DBritzius

In My Own Words

I had my daughter at a very late age, and feel a bit out of place around the parents in my daughter's class, however there are some that are really friendly toward me and that helped me a lot. I am very much involved with my work, as it is a school oriented too, I work in the cottage as a "dorm mom" and enjoy working with the kids, have done this for 25 some years, did a lot of tutoring, teacher's aide and sub teacher for a couple of years before they hired me on as its first known as "houseparent", then student life counselor, which I do not like the title. I would have prefered residential staff. Any way, I have done a lot of tutoring with our kids, both boys and girls, a lot of them get sent to me to do math/higher math homework as many staff does not know how to help them with it, as well as many other subject. I have learned to keep up with their teaching so that I would know what they are learning and be able to help them if they need my help. This is the deaf school located in Vancouver, WA. The first focus we have with the school is safety issues, we have been in the newspaper too many times, and we have improved so much on this as well as now as time goes on, we have other issues we have dealt with, bullying, drugs, and few other things. I have so many memorable things occurered at the school as my role is like a parent. I have had one who got kicked out because she had so much issues with herself, drugs and drinking, family is that way as well. I worked really hard with her, then we scared her by having a "friend" cop take her in handcuff and drive her around as she thought she was going to jail, because she was horrible to everyone. Apparently this idea that I came up with scared her so bad, and it shook her up as well as telling her she needs to change. She returned about 10 years after this with three children and said to me when she first saw me. You SAVED MY LIFE!!! I was puzzled then she told me about the cop experience, and that was a wake up call. There are things we have to take chances on to help the child. I have been abused as a child, and do not recommend spanking to anyone however since I have had my own child, I realize spankng (like the verse says) no spanking, spoil the child. I saw that happening with my child and of course rule of thumb use your own hand, know how much you hurt when you spank or how hard, my child had her first and last spanking as she showed respect after that and I never had to spank her again, so I knew I did the right thing at that time. She shows a lot of respect toward me when I reprimand her by talking to her about the issue and what and why we should not do it etc. Its been a blessing learning experience for me, knwing spanking was against my belief but then I change my mind. I have allowed who ever watch her to use that but with an understanding use own hand, no stick or anything because thats how I was raised, and it was horrid. I could write a book on it. Anyways...I want them to respect my wish and follow the guideline of spanking if needed then I will follow through on making sure she understood why it happened and what could have happened.

Parents I'd Like to Meet

I am usually a friendly person but because of my hearing loss, it is very hard to communicate with others in a noisy environment when meeting so I just stand quietly and collect my daughter and leave. Sometimes I just wait until the teacher is alone then have a quiet chat moment times on the progress on my daughter. I do not want anyone to think I am a stuck up because this is how I behave by being quiet and leave. There is one gal that I have high respect for as she always made sure I understood what or needed to be done, and she was exceptional parent there. I would like my daughter to be involve in music and dance environment because she loves music, and dance is something that she needs to have to help lower her energy level down, as she is full of energy. She has gotten hurt so many times in PE, and I do not know other than banging heads, and never been inform of her injury until she has a headache, first thought was PE. I get frustrated because no one tells me she got injured. I worry a lot on this one because she has migraine issue, and I can prevent it if I knew that she banged her head or something. She is accident prone a lot more there for some reason. I have issues with how the school is run only because I work for the state, and know the laws of what needs to be done to run a school, and this school will fail horribly if nothing is done about this, makes me wonder if other parents are aware of this. It has a lot to do with safety of the child in the school, riding the bus, etc.