence: “What does every sentence begin with and end with?”

Do to this restructuring and more intensive approach to her studies, Lynnea has begun making great strides.  Over the last 3 months, Lynnea has stopped bringing home tests marked with 30's and 40's and now consistently brings home tests marked with 80's and 90's and the occasional 100.  Now when Neya hands me her math homework or her writing homework, it is rare for there to be any errors at all.  The other day I caught Lynnea reading books all on her own without any encouragement from me.  I am elated with this improvement.  Problem solved right?

Not according to her teacher.

Mrs. name-omitted feels that Lynnea should repeat the second grade.  We had very mixed feelings about that.  Often Lynnea, in frustration at not being able to solve a problem, would tell me “I'm DUMB!  The other kids are all smarter than me!”  Lynnea. Is. Not. Dumb.  When she is relaxed and comfortable she makes observations that stun me, observations which imply a thoughtful, active, and intelligent young mind.  Nonetheless, she feels stupid.  I can only imagine how having to do second grade over again would make her feel.  Lynnea is bigger than most kids 1 or 2 years older than her.  If she redoes 2nd grade next year she'll really feel that she has been put in with the “little kids”.

So we asked the school to evaluate Lynnea to see if she was a special needs student.  The testing was extensive, during the time in which Lynnea was making dramatic improvement, she was being pulled out of class and tested by various specialists for math, reading, logic and reasoning, social adjustment, physical development and so forth.

The results?  Across the board, Lynnea is average to above average for her age, and appears to know the material any second grader should know.  This came out in a meeting with us, the specialists, Lynnea's teacher, and a state official in charge of special education programs.

Consistently all the specialists said the same thing–the one problem they noted was anxiety.  If Lynnea became nervous she could no longer perform and the specialist would have to encourage her and give her a moment to settle down before continuing the test.  More than one of them said that Lynnea's first reaction was “I can't do that” or “I don't know how to do that”, but when encouraged to try with positive reinforcement, Lynnea did fine.

Lynnea needs to believe in herself.

Which is basically what I told the teacher when Lynnea first had problems.  But what do I know?

At the meeting the teacher was clearly mystified that Lynnea had done so well, and finally took the tack of “Be that as it may, she needs to be able to demonstrate this ability in the classroom, in third grade they have to do MCAS.  Lynnea can't demonstrate in the classroom that she knows the material.  I can't test her.”

I pointed out that in the last 3 months Lynnea hadn't brought home a single test or worksheet with a score below 70 and most of them are 80 or better.  Pat and I both felt that Lynnea had demonstrated she can do the work, and Mrs. name-omitted clearly can test her now even if she couldn't before.

The teacher admitted that there was improvement, but clearly didn't believe that Lynnea knew the material.  She pointed out how recently Lynnea was unable to correctly define “homonym” on a test (because, you know, it's freaking vital to know what a homonym is.)

Lynnea reviewed homonyms, antonyms, and synonyms with me the day before that test.  And she does tend to mix up “synonym” and “homonym”.  This was further complicated by the definition the teacher was trying to get Lynnea to memorize.  According to the teacher:

• Synonyms are two words that are spelled differently, sound differently, but mean the same thing.
   
• Homonyms are two words that are spelled differently, sound the same, but mean different things.

For the record, homonyms do NOT have to be spelled differently.  “BANK” as in financial institution, and “BANK” as in the edge of a river are homonyms.  I looked it up.  Also with respect to synonyms, who freaking cares how they are spelled and what they sound like?  That's not important.  Words are synonyms if they MEAN THE SAME THING.  So the definitions Lynnea and I practiced were:

• Synonyms are two different words that mean the same thing.
   
• Homonyms are two words that sound alike but mean something different.

She got away with the definition of synonym, but on homonym she wrote “homonyms are two different words that sound alike”, and lost points.   Unless I'm mistaken, although she didn't spell out a “difference in meaning” but she did say “different words”.  Are there any examples of two different words that sound alike and mean the same thing?  I can't think of any, unless you include regional spelling differences like COLOR and COLOUR.  Nonetheless, we went over the test together, and I reminded Lynnea that she had to say “and mean different things”. As far as I was concerned it was a minor issue. 

The ultimate conclusion of the meeting was that Lynnea needed “special consideration” in the classroom (i.e. don't make her nervous) because of her anxiety disorder, but didn't require special ed.  Pat and I made clear our intention for Lynnea to begin seeing a therapist to help her work on her anxiety and to evaluate her and see if she needed any pharmacological help.

I pointed out to Mrs. name-omitted that Lynnea believes herself to be stupid.  I said that I felt being held back a year would only reinforce that mistaken belief.  Further, I felt that now that Lynnea is clearly demonstrating a mastery of the material in the homework I'm seeing, she would likely become incredibly bored if she had to do all this material over again next year.

Mrs. name-omitted was nonplussed, and chose to make official her recommendation that Lynnea repeat the second grade.

Pat and I spent a long time thinking about it and talking about it, and have decided to overrule Mrs. name-omitted and move Lynnea along to third grade.  We selected the teacher with the best reputation for being understanding with students and sent in the paperwork.

The school guidance counselor took Patty aside recently and told her that she felt Lynnea would probably do better “in another classroom”.  She confided that she had recently learned that Mrs. name-omitted was “a screamer”.    In other words, she raises her voice a lot in class.  I'm sure that's very conducive to productivity from the children who have anxiety issues.

By now you may be getting the impression that I don't like Mrs. name-omitted.  As a person I neither like nor dislike her, but I do feel that she has become part of the problem.  I think that despite dramatic improvement she continues to see Lynnea as Lynnea was, rather than as she is.

She's not a good fit for my daughter.  Lynnea has confided in me that Mrs. name-omitted “freaks her out”.  I can see why.  Mrs. name-omitted always appears to be putting on a performance–all of her movements and expressions are highly exaggerated.  When she offers encouragement or says something positive it feels incredibly fake.  And finally, Mrs. name-omitted is one of those people who always looks anywhere but at you when she is speaking to you.  She can't look me in the eye and talk to me about what's going on with my daughter in class.  This further creates the impression of someone who is acting, as opposed to just being truthful.  During the meeting, whenever the teacher was speaking to me, I had to fight a very strong urge to wave my arms around and say “Hey, I'm over here.”

Bluntly, Mrs. name-omitted is weird, and perhaps of limited insight as it doesn't appear to have occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, she is part of the problem.  Despite the fact that she sat in a room full of experts who said that Lynnea was above average and knew the material.

So Lynnea will be going on to third grade next year.  Are we worried that we might be making a mistake?  We're terrified.  But we're going to work with Lynnea over the summer.  She's going to continue to do vocabulary and math and reading.  We're not going to let her forget what she's learned.  Wish us luck.