Day 101 Question 101:

What was the last thing that made your heart break?

I am not a parent.  Many people believe my opinion is not valid when it comes to children and anything parent-esque because of this fact.  No I did not give birth to any children but I believe I have had a lot of positive voice in many children’s lives and I have taken a great deal of training and have seen mothers improve their parenting techniques because of me.  My voice is valid because as I have said over and over again…it takes a village to raise a child.  I am currently a nanny for twin girls that are 16 months old.  No these children are not mine but I love them with everything in me and in a sense they are my family.  I would take a bullet or throw myself in front of a bus for either of them.  My job (not just as their nanny but as a kind and decent human being) is to protect these children and not one day passes that I do not think about that.

On my computer my homepage is set to Yahoo news.  Yesterday I scanned the page before opening my email and a headline caught my eye.  The headline read: Teacher/Bully: How My Son Was Humiliated by His Teacher and Aide.  I was pulled in immediately.  I am going to include the article as well as the Youtube video because I believe this story needs to go viral and these women that have done these horrible things need to be called out.  This story broke my heart because a completely innocent child was treated in a disgusting manner by TEACHERS….the people that are supposed to protect him.  This child is autistic.  When I watched this Youtube video tears swelled up in my eyes and I felt so much sorrow for this child’s father.  No parent should ever have to face what this father had to face.  This young autistic boy was spoken to like he was a stray dog and the teacher and the aid in the classroom showed no love for him…the showed him no decency or respect at all.  This made my heart break because I could not understand how people could act like that.  I don’t understand how adults could harm a child in any mental or physical way and not feel any guilt in themselves.  I could not understand how a school system did not stand up and immediately fire these women.  I could not understand how the actual story got swept under the rug and it took the father making a youtube video for it to get attention.  As administrators at this school, the entire staff should be absolutely embarrassed and disgusted with themselves for not taking a stand against what happened.

 People question why I may not want to have kids and to be honest….this ranks right up there with the reasons.  A child is to always be protected and if I were to bring my child to school and find out that he/she were being treated this way I am not sure of what I would do.  I would be filled with anger because all children deserve a chance…even the ones that give us a run for our money.  I may not be a parent but children mean the world to me and after reading this article I felt a deep sadness both for the father and the son.  This little boy had to go through day-to-day torture in a place that everyone would tell him is safe.  The father had to listen to a lengthy recording of his son being vocally abused….I cannot even imagine how that feels…and I hope to never feel that way.  This father and son deserve justice in this situation and even though I am one person and this is one minor gesture I want to help….I want to continue the trek in making his video viral and showing the world that even our educators are the BULLIES!!!!  I believe that when a teacher has worked hard and proven themselves they deserve to be rewarded but handing out tenure to animals such as this and allowing them to just receive a slap on the hand is WRONG (I am not sure if they are tenured teachers but I would make that guess).  If you have a chance I also recommend watching the documentary Waiting for Superman…you can find it on youtube part by part.  This documentary will blow your mind to find out what is really going on in the United States school system.  It is time we take a stand and state our peace…people like this should NEVER be allowed to “teach” children.  I would love to hear your opinions and thoughts.  :0)

The article below is what I found on Yahoo news:

N.J. father records teacher, aide mocking autistic son

By Erin Wright

New Jersey might have what is considered the toughest anti-bullying law in the nation, but one Cherry Hill father felt it didn’t go far enough to protect his autistic young son. So he decided to employ a tactic that melded equal parts secrecy and publicity and that has propelled his case into the spotlight.

Stuart Chaifetz said that his 10-year-old son Akian had always been a “sweet and nonviolent child,” and so it was puzzling when his son began arriving home with notes from Horace Mann Elementary School claiming that Akian was having violent outbursts, and in some cases hitting his teacher and an aide. When meetings with school administrators and personnel didn’t produce any answers, Chaifetz was at a loss. “I felt I was beginning to lose my son — that these outbursts were changing his very nature,” he writes on a website he created. “I knew I had to find out what was happening in his class that was having a dramatic impact on him.”

Chaifetz’s method of getting to the bottom of things including wiring his young son for sound one February morning. Akian returned with more than six hours of audio, which Chaifetz listened to that night and said “changed his life forever.”

Chaifetz detailed his findings on a web page, “No More Teachers/Bullies,” and in a YouTube video titled: “Teacher/Bully: How My Son Was Humiliated and Tormented by His Teacher and Aide.” In clips of the audio, a classroom aide and teacher whom Chaifetz identifies as “Jodi” and “Kelly” can be heard discussing alcohol use, spousal issues and other personal topics, as well as mocking Akian and responding rudely to his questions. Chaifetz in listening to the audio, the reasoning behind his son’s outbursts became clear to him, and he then moved to take the case public.

And, as is so often the case with compelling YouTube videos, Chaifetz’s case has quickly gone viral. In a note atop the hundreds of comments he’s received since posting the video on April 20, Chaifetz states that he’s disabled the auto-post feature due to a large amount of “inappropriate posts,” and that he’s finding it hard to keep up with the amount of comments pouring in. Chaifetz has also noted a groundswell of support on Facebook.

As a result of Chaifetz’s impromptu sting, the aide was fired but the teacher was apparently reassigned to another school. On his web page, Chaifetz expresses the opinion that such teachers should be fired, “no second chances, no excuses.” To that end, he has collected more than 20,000 signatures on a petition seeking legislation that would result in the immediate dismissal of teachers who engage in bullying.