My 10 year old is finishing 4th grade and moving up to the junior high next year. For their graduation ceremony the kids were sent home with a long strip of paper with instructions to trace themselves and decorate their outline any way they want as long as they did not use REAL clothes. Being a HUGE Doctor Who fan my son decided he was The Doctor running into his TARDIS with his sonic screwdriver in hand to get away from a swarm of Dalek. It came out fantastic. He even glued on different shades of brown thread to make the hair on his head. Sounds pretty innocent, right?
Wrong!
He was reprimanded by his school principal for having an outline with a weapon on it. A screwdriver can be used as a weapon and it looks like he is breaking into that blue telephone booth with the screwdriver. Wah? Huh? She went further to say that he should have made his face on his outline instead of him running into the TARDIS, back to the observer. She tried to make him draw a face on the back of his head but he refused. She offered him buttons to make the back of his suit look like the front. Umm? No where in the instructions was there anything that said make sure your face is in the picture. The instructions were pretty clear that you can do whatever you want as long as you didn’t use real clothes.
He was proud of the end result of his projects so I fought to make sure it stayed as it was. He had to write a paper on what his outline meant. No other child in the entire grade had to do so. I told him to write it as if someone has never seen Doctor Who because clearly the principal had not. This is what he wrote:
My outline is of me playing The Doctor on Doctor Who. I am running to my TARDIS which is stuck looking like a London police call box from the 1960s. The TARDIS is short for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. It is a time machine and a spaceship.
I am holding my Sonic Screwdriver. I can use it to repair alien technology, do medical scans, track alien life forms and occasionally open the TARDIS door when I forget my key. The Doctor often uses his sonic screwdriver to save the universe.
I am running into my TARDIS with my sonic screwdriver to get away from a swarm of Dalek. I will use my sonic screwdriver to repair the controls of my TARDIS and save the planet from the bad guys by disabling their weapons. I do not like weapons.
The thing that makes me most exasperated with this is that back in December he had a class assignment that required him to make a WORKABLE bow and 2 USABLE arrows out of materials found in nature. So having 9 and 10 year old children make WORKABLE/USABLE weaponry is allowed but drawing a Science Fiction-based tool is not.
This same school district suspended several seniors for 5 days on the charge of “assault with a deadly weapon” and one of them was not even at school at the time but suspended all the same. What weapon did these seniors dare bring into the halls of the high school? Water Balloons.
ADDled Adventures 
It’s BRILLIANT! I love what your son drew! I think it is ridiculous that someone would think a sonic screwdriver is a weapon… But seriously it’s a drawing! In comparison to having the children make actual weapons…. And how are water balloons weapons, granted a wet tile floor can be dangerous! I really question the standards in that school district. Bravo for standing up for your kids. I’m going to show this to my family when they get home. (You posted this on my youngest sons birthday. Lol)
soo right! and seriosly! I want that picture! its really awesome
Which school district?