A mom in Mississippi claimed that a teacher "shamed" her son with a "Zero Award" at school.
Patricia Buckley said her teenage boy Bradley, 14, received it from his teacher at the Leake Central Junior High School in Leake County.
The devastated mom said she first noticed something wasn’t right after picking her son up from school and noticed that the document was “balled up like he was ashamed.”
Buckley asked her son what was wrong, and he relayed the news. His instructor - reportedly in her first year of teaching - had given him “The Zero Award,” a disheartening certificate with his name and the words, “It’s impossible to be me. Don’t try. You’ll never find a solution” displayed on it.
“I think it was so horrible for him to get this award,” Buckley told Michaila Franklin of the local ABC outlet WAPT of the letter.
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Certainly, this didn’t sit right with the mom, who said her son didn’t deserve such a degrading accolade.
When the reporter asked what “The Zero Award” was supposed to mean, she said: “I don’t know. That’s why I called the superintendent’s office to find out.”
Following the mortifying moment, Buckley said that she would do whatever she could for her son so that it could “never happen again” to him or any “child.”
And although she spoke to the Leake County Schools’ superintendent on numerous occasions, Buckley claimed they have yet to respond with solutions.
She went on to say that her son wants to stay at the same school, but she’s considering sending him elsewhere due to the incident.
Indy100 reached out to Leake Central Junior High School for comment.
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