I want to put this out so that no one else has to go through this horrible experience with their child. I agree with the others, in my opinion, our child's teacher, Ms. Schmid, at Harbor Day School should not be able to label or diagnose children without the proper cridentials. Our child had always thrived when it came to doing math and loved reading. Ms. Schmid was the teacher and our child would come home not feeling good, sad and feeling not worthy. When we went to our first teacher conference she told us that our child was "just not a fit for the Harbor Day School" and that our child had learning disabilities.
This was a shcok to hear because our child has always performed well in school. Ms. Schmid told us that our child needed to be tested by another specialist and that our child needed a tutor and special help if we wanted to stay at Harbor Day. This sent us into a disasterous course of events, starting with paying a large sum of money to have our child tested with a "qualified professional." We had numerous sleepless nights and our child was miserable because Ms Schmid made our child feel inadequate compared to the other children.
Testing day came and the doctor asked us why we were there and I informed him that the teacher told us that our child had learning problems. He performed many tests and came out to us and told us that he saw "absolutely no learning problems" he said that our child was very bright and above avererage in nearly all of the testing, with math being extremely high. I asked him if he was sure this was correct and he said that he was correct and provided me later with a written report.
Our child proceeded to have a horrible year with feelings of being inadequte but managed to make it through. From that point forward, we had issues with our child worrying about doing poorly in school because of Ms. Schmid.
Our child performed excellent in school from then on and graduated the school at the top of the class. I learned from other parents that Ms. Schmid had done this to other children. I alerted the school about everything but they did not do much. I asked what her credentials were to do the labeling and diagnosis that she did, they are not what is needed to diagnos a child with those serious accusations.
Our child went on to perform at the top of the class in high school, valadictorian and accepted to what some say is the number one University in the world. Does this sound like a kid with serious learning problems? There were no specialists hired to help our child get over a learning disability because there were no learning issues to being with.
Our only issue was MS. Schmid and her, in our opinion, "unqualified" label/diagnosis or what ever you want to call what she does. In our opinion, she should not be in the position of "learning specialist" and defiitely should not be diagnosing and labeling children and causing emotional distress!