Reading Recommendation: “Are you accidentally upsetting your adopted student?”

I have been waiting for a bomb of horrible adopter and adoption industry-centered articles to drop during NAAM2019. Maybe I hang out in the wrong circles, but I haven’t seen that many–so far. Perhaps these know-it-all entitleds and their clueless friends in the press are waiting for Gotcha Day (National Adoption Day, November 23) when thousands of children across the US get their names changed and their vital records and court documents sealed to protect them from themselves, their families, and their histories. They’ll be adopted!

I would, therefore, like to recommend an article  I read today, which exemplifies good stuff that can come out of NAM12019. Us, not them!

T Are you accidentally upsetting your adopted students? by Sara Herriott. published on the tes for Schools webpage. (can’t find what “tes” stands for). Herriott is an adoptee and deputy head of a primary school in Herefordshire, England.

Although Herriott is writing for a British audience, her blueprint for sound teaching behavior and practice travels well to the other side of the Atlantic. .

She writes:

We live in a world where our classrooms – wherever they are – will have children from a variety of backgrounds: adopted, fostered, “looked after”, special guardianships, children who have been conceived by egg donor, sperm donor, surrogacy and so on.

You would think that teachers, in the trenches of our current culture wars would recognize this. Apparently, they don’t since Herriot covers everything from schoolyard bullying to family tree and baby photo assignments, to teacher-inculcated adoption gratitude, all of which are familiar to American adoptee eyes and ears.  I honestly don’t remember suffering through a family tree assignment, Everybody else seems to, though, so maybe I’ve blocked it out.  At this late date, it is hard for me to imagine with the variety of family building, schemes available today, that this project is still assigned. Jesus! Up through college, I squirmed whenever the subject of adoption came up. My first husband didn’t even know I was adopted until a couple of days before we got married. How messed up is that?

I have another reading recommendation I planned to include today, but I’m having trouble putting it together. Maybe it will be done tomorrow.

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