Lizze and I met with the school this morning for an official meeting about Elliott being bullied. There's been lots of discussion surrounding this lately, and the purpose of this meeting was to get everyone on the same page.
The meeting lasted maybe 30 minutes and was attended by all of Elliott's main teachers throughout the day, the principal, interventionist and of course, Lizze and myself. [ditty_news_ticker id="47402"] I feel that the meeting was overwhelmingly positive because it provided some clarification as to what's going on and allowed us to formulate a plan for moving forward.
The one issue we ran into was that no one aside from Elliott has witnessed him being assaulted. This limits what the school can do to address this and today we learned why.
Here's the problem.
What Elliott says is happening is considered assault by the school and needs to be witnessed by a staff member to deal with it officially. That doesn't mean they can't do anything about it, though. Elliott and this kid have been moved to opposite sides of the room, and they aren't in any of the same groups anymore.
There's no reason for them ever really to be near each other.
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The interventionist is also helping to empower Elliott by showing him what he can do if this stuff happens again.
He's been given permission to scream at this kid if he hurts him again. They want him to disrupt class and call as much attention to what just happened as possible. This ensures that the teachers are notified immediately when something happens and not later on, after the fact.
At this point, we've done everything that can be done and all the pieces are in place to ensure these things don't happen again. If they do, the hope is that Elliott can react in the moment and ensure that his teachers are aware of whatever happened immediately so that they can respond. [ditty_news_ticker id="47402"] We know there's also name calling and frequent teasing and while that's not right, our main concern is physical assault. Kids can be nasty to each other and unfortunately, teasing goes along with that. We need to help Elliott thicken his skin a bit, so these things bounce off him rather than be absorbed.
Lizze and I aren't feeling 100% about this, but I do think that this is overwhelmingly a move in the right direction.
Since they made these changes, Elliott hasn't been assaulted by this kid. Apparently, this kid still runs his mouth, but we're helping Elliott not to be so impacted by his words...
This will be very closely monitored as we move forward......
