Class Warfare

— March 3, 2003: Employment letter to Ms. Tollin counsels, do watch out for absences and occasional appearances of “yelling.”

— March 5, 2004: “You still need to watch how you are perceived by some, who feel you ‘yell’ at them.”


ALMOST HALF THE complaints listed in the letter, it should be said, were from the 2006-’07 school year — the year Amanda Pouls was in Tollin’s class. Philadelphia also obtained a letter, dated June 2007 but referring to an incident 13 years ago, from a pair of parents who say their daughter experienced “mean-spirited and very negative” behavior from Tollin, including the teacher “shaking her fingers directly in front of her face … and screaming at her about learning math facts.” All of this is, according to Michael Pouls, “proof positive” that theirs was a struggle against an abusive teacher who singled out their child because she felt the right.

Samantha Feld, one of the Baldwin alumni around the country who’ve been posting about the conflict on Facebook, says the complaints are merely the kind a teacher like Tollin gets. “She was strict,” says Feld. “Baldwin is tough. It’s not some rich-kid school where kids are coddled. The reason Baldwin has such a good reputation is that it forces kids to perform at their best.”

But since the time when Feld was in second grade — in 1992 — the expectations of private-school parents have changed. They’re not spending $23,000 a year for “tough love,” it seems, but for love, period.

“You want them in this loving, caring place,” says one Baldwin mother who called on the Poulses’ behalf. “They are babies, and they need to be babiefied.”

Tollin’s teaching style, it seems, wasn’t gelling well in this new environment. “I do not feel that Patsy belongs in second grade anymore,” wrote Baiba Vasys, in a statement obtained by Philadelphia that Baldwin’s lawyers intend to file in court. “She just does not seem to be able to give the children the kind, nurturing support that they need. … it’s like ‘second grade boot camp.’”

It’s apparent that Tollin has developed contempt for this new, coddling culture of parenting. “We have been told that this is a consumerism era, and that we have to cater to the parents more,” she sighs, in Halpern’s office. “I also have observed that many families, in order to send their girls to private school, need two incomes. So a lot of the raising is left to nannies. So we have become the ones who teach manners. We are the ones who — you would be appalled if you sat in the lunchroom with these kids — they don’t even know how to use silverware! It’s because parents don’t spend the time to teach them, and when the parents are with the girls, they don’t want to reprimand them. They want to be their friends. Children today,” she says, “don’t do for themselves.”

It’s certainly possible that these feelings affected how Tollin treated parents and children, including Amanda Pouls, for whom she seems to have an outsized contempt, considering Amanda is eight. “One day, Amanda said to me, ‘I have seven cell phones,’” Tollin tells me. “I said, ‘Why do you need a cell phone?’ She said” — Tollin assumes a bratty kid voice — “‘I don’t know. I wanted it. My daddy bought it for me.’” (Amanda actually has only one cell phone, a Sidekick.)

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