Suffering bullying from the principal
Esmeralda, Rocío’s mother
I am the mother of two girls, one nine years old and the other seven, the latter with type one diabetes. My husband and I have experienced many events, some good and some not so good, but February 25, 2015 will remain in our memory as the day our lives took a 180-degree turn. Our youngest daughter had a catarrhal condition and for two days had been very sleepy and down, which struck us as very strange, as she is normally a very active child. Added to this was the fact that she was very thirsty and urinated a lot, especially at night.
We knew something was wrong with her and decided to take her to the hospital. The wait to find out what could happen to her felt eternal. After examining her and doing a blood glucose test, the pediatrician looked at us with a face that showed she didn’t like what she had to tell us. When she said that she had probably just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and that she had to be admitted, our world fell apart.
Is our little one diabetic? Forever? And we couldn’t have done anything to prevent it? We couldn’t believe the news, it couldn’t be true…
Amidst all that chaos, in April of that same year, another problem arose: schooling. When only two months had passed since her diagnosis, I found myself having to pre-register her at the Early Childhood Education center where her older sister was enrolled, as she was starting the first year of Early Childhood Education in September at a school in Algeciras.
Faced with my great concern about how my daughter would be attended to at school, I decided to make an appointment with the school principal a few months in advance, which ended up being a disaster. The first thing that woman managed to tell me was that education was not compulsory until age 6 and why I was going to enroll my daughter in school. That left me speechless. She then added that if I wanted to enroll her, I could do so in a Special Center for Special Education. My bewilderment upon hearing so much nonsense was enormous, while also serving to sink me even further into the sorrow I already felt.
Due to my lack of knowledge, the only thing that occurred to me then was to speak with the Diabetes Unit at the Algeciras Hospital and ask what other children in the same circumstances as my daughter did when facing the enrollment process. There, they put me in touch with the doctor from the Educational Guidance Team of Campo de Gibraltar, and when she learned of the response I had received, the school principal became furious and decided to go see her to demand explanations. Finally, the doctor managed to get my daughter enrolled in school.
Despite having overcome that great challenge of the enrollment process, I must say that during the three years my daughter was enrolled in that school, she suffered bullying by the principal. Although from the very first moment her preschool teacher took responsibility for welcoming her, I had to constantly go to the school to attend to my daughter, as the principal did not allow any teacher or monitor to help her. It was a complete ordeal.
Among the numerous anecdotes I still remember, I recall one time when my daughter’s teacher was late and arrived at school five minutes later than usual. Those five minutes had not yet passed when the principal called me to come to the school to pick up my daughter. When I went, the teacher had already arrived; apparently, she had simply had a problem with her car.
Another day, they made me go to my daughter’s class and accompany her because her teacher had to go to the doctor and would be absent. I also remember another occasion when my daughter’s class went on a field trip to a farm school, and I had to follow the bus that was taking them in my own car, wait an hour after they had finished their lunch, and go in to give her insulin. When I finished doing so, I had to leave again and wait outside while I watched the teachers and some student teachers chat and sunbathe while the farm’s monitors attended to the children.
I could tell many other anecdotes that were repeated during the three years my daughter was enrolled in that school, like the time the principal got angry because the president of the AMPA had changed the breakfast schedule for Andalusia Day to my daughter’s class. That man, with good intentions, made the breakfast coincide with the time my daughter had to be injected with insulin, so that she could participate in the breakfast with her classmates. It seems that when the principal found out, she started yelling at him, and said in the School Council that she was going to make our lives impossible, and she certainly succeeded.
The educational guidance team’s doctor would come by occasionally and try to put that woman in her place, but then she would continue with her nonsense. Once the doctor was outraged because the principal had not bothered at all to set up a suitable room for my daughter to have her routine check-ups: changing her catheter, giving her insulin, etc. We always had to do it in the middle of class, in the bathroom while students came in and out, or in a small room with piled-up tables and chairs that they used as a storage room and which had a strong smell of dampness. Her privacy was never respected.
The problem is that parents, in these situations, are completely helpless due to lack of information. Currently, I am preparing for the competitive examinations for Educational Guidance for Secondary Education, and that has allowed me to learn firsthand about the legislation and some rights that I now know I should have fought for my daughter. At that time, my ignorance made me keep quiet and vent my frustration by crying. It outraged me that there were people like that.
When my daughter was about to start Primary school, we moved to Malaga, where we enrolled her in a new school that we are delighted with to this day. The school does everything that is “within their possibilities,” however, my daughter still lacks a monitor to attend to her properly, as she is only seven years old and it is still too soon for her to know how to properly manage the insulin pump she must carry with her. When my husband and I have asked the school to request support for my daughter, they have responded that her illness is something temporary and that when she is older she will not need it, to which I reply that it is better for the State and for us, that in the future we can save ourselves that help, but now my daughter needs it.
Currently, I continue to take care of my daughter and go to her educational center whenever she has any complications, and I must say that I understand it perfectly, because it is impossible for a teacher with 26 children in class to attend to my daughter. However, the truth is that both the tutor and the rest of the teaching staff collaborate in everything within their power to help her. The problem is the lack of human resources. Currently, an “inclusive education” is advocated that addresses the diversities and difficulties presented by students, but I think there is still a lot of work to be done, as investment is needed in human, assistance, material, and pedagogical resources to achieve quality and egalitarian education.