A Slice of Life for this Teacher

[arely staircase]

Got an e-mail from a student's mom (ccd to my principal) stating that I was humiliating her son by calling the kids up in groups to turn in their homework.) Because her son often neglects to do his homework, he was humiliated by the ritual. She suggested a tray they could just put it in and thus make his failure to do what was expected of him more comfortable.

wow

[femmocrat]

1. I bet you had a suggestion for her as well!

[arely staircase]

4. no

no matter how politely put that leads to a parent teacher conference resembling gitmo scenes from zero dark thirty. my vice principal suggested a meeting in which someone from district administration would be in attendance. the mom dropped the subject altogether.

but I once got written up (as a first year teacher) for letting a kid retake a test she had failed. Ya see, that let all the other kids know she failed and violated her confidentiality. The AFT stepped in and even in right to work for peanuts Texas, got it removed from my file. I stopped giving make-up/second chances on tests.

[winter is coming]

2. Gosh, if only there were some way to avoid that humliating experience...

[arely staircase]

6. yeah i know, if there were only some way..

you'd think if it were so humiliating he could maybe......

[winter is coming]

9. If she's got time to contact you, she's got time to remind the kid to do his homework. n/t

[arely staircase]

10. when we request meetings she never has time for that

regardless of what time we suggest. it is a small town so I know enough about her to know she could make 30 minutes if this was more than complaining for the sake of enabling.

[kwassa]

3. It's called "enabling". Mom enables her son's poor performance.

and wants you to enable, too.

Don't, please.

[arely staircase]

18. yes it is enabling but the campus admin calls it accomodating.

and not as in the justifiable and legally required accommodations for SpEd or LEP (non-native English speakers). Just accommodating those who don't do their work and feel awkward when said work is due.

[Yo_Mama]

28. My Mom can trump you

While teaching second grade she was constantly harassed by one mother who didn't want her son to do the work. She demanded, and got, multiple meetings with administrators. He "wasn't a pencil person", the mother said. If he didn't want to do a reading paper, the teacher was supposed to assign him a project of "modeling" or something of that nature.

My Mom was forced to stop even trying to make this kid do the work. Having won the battle, the mother continued to enforce the "you can't make my son do schoolwork" rule right through grade six.

Ten years later, with the boy now flunking out of high school, this mother filed a lawsuit against the school district for failing to teach her son.

[arely staircase]

33. similar situation in an elementary in which i used to teach

kid skates by 4 years doing nothing. disrupted every teachers class he ever had, dad took his side in every meeting and pretty much intimidated the campus administration into always backing down. now comes 5th grade, in which the STAAR reading and math tests are required to pass to the 6th. he can't get over a 30 something on any of them and I heard daddy was at the school chewing them out for not educating his boy. don't know if he is lawyered up yet, but wouldn't be surprised.

[Yo_Mama]

34. And in the end the kid's the loser

Yeah, the teachers get harassed and abused, but the kid has to go through life handicapped. It's disgusting that school administrators won't stand up against these types.

I know why - they're afraid of lawsuits, but geeze.

[kairos12]

48. Did the boy become President in 2000?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Dear Mom: Not to worry. He probably won't be embarrassingly called up to get his diploma.

[arely staircase]

7. thank you. eom

[Brickbat]

8. I knew a teacher who would accept late work only if the student's parent called in and made the

excuse for the student. In the vast majority of cases, this discouraged late work, with the occasional exception of a parent calling and making an excuse regarding an extracurricular activity, family event, emergency or whatever. But she had one student who turned everything in late, and the student's father called several times a week with excuses.

The excuses got stupider and stupider, until finally the teacher friend one day said to the father, "Aren't you tired of having this conversation four times a week? Aren't you tired of making excuses for your daughter?"

He actually said to her, "Well, how can we make sure this doesn't happen again?"

[arely staircase]

11. that is right out of my life

except I would have been written up for the "aren't you tired of.." part

[Brickbat]

12. Yeah, she lives in an area where the union is strong.

That makes a huge difference.

[arely staircase]

14. no, my union is weak in "right to work" Texas

but they have come to the rescue a couple of time with letters from Austin lawyers.

[FLyellowdog]

13. A parent complained to me one time

that my red marking grades were humiliating to his daughter because others could see her low grades written in such a glaring color.

It wasn't worth the fight so I merely said, "Thank you. I never thought of that." And I started using different colored pens for grading papers.

I learned early on in my teaching career to pick my battles. Teachers have a difficult enough time trying to be all things to all people without making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Get a basket and let the students put their homework there. You have more important things to do instead of fretting about this. Who knows what set the parent off that day...

Thanks for choosing this difficult career. I hope you find it rewarding...in spite of crazy parents.

[arely staircase]

15. thank you but problem with that

is that I change up my whole class routine in order to make it easier for a kid to continue to not do his work. and talking to teachers who have done the basket thing, the same kids will swear up and down they turned it in.

[winter is coming]

16. Unless it's unlike any school I ever attended, the kids already know who doesn't

do their homework on a regular basis. Humiliation, my ass. The parents are just looking for a situation where they can blame you for "losing" stuff that hasn't been turned in.

[arely staircase]

17. exactly

I have kids swear up and down they handed me their work, meetings were called, instructional time missed, and the work turn up in the kid's backpack (incomplete and crumpled, of course)

[sad-cafe]

47. a basket can also provide the opportunity for students to copy work

or outright take one student's name off and put their own name on

[Bigmack]

19. High school...?

Mom needs to be reminded that after graduation, her opinion/suggestions/input won't mean shit.

One of my student teachers... an excellent one... told the kids that in college.."Mamma ain't there and the teacher don't care!"

[arely staircase]

21. middle school

nt

[WinkyDink]

20. Principal called me in to a parent mtg for requiring that a student (17) print his name legibly.

I lost.

[arely staircase]

24. sadly i find that to be not only believable

but unsurprising

[WinkyDink]

37. Well, I have a great imagination, but not THAT great! The father was even intimidating!

[Bigmack]

35. How can you lose in the long run?...

The sniveling little shit still has to be in your class... god knows what could happen to his grades.

Went to his mommy...? At 17...?

Even if you don't get payback, the world is gonna eat this little prick alive.... and his momma won't be able to do squat. Schadenfreude is such a lovely word.

[WinkyDink]

38. No, his old man. And the male vice-principal backed him up. So, yes, the kid was still in my class--

scribbling his name defiantly.

And I of course was not speaking long-term, for we ALL lose in the long-term, do we not?

[treestar]

22. egads

please tell us the principal took your side!

[arely staircase]

29. yeah, but only after I made it clear I was willing to go to district admin. and the school board

before I would make it easier for a kid to continue to not do homework. his initial instinct was to appease the parent.

[reformist2]

23. A huge downside of the internet age - how many e-mails from parents do you get???

[arely staircase]

26. tons

I send home a newsletter every three weeks, I post my assignments on my website, and when their kids don't get some project done that was assigned weeks ago, I hear "well I didn't know anything about it" from some parents.

[Yo_Mama]

25. How humiliated will her son be when he's flunking in HS? n/t

[arely staircase]

27. middle school

and he is actually passing with way lower grades than he should be making - mainly because he is missing so much homework. he is a smart but very lazy kid. he will work, and do well in class. but left to his own devices, not so much.

[Yo_Mama]

31. The deficits accumulate

Some parents are their kids' worst enemies.

[arely staircase]

32. it is a common thing in parent meetings

about ten minutes into them and you think "oh, ok. I get it now." this isn't most parents but behind many a Lying Excuse Making, Jr. is Lying Excuse Making, Sr. Same with the bullies.

[winter is coming]

41. Yeesh. My kid's a middle schooler. If you don't turn in your homework, you have to report

to a supervised classroom during the lunch hour to do it. Fail to show up for that and you get a detention.

[arely staircase]

43. then i salute the campus administration at that school

leadership makes all the difference.

[winter is coming]

45. I don't doubt it. It's a shame so many teachers don't get the support

they deserve from administrators.

[onethatcares]

30. I think the parents might be

looking for someone to blame on their sweet child failing in life. Probably another set of those folks that would blame the liberal elitist academia for their son not being able to get a break.

Keep up the great work that you chose to do, you have my heartfelt appreciation.

[FLyellowdog]

36. Reminds me of the unfriendly conference I had to have one time

with a local doctor and his wife. (1)They were mad because their son had not yet been chosen Student of the Month (elementary school) when he was so obviously "superior" to others who had been chosen first. (2)They were furious when their child made a B on a Social Studies test and I told them that although the grade was lower than what the child usually made, it was not so bad that he have the experience of how others might feel when making a lower score than they wanted.I said that in all kindness trying to look for the silver lining. Well, that really flung them off the deep end. (3) Before the conference was over, they had dragged me through every recrimination they could think of. The "dr." father sat over in the corner and literally laughed at all my responses s....I stood up and
said that the conference was terminated, and since they had lost confidence in my ability to provide a quality education for their son, I'd have him removed from my class and placed in another teacher's room before the beginning of the next school day.

I thought they were going to have a stroke. They bumbled and stumbled, saying that they hadn't come down to the school requesting to have their son moved to another class and that's not what they intended to have happen. I politely responded that "Well, that's what I intend to have happen." Then I walked out and that was that.

Thank goodness the Asst. Principal had been in the meeting with us and she was fairly impressed with how I'd handled the unpleasant situation. Anyway, the child was placed in another class the next morning and life went on.

Some days it just isn't worth chewing through the restaints.

[dsc]

39. I hope you bought that teacher a hell of a dinner

I am referring to the other class you got the kid put into.

[FLyellowdog]

40. She named that kid "Student of the Month" the very next month!!!!

I guess she didn't want to risk the parents' rage.

[arely staircase]

44. no they didn't want him removed

they preferred he stay in your class and they (the parents) get to bully you. good for you and your asst. principal. I wish I had one like that.

[FLyellowdog]

46. Well, they certainly picked the wrong swamp donkey to mess with.

I had a great reputation and wasn't about to let some conceited bag of wind take over my classroom decisions. And it felt GOOOOOOOOD. We as teachers really have so few chances to take control of our environment and this was one time that I was going to stand my ground.

I was one of those teachers who always got loads and loads of requests from parents who wanted their children in my room...in fact, these parents had made that very request at the beginning of the year. Too bad...people should be careful for what they wish.

Good luck with your teaching.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

42. I would have made him stay after school to complete his homework

The mom could come too.