What Was She Thinking?
September 25, 2009 by Jill Cornfield
Filed under Health
As sometimes happens, the comments posted about a news item are as eye-opening as the event itself. A Miami special education teacher, Sylvia Tagle, will be sentenced Oct. 7 for spiking an autistic student’s soda with hot sauce. I read several reports in an attempt to untangle what happened; best as I can figure out, the soda was on Tagle’s desk and the student took it. Whose soda was it? Tagle’s defense attorney says it was her own. (Because so many people love hot sauce in soda.) Prosecutors say she did it knowing the student would take the soda, and she put the hot sauce in to teach him a lesson.
Photo courtesy of jhritz (flickr.com)
But any hot-sauce-in-soda-loving teacher would never leave such a drink accessible. Alex roots around in other people’s bags whenever he has the chance, and I’m always grateful when people laugh it off. And, yes. We tell him over and over again to leave people’s things alone. No touching! Not yours! Thousands and thousands of times, now.
As the mother of a boy with autism, I would expect his teacher to keep anything out of his reach that she didn’t want him to have. It’s sickening to think that a special education teacher planned to hurt a child. Took the soda. Thought, “I’ll show him!” Wondered what to use. Settled on hot sauce: nontoxic (more or less) but sure to cause pain and misery. Spiked the soda. Left it on her desk as a lure. Then, the wonderful payoff when the kid takes the bait. They say the rewards of teaching are unmatched by any other thrill. I hope Tagle enjoyed her glorious moment.
Plain and simple, this is bullying. Outright cruelty. Taking advantage of someone who is less capable.
For horrendously insensitive comments and more brutality, read comments here on Mom Logic. I know it’s naive, but I expected better from a site supposedly read by mothers. One of the more humane remarks is from someone named Tom. Sadly, someone named Nancy, herself a special education teacher, says she sees no problem at all with a teacher keeping a can of soda on her desk and expecting the kids to leave it alone. “Maybe hot sauce is what it takes for him to learn,” she says.
I have to remind myself that sometimes the vocal outspoken are a minority. It’s just a handful of remarks out of a nation of caring people. But it’s still shocking to come across. There are also some comments from people who are shocked at the “little brat deserved it” remarks, so that’s worth noting too.
I wouldn’t have thought we’d have to specifically outline this for special ed teachers but I guess some of them need more specific guidelines: not only can you not hit our kids, you can’t bait something they find tempting with hot sauce or something they’ll find bitter and unpleasant, even if it doesn’t kill them. In other words, no, you may not put hot sauce (or any other noxious substance) in soda (or any other food a child could consume).
Five years in prison for an incident involving soda may seem extreme. And if it were two kids involved, or a parent at the end of her tether, I’d agree. But it’s a special education teacher, someone who’s been trained to cope with difficult situations and difficult kids. At the end of the day, she goes home and can drink all the soda she wants. Her student has the same life, the same limitations he carried around during the school day. It’s not a job for him, it’s his life. And a teacher who schemes and dreams up a plan to hurt a student in order to “teach” him deserves to be taught a lesson herself.
So, five years in prison? Sounds fair to me.
Thanks for validating my own reaction of disgust with this story. The facts were hard to get a handle on, and I imagined the same narrative you did, including the satisfaction we both think she may have felt at the child’s pain. I shudder. It is a relief to know I do not shudder alone.
This makes me sad, yet somehow I’m not surprised….which makes me even sadder!
WE recently took the girls to a small, local Fair. It had the potential to go very, very well. But, it proved to be way too much stimulation for them, and they were overwhelmed, and so we left.
But not before some stranger informed us that ‘we should spank them’.
After someone makes a negative comment, I usually point out that my child/children have autism, and their comments aren’t helpful. This usually leavesthe person feeling embarassed. (I never asked for their comments in the first place, so they asked for it.)
I find it both amazing and sad that you all can be so condemning without knowing more than what you read in the newspaper. This teacher has been putting hot sauce in her soda for fifteen years that I personally know of. Yes, it is unfortunate that a child got his hands on it. What is sad is that she was so beside herself that she did not call on any of the many people that she knew over the years who could easily testify that she puts hot sauce in her sodas. She also did not seek assistance from the countless parents that could testify on her behalf for the good that she has done for their children over the last thirty years.
This story disgusts me in so many ways, I almost don’t know where to begin. However, first and foremost, this teacher is supposedly trained and PAID to work with special needs kids. If she has half a brain in her head, she would no doubt understand this child does not comprehand that he can’t touch or take other’s belongings; he isn’t doing it to be defiant, he isn’t a “bad” child. The logical fix to her problem should have been to move the drink where it could not be reached.
I am hearing more and more stories about special ed teachers and aides who mistreat these kids, and all I can say there is a special place in Hell for them. I understand they may get burned out or aggravated, but if you can’t hack it, quit. Life is hard enough for the child and the parents as well, no one needs the added worry that our kids will be harmed while we entrust them to people who are supposed to be providing help.
Glad you agree! It can seem, at first read, like it’s not that big a deal, until you re-enact, in your own head, all the steps that went into it. Premeditated crimes always get longer than spontaneous ones!
There were other charges of abuse as well (hair pulling and refusing to change dirty diapers, according to an aide), and that’s what makes it easy to accept the jury’s guilty verdict. If you are in touch with Sylvia Tagle please let her know she is welcome to present her side here.
I’m sorry the fair was over-stimulating to your girls and that you had to suffer the comments of insensitive strangers. I never really understand what leads people to make comments only in order to make someone else feel bad.