So, That's How Poorly Ms Fox Behaved at Somerset Road Preschool, Southampton?

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing as a parent of Raisa Salwa Ahmed, who had been attending the Somerset Road Preschool (Southampton, SO17 3AA, Ofsted unique reference no: 131558) at Southampton for the last eight/nine months (since Sept/2007). I would like to put forward my following experiences that relates to misconduct and misexplanation from the preschool supervisor Ms Sheila Fox. I find her behaviour different and felt unsafe and unsure about the standard of care as she is also the supervisor of the preschool and decided to withdraw my child from the school.

Raisa attended three to four sessions per week at the Somerset Road Preschool (which sum up about 12 hours per week including lunch club hours). For the last five weeks, she also has been attending childminding and day nursing to make it more than 40 hours per week out-of-home care. I am sure you would appreciate that change of hours in out-of-home care has put obvious pressure on her. As a result, although she was previously learning to use toilet, she has slowed her toilet training recently. Ms Fox had sent me a letter with her concern that Raisa was almost 3.5 years old and it was time that she was potty trained. But the way she handed the letter to me seemed to me to be very rude. I have replied her with a letter saying, it was okay for her to be trained but we would like to make it happen without imposing extra pressure on her. According to her advice, I have also tried to prepare Raisa for the pre-school without giving her any nappies on two previous occasions. But Raisa had fever and cold on both occasions on her return and could not attend the preschool for following few days. I find Ms Sheila Fox’s imposition inappropriate as I would have expected her to make sure proper care of Raisa was taken while Raisa was without her nappies.

On 16th May 2008 morning I took Raisa to pre-school after she almost recovered from fever. I honestly mentioned to Ms Sheila Fox that Raisa is a 'little feverish' but playful and as such had to come in with her nappies. Ms Fox asked me (rudely) to take Raisa back without allowing me to do any further explanations. As I was trying to explain that Raisa was only feverish (my measure of 99 F, 98.4 F being normal) and she was playful and enthusiastic about preschool, Ms Sheila Fox extended no further explanation and insisted that I should leave with Raisa back home. I could see she was angry and rude, the reason of which was completely unknown to me. Her different behaviour to me and my child is increasingly becoming a point of concern and insecurity of my child. On my return I had been able to check with the health and hygiene policies of the preschool with the help of school register. The policies say ‘a child can should not be brought to school, if she has infectious or contagious disease or uncomfortable illness’. Ms Sheila has not allowed me to explain if she was that sick or if she had any kind of contagious illness (Raisa did not have any sign of infectious diseases neither she had any uncomfortable feeling, at all). I find Ms Fox’s behaviour different, appalling and not expected from someone who had been working so closely with children and their parents. I felt unsafe and insecure leaving my child with her (and the preschool) as I could see she has unexplainable anger/anguish she may have grown in and felt the necessity of taking my child off from the preschool. This is obviously a very hard decision for me to take as it is difficult to arrange another but with the given circumstances it was the grave essence.
I would really appreciate if you kindly take appropriate measures in making sure such staffs are responsible, do not make it uncomfortable for parents to talk to, are unsafe to leave child with due to their unexplainable anger and do not impose any rules on their own explanations that they cannot serve accordingly. I understand your organization does the best to make sure every child care provider conforms to your minimum standards and I solicit your highest co-operation regarding this.

Better days are coming for BD?

Perhaps a wind of change is taking over in BD. A change from late October 2006 clash, nothing could be worse than that, a change from machiavillains' politics, a change from practice of walking out of parliament for no better reasons.... and so many other things I can mention only to make a pageful of complaints.

I look forward to BD hoping that the change would be for the better reasons. Something like a national unity based government, where politicians would learn to sit together and talk rather than fight on the streets, would behave more educated than they believe they are.

I see that BD is now the second largest capital growing country in Asia in China, intrigued with its own peoblems, like floods and corruption. Let the later go and let the country proceed. Minnows never have a good life in the face of the world. BD has to rise for the occasion.

May be all of these are typset hopes, meant to die again !

Happy Birthday on 14th August, 2007

Dear Mitapu (BD) and Yasuko Mama (Japan),

Happy Birthday to you both...Make this day ... a day for you to remember...

Appeal for Donations

As you may have come across, a great share of diarrhoea patients across the capital and around the country are now being dumped into hospitals like ICDDR,B every day. ICDDR,B has been providing free healthcare for such patients. However, under given circumstances, it is now almost impossible for the hospital to arrange for extra fund to provide such free treatments. Those who are thinking of donating money (be it part of your mandatory yearly Jakat or volunteery contribution) towards helping the flood victims may find it easy to donate money to ICDDR,B.

I would kindly urge all of you to see ICDDR,B appeal to find the necessary account details (for UK, USA or other places):

http://www.icddrb. org/activity/ index.jsp? activityObjectID =977&isAuthMode=true&typeOfActivity= Contribute

Research Re-search

I have already gained some experience through the first few months of my academic research career. Never start working with a non-professional code or tool developed by another researcher of the same experience. Most of the times you would spend times after fixing things, one after the other. And also, no matter how far you work hard after fixing, you would never get any share of recongition of the good work. I am not being sarcastic, but this is like hand rule. Yes, when you know a tool been tested enough, and you know it has enough scope, you can always take the risk of working with it. Research can be your best friend, if you can get good hands in the tools you are using.

Slow Work

I have been stuck to a point of my works at the moment. The reason is a software that I need for my works to be completed before nine months. Here, of course, there is a nine month deadline for PhD students to prove that they are worthy of a PhD. I am only concerned when would the software arrive at my hand. I hear that the software has already arrived but it has not been installed yet. People are now in France in DATE conference, which is probably why the installation is getting delayed.

Let's hope the software comes at my hands soon. Of course during the time I wait for this, I am getting my hands ready for the software. The name of the softwares are 'Cocentric System Studio' and 'Celoxica Agility Compiler'.

SUPER luck

I have been always blessed with my luck of having really supportive and benevolent supervisors. In my MSc here in Southampton, I worked with Professor Eric Rogers, who had been extra ordinary in his way of supervising. He is a versatile researcher, peddling the control systems and multidimensional signal processing for about last 20 years. Now I am into my PhD and being supervised by him and also Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi. Yet again, thanks to Him, I have been having the best of supports that I could get. Professor Bashir is a very smart researcher, foreseeing and collaborative. He also maintains very high profile in the research of low power design, test and also in network-on-chip design and exploration. I have this habit of connecting my experiences with my mother's sayings. She always said, 'finding a good person to guide you is about being equally good at their likings, as well', which essentially means that I have to work equally hard to keep it up. So WORK HARD, even though that won't help my hair fall.