I have two experiences in elementary school that I feel should be put on here. Along with some lessons from both of them.

1. I was locked in a closet in 2nd grade. My mother didn't know until the nurse told her because I didn't want to tell my mother on the grounds that I thought I had been in the wrong. The reason that I was given for being locked into a closet at age seven for an amount of time long enough for a school nurse to know was that I was because I would not take my coat off and therefore could not join class.

Something to take from this is to tell your children that they can talk about mistakes they made at school and how the teacher reacted so that this kind of stuff can be caught. Encouraging your child to have open communication with you is extremely important anyways. It helps you to build a trusting parent child relationship.

1. I stayed outside when recess was over and they never went looking for me. The amount of students in my class was 24. I wasn't the only one to have stayed out during that time either another student was also outside. So 2/24 or 1/12 of the class was gone. We went back into the school because we didn't see any more students outside which we found weird. We estimated that we were out there for 4 hours. I remember the feel as we walked down the hall to our class. I felt like I did something terribly wrong. The moment we came back in the teacher had a shocked look on his face. He asked us where we had been and then told us and I quote "Don't tell anyone, I thought you had been picked up by your parents.". Again because I didn't want to disappoint my mother and I thought I had been in the wrong I did not tell her until about 4 or so years later. This took place in 4th grade.

Something to take from this is that there should be more communication between staff at schools. If you are a teacher or becoming a teacher and a student is suddenly missing after a recess, please call the office and ask if they were checked out. That is what the check out system is for.

Not anything a teacher did but I am also angry that there were registered sex offenders near local schools of mine.