What Would You Do?

My son is in third grade. Yesterday after school, I noticed he had a postage stamp-size hole in the back of his shirt. Upon examination, it was obvious the hole had been deliberately cut, not torn. It was a fairly neat little square.

I wrote what I thought was a neutral, informative note to the kiddo's teacher and sent the shirt to school with the note the next day. When I picked up the kiddo, he told me the teacher had tried to get him to admit that he'd cut the hole himself.

Huh??

First of all, the kiddo is not destructive. Never has been. Second, the kiddo wouldn't have turned his shirt around in class, or anywhere else, for that matter; this is a kid who doesn't want the world to see even part of his chest. Third, if the kiddo is limber and coordinated and sneaky enough to have cut a square in the center of the back of his shirt, I should sign him up for the circus.

Now I'm annoyed that she spent time telling the kiddo he probably cut the hole himself, and that when SHE was a kid, she colored all over someone's front stoop. So just because SHE was kind of a mischievous kid, she assumes my kid cut the back of his own shirt? For the record, he was genuinely shocked when I initially said it looked like someone had cut his shirt. And I know when this kid is lying, and he wasn't.

So what would you do? Drop it? Write another note? Talk to her in person? For whatever it's worth, I get the impression she has it in for the kiddo this year. This strikes me as WEIRD because he's never had another teacher give him so much trouble. I know he didn't turn into a different kid all of a sudden this school year. Also, this teacher has used other slightly shaming tactics to manage the class.

As I told the kiddo, sometimes you get a teacher or boss you like, and sometimes you get one you don't like, and you have to learn to deal with them no matter what. Still, I'd sort of like to tell off this teacher. I won't do anything nasty, certainly. But you know what I mean.