My daughter is in the same class. I spoke to the teacher who gave out the assignment. Her explanation was that the health class was held in the computer lab right before lunch and that some of the students didn't want to walk all the way upstairs at the end of the period to return the posters to her classroom. They made arrangements with the homeroom teacher to store their assignments there, and they disappeared from that point. I haven't received an explanation as to how they disappeared. It seems unlikely that the teacher would throw them out, but it seems equally unlikely that a custodian would come across a group of posters that were being appropriately stored and decide that they were garbage, at least without checking with the teacher first.

The other clarification that I received from the health teacher was about the length of the project. It was done over a 7-week span, but it was only 4 class periods. It was supposed to be an in-class assignment, and one of those classes was cancelled because of a storm, another because of other circumstances at the school which caused major disruptions to the day's schedule, and another was taken up with a lesson which I think was related to those circumstances. That's fair enough -- an in-class assignment shouldn't be done at home anyway in my opinion.

I explained to the teacher our frustrations with the situation. First of all, my daughter was home sick the day the posters were "relocated", so she herself has no firsthand knowledge of the circumstances of their relocation. Second, because it was an in-class assignment, she did all her work in class with her partner, using school computers. She did not know if she had any work saved and was unable to check because she was not allowed access to the school computers. I explained to the teacher that our position was that our daughter was simply not going to redo the work she had already done. The teacher was actually very sympathetic. She told me that she had been monitoring the progress of the class, that she knew that the students had already completed the majority of their "learning", and that was more important to her than having an actual poster, under the circumstances. The students involved are all good students, which the teacher acknowledged. She said that when she spoke to the students on Thursday, when the projects were missed, they told her that they could just redo the projects as they had done a lot of the work at home and had saved all their material on their home computers. She felt, therefore, that it would not be a hardship for them to simply reprint their material in a week. This was not the case for my daughter; presumably she felt she would be able to access her information on the school computers. The teacher agreed that redoing the work was not a reasonable option. She said that it was not her intention to make the kids do the work again, but that the students had indicated it was simply a matter of reprinting.

I asked her what her suggestion was for my daughter and her project partner. The teacher suggested that she scale down the mark and base it on an oral presentation (which was part of the assignment). That is a reasonable solution, as long as it is acceptable to my daughter and her partner. I don't know whether that changes anything for the other students involved; I can only intercede for my own child.

I'd like to make it clear that we are not enamoured of our school experience at this school, as Harold and some of the others who have commented here are aware (and like Harold, I'd love to see the data that suggests that NB schools are progressive -- compared to what??). If anyone were to suggest that I am a champion of the teachers, the teachers would likely collapse from their hysterical laughter! However, this experience reinforces the communication issue for me. I know that many parents are just too frustrated to talk to the teachers but for some reason, I always feel that I must, at the very least, intercede on behalf of my child. This is one of very few situations where I have had a positive outcome.

I told Harold's wife that I sometimes feel as if I am a lone voice in the wilderness. Over the past year or so, there have been many issues in this school which affect more kids than my own, but I think I have been the only parent to consistently take the school to task. It has been an excruciatingly frustrating experience. I wish it were easier for parents to work together to solve some of these problems; as long is it is only one "squeaky wheel" making the noise, it is a lot easier for the school to simply ignore the noise. However, as I have told the principal and various teachers, my first responsibility in this world is to my kids, and it isn't one I take lightly, so I guess I'll continue to "squeak" along.