6th Grade Permission Letter: Fill & Download for Free

When my daughter was in the 5th grade, her teacher called me to say she wanted to test my daughter for the school’s gifted program, but she needed my permission to do that.I refused because:Although she’s always been very bright, there were times when she’d get “anxious” taking an important test and the test results were often below her actual ability. The kids all knew when someone was being tested for the gifted program, so if she took the test and felt anxious during the test, the results might be below her actual ability and then she might not be admitted to the gifted program and I didn’t want her to experience that failure, so I declined the teacher’s suggestion.The next semester my daughter was placed in a mixed class room of 5th and 6th graders - and without my knowledge or permission my daughter was being given 6th grade work (one year ahead of her grade level). So at night she’d be sitting at the kitchen table doing her homework until she fell asleep at the table with her head on the table.I was outraged when I learned what was going on. How could a teacher have the audacity and the nerve and the gall to do that to my child! I wasn’t as assertive then as I am now or I would have written letters to the school board, the principal and the newspaper about what this teacher had done. My daughter loved school before this happened and she and her best friend were acknowledged as “the smartest girls in the class” - but that wasn’t what was most important to me. What was important to me was that she was loving and enjoying school and wasn’t behaving at all arrogant about being smart. I wanted her to enjoy her childhood and just be a happy little kid since childhood is such a short time in a person’s life and I wanted her to enjoy every minute of that brief period in her life. I’d known other parents who had kids in gifted programs and it often seemed like those parents wanted that “for their kid” so they as parents would have bragging rights.Even now I’m feeling the same anger and frustration that I felt then about what this teacher had done - and that she thought it was OK to make such a decision on her own, thinking she knew my child better than I knew her and that she knew what was best for my child better than I did.

Cried with me!I was a withdrawn student and didn’t really do well in school. I loved manatees. My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. DeNatalie, got permission from the principal to adopt a class manatee. This wasn’t a thing. I lived in Jersey, but this was her way of showing interest in me, and trying to reach out to me.Our class got regular pictures and updates of our ‘class pet’, the manatee Sweetgums.I graduated from her class and moved on to 6th grade. One day she called me in to her class. She had been crying and had a box of tissues on her desk. She held her hand out to me and told me that she had received a letter. Our manatee, Sweetgums, had been hit by a boat propeller and died. The man who hit her had reported it.Mrs. DeNatalie opened up her arms and held me as we cried together over a pet we had never met, but equally loved.This wasn’t the only time I saw her cry. We did a read aloud of ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’, and just before the sad part, she gave everyone in the class a tissue. She taught me that it was ok to cry, and it was ok to feel, and have compassion. She also showed me that it was ok to share a piece of yourself with your students. She also had a board in the class dedicated to Bruce Springsteen.Because of her I decided to be a teacher, and I wrote my exit portfolio essay about her. Even after 16 years of teaching, when I have a bad day, I ask myself, “What would Mrs. DeNatalie do?” She inspired me and showed me exactly the kind of teacher I wanted to be- one that laughed and cried with my students (of course at the appropriate times), sharing a piece of myself with them.

That compliance overrides everything including your sensory needs, your ability to advocate, especially your sense of security, and if you can't comply, then you "aren't trying hard enough." At least that's what they said. Oh yeah, and the compulsory 20+ comments on "applying yourself"— for whatever that does mean.i was mainstreamed but my kindergarten teacher withheld me out of art, music, and gym class to subject me to behaviorism dog training (like a rudimentary form of applied behavioral analysis) to work on my eye contact (the lack thereof) and sitting still (the lack thereof) and not fidgeting. She basically physically assaulted me for 100 days of 1-on-1 to work on this bullshit.The only thing imprinted in my mind was the image of her shouting scowling face (complete with her round dimpled chin and her head 2" halo of wavy thick brown hair) mocking my distressed face as I felt the sensation of her forcing my pointy jaw to force look her in the eyeballs (which were intense and surrounded by weary wrinkled rage framed in circle glasses). As she yelled at me, I felt the anxiety of cortisol pumping through my system, the fear, and the feeling when my body went limp to the floor because I wasn't allowed to say no in any way. I can't unsee this image forever. I mean, I wish I could say that I learned something in kindergarten aside from butchering my self-worth, but I didn't.Eventually she realized this wasn't working but the damage was done. Forever. I would never feel 100% secure and non-anxious in a classroom ever again (and definitely not when my 1st grade teacher followed it up by mocking my handwriting disability and ripping my paper in half in front of the classroom and handing me a fresh copy, saying "try again hun, this time neater").Maybe my kindergarten teacher could've kept me in art, music, and gym class. Gym and art would help me have an output for my adhd energy to regulate myself, and hell, if she kept me in music, because I am great at it (autistic special interest, my grandma also taught me to read music when I was 5), I could've developed a cute little thing called Self Esteem. But no.Instead I was humiliated and left to flounder. It wouldn't be until at least 2nd grade until I felt proficient at anything at all. I didn't really hit my stride and come out of my shell until 3rd grade until I had one of the most amazing teachers who presumed competence of me (she also had previous experience teaching Sped so that helps). It wouldn't be until 4th grade when I was diagnosed with ADHD. It wouldn't be until early my senior year of high school that I was diagnosed as autistic (formerly asperger's) as well as dysgraphic/DOWE. A whole bunch of people missed the memo before then and it was ugly. Some missed it since and it was still ugly. There are many amazing teachers (my 4th grade teacher, my 6th grade math teacher, my orchestra director from jr high and high school both— the last one especially), and there are many more teachers who have no business teaching at all (first 7th grade English teacher directly comes to mind, out of many, but F her in particular especially). I wouldn't wish my kindergarten experience on anyone and until it came out that I was enduring this abusive "therapy" my parents thought pretty highly of that teacher and were totally oblivious to her "dark side."I went to the high school years later to pick up my paperwork from my old student file (get it, or it will be destroyed, they said, of course). So what was in this mystery file? Nothing about any IEPs I had in late high school, a really old-ass 504 plan from 6th grade. There was a health chart from K-8, an incident file from where I injured myself smacking my head on a gym locker and bleeding all over the place as a teen. Definitely there was a letter from my mom handwritten to my elementary principal on why he did not have permission to paddle me (you know why, because I got paddled during an anxiety attack), but there were DOZENS of pages of this bullshit documenting my behavioral intervention courtesy of my kindergarten teacher. Like, why even waste so many trees telling the world that I am fidgeting or out of my seat for the 50th time? Ugh. Now I can be out of my seat whenever I want within reason, and have two large cigar boxes worth of fidgets that I have collected for when I can't be out of my chair. Apparently her deal to enforce neurotypical behavior has dramatically failed lol. It's a good thing that I can love and accept myself for who I am now instead of who I will never be. It only took almost dying over it and over a decade's worth of therapy to get here though.Little did my kindergarten teacher know, my kindergarten behavior of wandering the room, stimming with swirling lefty scissors on my fingers was actually an upgrade from my preschool behavior of flipping up my skirt with high kicks while singing and dancing the can-can on the table top. She had no idea, and was never qualified to handle a kid like me. Cheers.Are you really sure you wanted to ask us what we remembered learning from kindergarten now?