oops, corrected post:

Susan - If you have issues about a teacher and the principal doesn't support you, you have two choices: 1)Contact the teachers professional body and lodge a complaint 2) Move. 3) My guess is that you stayed, made a nuisance of yourself and embarrassed your child. Were the problems resolved?

LOL-- yes, they were. Since you "asked"--

In my job, I reported directly to the district superintendent and the principal was a good friend-- I had credibility. When this teacher pulled this, I raised my eyebrows from behind my desk, asked her to let go of my child, and thanked her for her report. She left my office (and my son) to go back to her classroom. From then on, I simply used my telephone: I dialed down from my office, to the principal's, when there were goings-on he should hear, and he came right up to hear and see for himself. She retired that summer. THAT was between THEM. I never bothered mentioning it to my boss.

The next year I was given a much larger office down the hall when a classroom became vacant. I only needed half of it, so I moved a large, comfy couch and a folding table in, and decorated it in bright but restful colors. It was across from the formal teachers' lounge.... but I had better coffee, an intentionally encouraging attitude about their inherent power as teachers, and a listening ear. And so my office became the de facto faculty and staff lounge as well as a place to bring behavior-disordered kids who needed the occasional kindly break from their classroom, also across the hall. These teachers made sure to let me know, tactfully, that they appreciated how I had handled the "Doris" situation the year before. (Of course they also appreciated the jobs my referendum-passing work had helped them retain the year before I went on the supt.'s staff; about 1/3 of the faculty were scheduled to be cut until that referendum unexpectedly passed.)

Later that year, I quietly mediated a staff revolt/principal's demands over new curricula being introduced along with a prematurely-"required" whole new teaching method the faculty had not yet gotten confident about trying. It kept that good faculty and that good principal out of the disciplinary tracks they were pushing one another towards, and allowed for a better working realtionship between them such that the principal became the district's new director of personnel and contract negotiator the following year instead of losing his job. He served effectively in that role for quite a long time.

Since you asked.

~Susan