Teacher forces 'the only friend the five-year-old boy has ever made' to denounce him publicly

Had it been my child...


Detective: "Have you had any contact with a Wendy Portillo Ms. 768??"

Me: "No, detective, you're sadly mistaken....I sure haven't"

How can one spin this idea of voting someone out of the class as a great and wonderful teaching tool? Survivor is a CBS Reality show and adults play that game and when they are voted out some can barely handle it without being emotional and they know it's a game. This little boy wouldn't understand the notion of such a game let alone take it with a grain salt.

This isn't even within the realm of reason and far more fictitious sounding than fiction could ever be.

LETS VOTE.

WHO WANTS BUSH OUT OF OFFICE. Seriously though this was unkind and unacceptable. The child was five years old, disabilities or not he should not have been picked over and judged by other five years old and an unfeeling teaching. The teacher should recieve disaplinary action, i mean really how old are we. I have no children however if this had been my brother i would have been extremely angry and she would have felt my WRATH.

This is horrible. No teacher should do this, she should be fired if this is true. What are we teaching kids by voting other kids out of class. I had an autistic kid in my class in 3rd grade, he would anger us with his tantrums but my teacher wouldnt kick him out, we dealth with it. This makes me wonder if this is happeningn elsewhere. Absolutely, no excuse.

bitch!

thats friggin harsh, dont care how he acts. Hes five years old! being bullied by teachers and classmates already isnt gunna do much good for him!

fire the friggin witch

This is a heartbreaking thing to do to a child that is doing the very best he can to fit in and who knows he is different. This teacher obviously was uneducated about the symptoms of autism and has done a great deal of harm to this child. Even if he weren't on the spectrum, this is cruel to any child at any age when acceptance by other children is crucial to development.

Reading this brings up mixed feelings in me. First I turn angry how the f*** the teacher came up with that idea! How are you supposed to react with only 5 years of age? Do you seriously think you get a fair vote? They might not even know the defninition of such!
On the other hand I feel very sad. How come that disabled individuals still get descriminated? Are we still that ignorant or even stupid?

unfortunatly Rkay, most of the world is probably more stupid and ignorant than ever before. We only need a few individuals to run how we live and most people are fine to go along with what they say, not bat an eyelid, and mainly jus not give a shit about what happens :/

until people can think for themselves, people are gunna be discriminated

Poor kid. He was probably definitely a handful, but even the most normal functioning kid, this would be devastating. That teacher is nothin' but a big ole bully.

Please take a history course. Any history course. You're coming off very stupid and ignorant by acting like we're somehow devolving.

This kid can't be worse than Bush....

This incident is going to effect this kids life FOREVER! never again will he look at school, friends, teachers, people;exc.. the same EVER again!

that is the most disgusting thing i have ever heard! No child should be put through that no matter there age gender or race. its wrong and extremely distrubing. it makes me feel for my younger sister. she about 10 and she dislexis. when she writes some of her letters apear turned. people pick on her all of the time. it hurts my heart to think about what elizabeth has to go through.

Its unfortunate that there aren't more people that want to be good teachers.

Instead, teaching jobs are being filled by unqualified barely college grads who aren't fit to teach their own dog's, much less anyone else's children.

That's sick! Aspberger's and other Austism Spectrum disorders need to be treated with far more respect and attention that the normal student body!

The school board should be notified immediately - they need to intervene, and that teacher needs to be reprimanded if not removed!

witch

That teacher should have just done her job and teach. School is not a contest for ego trips. If she can't cope with misbehavior then she shouldn't be around children. Sounds like this lady needs a time-out and a call to her parents more than any of her students. It sucks to think wackos are an influence at many schools across the country. Glad I don't have kids!!!!

Somebody explain to me how you handle a situation like this. The other students should not be hampered intellectually by one student; however, kicking the kid out of class is obviously an extremely vile way of getting rid of the problem. How do you not discriminate against this kid yet have your class function in its regular format?

That's so screwed up! Even if the kid was horrible in class, the issue should have been between the teacher, the admin., and the parent, with no involvement whatsoever by the students. What an immature way to handle a complicated situation...

This teacher will NOT get away with this. This is a violation of Special Education student rights. The teacher will undoubtedly face charges against the parents and (hopefully) the school district. It makes me so sad to see how little has been done to change the education system in this country. To think it was only 50 years ago that these students were not even allowed to receive an education.

As a parent with a son that has special needs and skims the autism spectrum, this is a very sad story. Ultimately it proves that there are many people out there that are not only unbelievably selfish, but they have no idea that to be a parent of a child that is already behind the ball that this kind of rubbish only makes it more terrifying to allow a state run institution full access to influence your child. Our world clearly needs more compassion for those that aren't born with the same capabilities as most of us. This teacher should never be allowed to teach a child again. Period.

I was the victim of a teacher who constantly ridiculed and berated me in 3rd grade and then I had the same teacher for 6th grade, that teacher ruined school for me. My parents were teachers so they always sided with the teacher.Ms.Portillo should have her teaching certificate revoked,she obviously doesn't have the common sense needed to educate.

How does this woman look in the mirror everyday and live with the pain she caused this little boy?

What a ghastly person! And I thought MY teachers were bad... this takes the cake.

omgg...
this is horrible.. this is the kind of thing that starts Virgina Techs

I am the actual son of the teacher that everyone is commenting on. right now I am disappointed in the media. I have first hand accounts and details of that day. For legal reasons she has not been able to tell her side of the story. the school board is permitting it. My mother has done everything she could prior to the incident. The school is not qualified to diagnost any child as autistic. The child is very disruptive and was hindering the learning of other students. When she posed the question to the students how they felt about his behavior, the children replied. No one was forced to disown their friend. This Lady has gone through great length to taint her image as an educator. Its a personal vendeta against her. When she met with the mother the mothetr asked the child "Are you sad?" and all the child responded was "Yes" . Its unfair the way the incident is being portrayed. There are always two sides to a story. Opinions are being posted based off of one side of the story, so for those who don't know the truth, respectfully keep an open mind

She posed a question to a group of 5 year olds about how they felt about his behavior? 5 year olds to solve a behavioral problem?

Not to solve a behavior problem. it was to merely show the student how he was affecting his peers. not to belittle him in front the class. it wasn't as if he was pulled up on stage.

Yes there are always two sides as her "actual son" states but no matter what taking a vote is uncalled for regardless of other circumstances. If this was a learning tool perhaps she should consider what her actions might incur. If I was a parent of any child in that class I would be asking for my child to be taken out as I would not want someone with those values teaching him/her. As for the "actual Son" perhaps your "mother" should engage a lawyer of her own so to speak to all these questions?

I severely doubt this woman meant any harm by this. Teaching 5 year olds must be a daunting task, but she could have handled the situation better.

IN addition the child was not treated as disabled prior to the incident. The school has advised her seek professional council and she did not. it wasn't till after the fact that she tags her son as autistic. If anything its neglect on the parents part, for the amount of time her son needed attention and nothing was done on her end. the teachers and the school has done everything in their power to cater to the child

I agree that how everything played out was not the best way to go about it but the way people are speaking of my mother are biased and unfair. legally we can't speak because of the school board but the extent at wich this women is going to ruin her reputation is unexceptable. There was no ill intent, her records are impecable, her reviews throught the yrs are spotless. Little do people know but the mother is calling the parents of the students and trying to gain supporters. Sad. Alot of people don't know the truth... Go to TCPALM.Com. Search Anthony Westbury. Scroll down and click the link related to a teacher.... read it (tcpalm is the local newspaper website. its credited, everthing on the website is published in the news paper)

this story has hit me in the worst way.How could a teacher be so stupid?? This poor little boy couldn't possibly understand that this incident had nothing to do with him, yet he will carry this in him for the rest of his life.Give me 5minutes with this lady...!If this was my daughter...

Thats sad that a teacher would act that way with any child let alone a child with autism, I have Aspergers syndrome and my youngest son has moderate/severe autism and it doesn't take a degree, special training or any type of catering to deal with us anymore then you need to deal with anyone, a little bit of patience and compassion is all that is required.

this dosent suprise me much at all, i had to switch schools because at my last school teachers were so harsh. They would call me stupid, retarded, ect. One of my teachers even told me that i would get no where in my life, told me that i'll be pumping her gas in no time. maybe if we didnt waste so much money in the war we could spend it on geting better teachers.

Again people are not LISTENING THE CHILD IS NOT AUTISTIC!!!!!!!!! listen to yourselves commenting about things you know nothing about. That's my mother people are talking about and i know first hand exactly what happened. the media is one sided. who here as heard any quotes from the teacher? no one, because legally the school board is not permitting it. So all you hearing is a one sided testimony. Do you believe everything you read? please tell me it isn't so. read my previous comments.

The news sources indicate that the child is in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger's which is a disease on the Autistic spectrum.

The saddest thing to me is that these kids are going to take away the idea that it's okay to treat someone who's different with cruelty. Removing the child from the class is one thing, but there's absolutely no excuse for publicly voting on the issue and allowing the child to be treated so badly by his peers.

in the process now of being diagnosed, but now she finds it convenient to test now, when all along she wasn't so moved to test him. it was not a public voting as you describe. did you read my previous comments at all? the peers treated him far less cruely by his peers than he ever treated them. if you only knew the half. the mother is exploiting this issue. not saying that the way everything went about couldn't have been done differently but, you don't have the whole stroy and people are making judgements based off of one persons testimony. do you believe in two sides of a story?

I'd been out of town for a few days over the holiday weekend, so I was catching up on the sun-bleached newspapers that had been littering my front yard.

A name suddenly caught my eye: Wendy Portillo of Morningside Elementary School in Port St. Lucie.

The name — and the reason for the story that mentioned her — made me catch my breath.

Portillo is accused of allowing her kindergarten class at Morningside to "vote out" a 5-year-old fellow student who apparently has a history of behavior problems in the classroom. The student, David Barton, is undergoing diagnosis for possible autism, which makes what happened in Portillo' s classroom even more difficult to understand.

The original story attracted more than 300 comments online. Many expressed outrage, some were downright unpleasant. There were calls for her firing, even for the child's parents to sue her individually.

The reason my heart skipped a beat was that I know Wendy Portillo and I simply cannot connect the lady I met with the person I read about in the paper.

I've spoken to Portillo several times on the phone and met her in person about three weeks ago. I was put in touch with her by a fellow teacher at Morningside.

After winning the state championships against schools from as far afield as Key West, Portillo and her team of third- through fifth-grade students have been invited to the world championships of Odyssey of the Mind at the end of this week at the University of Maryland.

Odyssey of the Mind is an almost 30-year-old organization that sets up academic problem-solving competitions for students from kindergarten through college level all over America and in 28 or so other countries around the world. The Morningside kids and their coach Portillo deserved some press coverage, the teacher told me.

The Morningside students had to create a humorous stage performance that explains the evolutionary demise of the dinosaurs in a grand total of eight minutes or less. The kids have to write the script, build the props and create the costumes. They've been working on "DinoStories" since last October, meeting several times a week. As Portillo told me, "there's a lot of sacrifice involved" and team members have to be extremely dedicated.

I meet a lot of people in my job and like to think I'm a fairly good judge of character. I like to think I can smell a rat a mile away.

Wendy Portillo gave not a whiff of anything amiss.

On the contrary, she seems a loving, caring person who genuinely wants only the best for her students. She certainly gave me the impression she's the sort of kindergarten teacher you'd remember with affection later in life.

And yet, here she finds herself in crisis, removed from her classroom. Reportedly, she admitted to holding the classroom vote, but now school board protocol prevents her from airing her side of the story. The Port St. Lucie Police Department and State Attorney's Office have both declined to press charges of child abuse.

There's obviously another side to this story and maybe one day we'll hear it. In the meantime, I'm suspending judgment. I think after teaching our kids for 12 years in St. Lucie County — nine of them at Morningside to some pretty lofty levels — we owe her that.