The world is nuts!!!

[a_goulding]

Originally Posted by Outbackjack

At the moment my wife and I are struggling with a situation at her school. (she is a teacher) She is facing "action" because of something she did last week. I will try and keep this short but factual. She teaches special needs kids. Not all the kids have something actually wrong with them, they are just behind the 8 ball because of their home life. One of these kids, perhaps my wifes favourite, has a terrible home life. The kind of thing that would make you cry and angry all at the same time. Anyway, this little girl, lets call her Betty, is really struggling with her school work, she is 7 years old. But, she is, even at this young age, a natural sportsman (girl). So when is was time for PE last week and she was having trouble running and doing what she normally excelled at, my wife took her aside and asked if she was OK. Betty said that her feet were hurting. My wife sat her down and took her shoes off to see what was wrong. She has huge weeping blisters due to the fact that her runners were way too small for her. My wife, knowing that Betty's mother would never get it together enough to get Betty new runners, took it upon herself to treat the blisters with some savlon. When Betty was still coming to school with the same small runners, my wife decided that the only thing to do was to get Betty some new runners. So, with my blessing, we set off and bought Betty some new runners. We took them out of the box and tried to make them look not quite so new..... We thought that this might trick the other kids in her class into thinkng that Betty wasn't getting some kind of charity. My wife said that when Betty got her runners she told her that she had never had new shoes before and was very gracious for a 7 year old.

A couple of days passed, Betty took to the playing feild again and all was good. Wrong. Betty's mother has lodged a complaint about her child being given charity without her consent. Now my wife is facing disiplinary action for what she has done. I told her to stick the job. But she will not desert her "little sweeties". She may be suspended or sacked. I, like her, am gobb smacked. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to care. Mind you, at least it looks like Betty will get to keep her new runners.

Vent over...... I have never put my laundry on a public forum, but I though that the public deserves to know what is happening at public schools.
Cheers all.

I think that what you and your wife did was a very genourous thing and the family should be grateful that there are people in the world like your wife. The school unfortunatley has to do something because of the parents complaint but they cannot sack her for caring about the well being of the children that she teaches otherwise there would be dire consequences for the schools actions. I am sure that even if the other parents new that she had bought the shoes for the little girl they would all get behind her and support her because they wouldn't want to lose a person like your wife because one parent is too lazy too buy new shoes for her own daughter. Best of luck with everything.

[JACK250]

Originally Posted by DOC

There is nothing wrong with the world, or your wifes guesture, where it went wrong was the way it was done.

You must first put yourself in the mothers shoes and in that familys thinking / way of life.

I have helped these people for years with countless guestures of good will similar to your wife, but to get this to work properly you need to take another approach, this is not what i think would work but from years of this work.

From the mothers view this can be very unconfortable and embarrasing, regardless of how she looks or acts, just imagine how bad you would feel, if you knew you could not afford all the things that others could and that having charity drop by can and does cause anger, this anger is not so much in this case the new shoes, but the anger would have been that she could not provide those shoes.

It is better if doing this to talk with the mother and even in that you just dont blurt out i'll buy the shoes, it needs a high level of thought, in something like a general greet and chat, then you might break into something like

hey you might be able to help me out, my sister gave me some shoes but i cant use them, they look a similar size as mary's shoes , I.m probably going to give them to the salvo's but they are like new, did you want to see if they would fit mary first ?

Or similar lines to that, you need to make the person feel like its thier idea and that it is not charity in a sense, she now would feel good as she has used her own thought pattern to save these shoes from going of the salvo's and as a mother provided for her daughter within her own means.

As above this approach is not based on what might work as i have lost count of the hundreds of times this approach has been used, to pass along clothes, toys and gifts to those who need them.

AS for the situation now where mum is upset, this would easily be fixed by quietly talking with the mum and expressing your applogies and in that you should have handled it better, now once again this may have people saying all sorts of stupid things like your joking, but done right you can reverse the mothers thinking to where she accepts the appology and feels now confortable with the outcome with the end result being this little girl gets to keep her shoes, the best outcome for all.

What you are saying sounds fair enough, but I think maybe you are being a little bit too politically correct. Sometimes people like this arn't that easy to reason with.