This is sooooooo fucked up
Also a sobering reminder that this society may not be the best place to bring new children into. I would be beyond irate if that had been my child.
ಠ_ಠ
this is Texas brand cruelty
real men thrive on pain
In a statement to KTRK, Fort Bend Independent School District said: “Staff members involved in this incident are no longer employed by the district. We remain committed to creating a safe and secure learning environment for every student.”
Obviously they failed at creating anything remotely ‘safe and secure’.
I mean a few simple rules should suffice, like “if a child falls and shatters their leg, staff should immediately call the parents and the ambulance”.
In any non-trivially sized organization there will be some people who are “bad”. You can’t expect any organization to perfectly filter them out since you don’t know what people will do in all situations. Even having “rules” doesn’t mean they will be followed.
The district fired them - which is the correct and appropriate thing to do.
While I agree with you in a general sense, the fact this occured in an educational setting with children would seem to indicate staff should have a hightened sense of compassion and the needs of the kids, and therefore wouldn’t sit around eating lunch and giggling while a child writhes and screams in pain on the floor for 2 hours.
Okay I’m not defending the teacher here except for the child’s right to be recognized and have their needs tended to. This also isn’t about “good” and “bad” teachers, but the education system. This is anecdotal, so take it for what it’s worth.
My wife, S, is an intervention specialist which is a teacher in a special ed classroom. I think she is a very good teacher, and after years in a underfunded inner city school, she now works in a very large well funded elementary school in a nice area with very involved and stable parents, by and large.
She has a student, L who is non verbal, most of her kids are and she has the most difficult special-ed classroom in her school. She works on a team with two other intervention specialists, one of which, B, was L’s teacher for two years previous. L has a muscular disability.
It’s S’s first year at this school so she is just starting to know the kids. What she is discovering is that these “very low” non verbal children, have basically received no prior schooling on subjects. Their learning plans have each of them marked very low, with the most basic goals. And granted, behavior is usually an issue with these kids who can’t communicate. They can lash out suddenly and scratch or bite a teacher or aide, drawing blood more often than not. So behavior will eat up a ton of bandwidth for any teacher. It took my wife months to get her kids to sit with her and do any work whatsoever. But once they started to do work for her so she could test their ability, she discovers that they are all quite advanced in various areas, despite basically never being taught. Kids with educational goals of being able to count to 5 can do multiplication and division for 2 and 3 digit numbers, ahead of their grade; kids who seem to have no concept of reading or conceptual language can spell and construct sentences or answer questions about a story, if it is shown to them in a way that they will interact with.
Back to L, he is another case just like this. Very difficult to work with at first, refused to be taught, lashes out violently when he gets frustrated, but now that he is used to her he will sit and work and also demonstrates advanced ability in multiple subjects.
However the last to years his previous teacher and the head of their team, B, by all accounts from teacher and aides did nothing with him for 2 years. He was basically laid on a mat in a closet, and ignored, everyday for 2 years. My wife says that for the most part he gets around in her class pretty darn well, so even the assumption that he’s mostly immobile was wrong.
Special ed teachers spend most of their time some weeks filling out complicated ed plans that are a state requirement, but frankly no one ever checks or even seems to know how to fill these things out. Everyone is just winging it. Bureaucracy is a stand in for education and the needs of the child. Imo my wife is an exceptional teacher who has time and time again achieved breakthroughs with some of her most difficult students. The lead on her team, with over a decade of experience in this job couldn’t even see past their own assumptions about the child, and never stopped to question them, and so the poor kid was neglected, uninjured thank God, for 2 years.
So if a pretty good teacher at a good school can fuck up that badly, how dangerous would it be for a inexperienced or disengaged teacher? To me this isn’t a problem that comes down to individual teachers but of the American education system as a whole, and it’s priorities. Spoiler alert, politics matter more than children.
Interesting read. Thanks for sharing. If you don’t mind me asking, does your wife experience burnout and if so, what kinds of strategies do you all employ to manage that burnout?
Well there are good days and bad days. When she started here she wasn’t able to get into her room to set it up until the 11th hour, so she started the year on her backfoot. She takes good care of her self, much better than me tbh, so I think that helps. She’s very tough and competent, and she has a sort of gentle frankness that I think help smooth out rough interpersonal issues that drive so much burn out, just because she like can’t stand to let things fester between people. Also our relationship is very strong and open and honest, and we share everything including housework. We take vacations, and alto she likes to plan vacations so it can be a nice mental getaway for her. Luckily I have a decent job too so we can do that. My kids are older and we only have them part time so she doesn’t have to full time mom, even though she’s a great step mom and very involved.
For anyone wondering, this is what those staff ignored for two hours (WARNING: this may well trigger you, it sure as fuck ruined my day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx4in4UpdWE
This video is 43 seconds long. You hear that sound out of a little kid’s leg, followed by the screaming for two hours, and don’t immediately call the ambulance, you’re not a reasonable adult. You’re an inhuman monster. Anyone saying “well maybe they thought he was just acting out” is ignoring the basic facts of the case so they can be contrary on the Internet.
While I’m not nonverbal I also broke my femur as a child, in specific I was around 6-7. Father ignored my cries of pain for probably around half an hour to an hour (I “saw” the sun jump in the sky) before eventually getting fed up with me. He roughly picked me up, tossed me over his shoulder (again ignoring my cries of pain), took me into the house and more or less thew me onto the floor. Walked off all pisses and my mom came in to see why I was so… distressed. My leg was about twice as large as normal, I was going/well into shock. Ambulance and whatnot got called, the Fire dudes showed up, gave me some sort of shot and awhile later the Ambulance dudes eventually showed up. Dad rode with me to the hospital and to keep things short he felt pretty terrible about himself for good reason.
Course that experience didn’t prevent him from being abusive later on but I can understand why he initially chose to ignore me, I was and still am rather emotional. Same kind of deal with this poor kid. I can understand ignoring at first, but there comes a point, hopefully quite quickly that you check in and see if things are alright. I push fuckn carts and I check in with old people all the time. Quite often they are just old and are being weird staring into space, looking confused whatever old people get up to but occasionally they need help and I’m glad to have asked. If your job is to take care of kids with special needs you should be very aware of their typical behavior and check in when there’s something off. Doubly so when there’s any sort of communication difficulties christ
So let me get this straight:
You think the staff heard something like this, and therefore knew that there was a severe injury, but just ignored it for some reason? Maybe they hated the child or something?
Even though they would most definitely get in deep trouble for ignoring what is actually a life threatening injury after anyone found out?
Dude, you don’t know people. Or you’re being contrarian just to be stubborn.
Think of everyone that drives past an accident that just happened, or people leaving elderly to suffer bedsores in care homes, or any number of cases of neglect that happen daily. Now couple that with someone who is maybe a difficult person to deal with and you bet your ass their problems are going to be last on the list to be concerned with. There are facilities that have poor care knowing they could be sued or face legal issues, but it happens anyway.
Perhaps I don’t. Though I think each of your examples has systemic reasons that make it unique from this situation.
It’s a school, so there’s no capitalist profit incentive unlike a nursing home. These are not bystanders, but people with a specific responsibility towards this child, and again, no profit incentive.
In this case, the child has parents that will be expecting their kid back from school in one piece at the end of the day. There is no way in hell they could realistically get away with knowingly ignoring such a severe injury. Broken femurs, again, can kill you due to internal bleeding. Not the death of some elderly nursing home patient, the death of a child (who has parents) under your care in a place where children do not die very often.
I don’t see it as very likely.
