A Brampton mother says she is shocked she wasn’t told her six-year-old son’s teacher taped off an area on the floor and a triangle around his desk to teach him about personal space.

Colene Edwards was first concerned when her son Anelka Farquharson’s teacher, a long-term supply, called her and said her son was having trouble learning about personal space, because, at four-foot-two, he is much taller than the other students.

There had been incidents of her son bumping into other kids, Edwards said she was told, and that accommodations had been made to address this.

Edwards said she asked three times to come in and see them and was told to wait until parent-teacher night on Oct. 13.

It wasn’t until that night that Edwards saw the accommodations that were made: a taped-off rectangle on the classroom floor for her son and a “pie-shaped” area around his desk.

“(The teacher) never once mentioned when she had the opportunity when we spoke on the phone . . . that she put tape on the ground or at his desk,” said Edwards.

The Peel District School Board disavowed the approach in a statement: “There are many strategies that can be used around student personal space, which should always include consultation with families.

“This would not be a strategy the board would recommend.”

Edwards said the strategy singled out her child.

But the school board’s communication director says that was not the case.

“There were actually three other students in the class using this strategy to learn personal space,” Brian Woodland said in an email to the Star.

“He had a square on the floor for daily physical activity where all 20 kids dance, jump, do push-ups and sit-ups,” Woodland said. “He was in his spot for (physical activity time) three times in a week, not segregated for whole periods of time.”

Woodland said the student’s desk had a triangle around it as a “personal space reminder.”

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Following the parent-teacher night, Edwards met with the principal and they decided to move her son to a new class.

Farquharson is now self-conscious about his size, said his mother, adding she wants to take him to a Raptors game to show him it’s OK to be tall and that “good things come in all sizes.”

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