Our Journey to homeschooling-Part 3

The summer went by fast. The whole summer I felt anxious about sending him back to school. He didn't want to go back either. But I felt trapped. Not knowing of any other options (Private schools were way too far out of our price range to even consider, we had just opened a business in January.) The word "Homeschool" came back in to our vocabulary as my DH's sister had made the decision to homeschool her daughter. DS began 2nd grade and DD began Kindergarten (With the same teacher DS had)A few months went by before we noticed things getting even worse. His teacher this year wouldn't allow parents in the classroom. He said it was a distraction and he didn't need the help. He was always bothered to talk about how DS was doing, never seemed to have the time. Wouldn't return phone calls.
DS spent more time moping. Crying over studying spelling words, worried he was going to fail his upcoming tests. I contacted the school councilor who started to see him for his anxiety. We again stopped doing our extra work. I was at a loss. I didn't know what to do to help him.
I asked his teacher to meet with me and he did so telling me that he was really disapointed in DS because he was a good boy capable of more than he was giving. That he hurried through his work just to be done with it. So I asked him to send fresh copies of everything he found unacceptable and that I would have DS work on them on the weekends. That first week his teacher sent home an entire packet of work for him to redo. The next week nothing came home. I would have loved to think that the lesson worked so well that he had learned instantly but I decided to ask the teacher about it. He told me he didn't have time to do this for every student who was struggling and would no longer be able to do it. I was really upset, one week and he gave up. Back to the workbooks at home.
Among some of the other issues, Every time I "popped in" the teacher was constantly disciplining some one. I spent a lot of time there and honestly only remember three or four times walking in to him teaching. I asked him about this and he told me that he had the roughest class he had ever had in his entire teaching career. There was a group of 5 boys that constantly caused major disruption. By the end of the year 3 of those boys had been put on permanent in school suspension.
The neighbor boy came over one day and asked if DS was ok- Confused I said "yeah, why?" Finding out that DS had been crying at school because the teacher had yelled at him making him feel silly about asking a math question. Come to find out this wasn't an isolated event. After many more talks with the teacher I found out that DS would often ask questions after the teacher had said "Any question ask Now" The teacher didn't stop to take in to account that DS is extremley shy and terribly afraid of failing. He didn't want to raise his hand in front of everyone. He was afraid of people thinking he wasn't smart enough. And he figured because no one else had asked the questions that he wanted to ask, that maybe he wasn't as smart as the rest of them. So he would wait until everyone was busy with thier work to ask. Or he wouldn't ask at all and end up not knowing how to do the assignment.
Meanwhile DD is in kindergarten and loving it. Doing great, only trouble is talking a little too much.
One day while helping in DD's class I see DS rush out to the hallway. Face bright red and crying terribly. Long story short, one of the "trouble" boys had punched him in the face and threatened to kill him in the middle of the classroom! I followed him and the other boy to the principles office where she told the boy to apologize and go on his merry way. I was outraged. I was not suggesting that you throw the kid to the alligators but the kid physically hit another person! And he gets told " next time be a self manager" If he were an adult and had punched another adult he would have been carted off to jail. Yet in school it is normal to shrug it off as part of "the school experience" I went and got DD and took them both home. I called DH and told him and he too thought this was normal and not such a big deal. I still stand unconvinced that someone else putting their hands on another person is "no big deal"
In first grade my son was knocked unconcious, recieved a concussion, dragged across the school yard, had someone sitting on his chest with thier hands on his mouth, In second grade he is punched in the face in the middle of his classroom. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen in third grade and the following years when the angry kids were even angrier and bigger kids were even stronger...

After two long depressing years I knew that I had to find a better way. I felt alone. All the moms I talked to from the school told me of thier similar experiences but had the " But what can ya do?" attitude. Since there was only a couple weeks left in school I decided to let them finish the year out. That may have been my biggest mistake yet.

While surfing the internet in the computer lab (I was completley unaware they were even allowed to Google!) DS and his two friends searched the word "poop" After clicking on the first few links, which included poop freezing spray claiming to make dog poop easier to pick up (they thought that was pretty funny so decided to look on)
The next link they clicked on was a naked man pooping in a naked womans mouth. Now, the have Pokemon, and Nickelodeon blocked there but somehow this slipped through thier filter system!! DS didn't tell us immediatley. It came out after two weeks of odd behavior. He wouldn't talk to us, would go to his room and just sit. It finally came out on a Friday night while flipping through channels. A commercial for the poop freezing spray came on. DH and I were laughing about the silliness of it. Then the story slowly came out as he cried. Needless to say he was confused. Traumatized, and his innocence was stolen. Once again I had not trusted my instincts and I had failed my son miserably for yet another year that we could never get back.