Letters

11th of May 2009

From: Angel Garden

Subject: results of teacher's review of 'the procedures' for encouraging self-discipline

Date: 11 May 2009 9:59:28 pm GMT+12:00

To: Susanne Cole, Mark Thornton, Sheryl Mace, Heather Peri

Dear all

we are just writing to say that we are looking forward to seeing the results of the review Mark referred to in his email of 27 April.  According to that, we should expect the review to be completed tomorrow.  We are hoping, as we said to Susanne and Judith at our meeting last week that there will now be clear, transparent guidelines for children, staff, and parents as to the consequences of inflicting physical harm on others.

[R] reported to us today that [...] hit her with a pencil, or 'flicked' her.  She said that she told Mrs Cole and that he had to apologise twice.  She said that although it had felt 'dealt with', she did not think it would stop him doing it again.  She was displaying the wired behaviour we were talking about last week, and we cannot avoid noticing that she did not report any incidents between last week, when there were incidents, and today, when there was another one.  i.e. when she does not get hit in any way at school, she does not exhibit the behaviour.

We must conclude that Titirangi Steiner School did not manage to be the safe place it advertises itself as for [R] today.

She also said that she is largely the only one who is telling, certainly the only one of the girls.  Since I have now seen the guidelines and they encourage and exhort all children to report all incidents, what are you doing to build that into your daily culture?

Whilst we respect the efforts to minimise incidents of attacking behaviour, the environment will not be truly safe until all the children KNOW that they will not be so attacked.  We will continue to make all efforts to persuade the school of the necessity for the clearest possible boundaries, especially in a class which is acknowledged to have had such problems for what now amounts to 'many years'.

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Angel and Steve

please forward this to Judith Cunningham, whose address we don't have, thanks.