Support for Voting Alex Black Out Of Class?

Once again we've got a story in the news about a child. This time, however,a teacher may have crossed the line - if you've been reading the news online, you've heard all about how Alex Barton was voted out of his kindergarten class by his 5 year old peers. You've heard all of this because Alex's mother, Melissa, has begun to use the power of the press in order to make the school believe that they have done something wrong.

I'm going to say, right now, that I believe the school was not in the wrong on this one.

Let me explain.

You've probably read the propoganda that Melissa and her family have been bandying about (hello, where's Gloria Allred when you need her), and you've heard a 5 year old say that he was sad about the situation. But have you read it all?

This is the incident report that was filed about the situation. It talks about the discussion had with the mother, with Alex, with the teacher, with the children, and basically with anyone (other than the children) who are involved. Go head and read those pages and come back, alright?

Now that you've read the incident report, do you honestly think that the teacher was in the wrong? Break it down, and here's what happened -

Alex was, once again, acting up in class. He has been known to kick and hit children, throw crayons, rip up paper, and basically disrupt the entire classroom of 17. The teacher has sent him to the office a number of times about this behavior. This time she sent him and the assistant principal sent him back. The students and teacher, however, were fed up and were not ready to have him come back that day. The teacher had Alex stand up and asked the children to explain to Alex why they did not want him to be back in class that day. They said that they didn't like when he did bad things, and when he was gross and ate boogers. Out of the 16 children, 14 wanted him to not be allowed back in class that specific day.

The media and Melissa Black are contending that the teacher was cruel on purpose and that she was having the children vote Alex out for forever. The students, however, all say that their teacher is a nice teacher and that they were only voting Alex out for the day because they were fed up with him.

Some are saying that this situation showed that children with special needs are getting picked on in school.

First of all, there has been no official diagnosis yet that Alex has autism - everything says that he's being "evaluated" for autism. Secondly, what about all the other children? You've got 17 children in a class, and when one starts acting up and disrupting everyone, you are cheating the other 16 out of learning.

I'm not going to sit here and say that children who have disabilities should be taken out of school every time. There were a number of children in my school who had disabilities, both mental and physical, who were never taken out of school and who made plenty of friends. This situation, however, is different.

When you've got a child who is biting and kicking, and who is disrupting the entire classroom, what can you do? They couldn't take him out of school yet, as there is no "official' reason to do so, and if they would have the mother would probably have gone off on them anyway. The teacher was simply trying to make Alex understand why his actions were making the other children upset and why they didn't want him in class anymore.

There are seven children in Toad's class. One of these children is much like Alex, except that he has not physically hurt another child yet. Toad has made it very clear lately that his classmate, H, is getting much more disruptive than he ever used to be. I have been in Toad's classroom and have seen H act up, getting extremely loud and bothering everyone. The PE teacher pulled me aside one day (when Toad was really upset about H bothering everyone in the class) and said that something should be done, as H was "preventing all of the children from learning".

Alex's mother is showing cute pictures of her little boy smiling to the media. How about some video of your child acting up, Melissa? Don't sit there and pretend that your son is an absolute angel and that his peers shouldn't have said anything to him. The truth of the matter is that your son was apparently disrupting the class for the entire year. He was physically harming other studnets and he was preventing everyone from learning and enjoying their school day. If another child was doing this, you would be upset that they were still allowed in the classroom.

Was the teacher in the right in this situation? I don't know as I wasn't there, but I do know that the media needs to stop vilifying the teacher and start realizing that there is always two sides to the story.

Do you think Alex should have been kicked out of his class?