Our education struggles for our gifted little boy

These are actual stories of disciplinary stupidity from schools which we've collected and used with the permission of the parents. Feel free to laugh and cry at the same time -- we did.

• 5-year-old Walter was given a yellow card for coloring his apple green and yellow instead of red, even though he explained to the teacher that his was a McIntosh apple.
  
  
•  8-year-old Lizzie was sent to the principal's office for claiming that she was reading Moby Dick and when she got there she took the book out of her bag and showed him, uncertain if the library might have changed its mind about how long she could check it out.
  
  
• 6-year-old Ben was forced to miss recess because he hadn't stopped wiggling. He then got the "sad phone call home" because he couldn't sit still for centers.
  
  
• 5-year-old Paul was chastised for not singing with the class and lost his "respect" star when he told the teacher he'd be happy to sing if only they'd settle on one pitch.
  
  
• 6-year-old Warren was the only one in class not allowed to read his Tuesday night writing homework. Topic: What I learned in first grade. He wrote, "In first grade I learned really boring stuff. In the beginning, I was at a different school. It was baby work like 0+0. Now today for "new school".... It is still too easy. I want negative numbers like 100-1,000= -900 and  rounding, biology, Saqqara, and I also want to learn Mt. Everest. I want to really learn about high grade levels because it's more interesting."
  
  
• 4-year-old Devon was given an assignment in counting money. He had to count out 28 cents, coloring the correct number of pennies. Well, he only colored in 10 circles, so he was marked incorrect. Being autistic, this caused a major meltdown and his mother was called to talk to the teacher. After finally getting him calmed down, he explained to the teacher he had colored two circles silver for dimes, and 8 brown for pennies. The teacher was floored because she had not taught about using dimes yet.
  
  
• 5-year-old Michael saw another child playing a video game on a hand-held machine in school. Michael was fascinated because he'd never seen anything like that before and because the child was playing it in school. The other child asked Michael to stop looking over his shoulder, but Michael didn't. The other child pushed him. Michael then got in trouble for "aggravating" the other child. (This story was relayed to the mother by the teacher, who somehow failed to notice how very odd the story sounded).
  
  
• In preschool, 4-year-old Timothy* was sent to sit in the kitchen for refusing to say the "Pledge of Allegiance."  His teacher said "If you're not proud to be an American, you can sit in the kitchen."  He told his mother that of course he was proud to be an American, but he thought it seemed stupid to have to say it every day.
  
  
• 6-year-old Graham, a first grader, had a strict teacher who didn't allow talking in class. When she mentioned one day they would be moving on to Science (Graham's favorite subject), he blurted out "Hurray!" She made him pull a card for talking. (We don't want enthusiastic learners, now do we?)
  
  
• 5-year-old Paul was wiggling too much during a story. The teacher stood up, took him bodily to a chair, told him to sit there and not move a muscle, and when he did, she decided it was conscious defiance, and sent him to detention. He needed to go to the bathroom.
  
  
• 6-year-old Janis was sent to detention for "daydreaming" in class (the teacher said this was an every day occurance). When Janis got to detention (a fourth-grade class in session) she found the teacher had dressed up as Sacagawea and was telling her story as if she was the young Indian woman. Janis was so fascinated that she did the assigned homework for the Sacagawea lesson and wanted to return the next day for the rest of the story and to turn in her work. Around the same time the following day, Janis tried to get noticed daydreaming, and when that didn't work, she stood up in class, announced loudly that she was "daydreaming" and was sent again to detention. She was also sent home with two notes: one from her first grade teacher complaining of her behavior, and another from the fourth grade teacher who was very impressed with Janis' report.
  
  
• "Holly" was a bright, fun girl who was kind to other kids and showed good leadership qualities. Her mother had moved her from a small, private school to a public school because she thrived in social activities and was feeling isolated. Holly's new teacher noticed that all the girls in her class wanted to be Holly's friend, which caused some discord. So she disciplined Holly for causing this friction amongst her classmates, and continually tried to break Holly away from the other girls in class activities. After a couple of months of this, Holly's mother removed her from the school.
  
  
  
  _______
  *Name changed per the parent