Dear Teacher in a Parent Conference,
As if the day couldn’t be any worse, now this foolishness. It’s not that we don’t love or respect parents. We really do. Heck, most of us, are parents ourselves. We get it. Our personal children drive us bonkers the same as any other parent.
What we don’t appreciate is being blamed for all that ails a child. If he’s on Tik Tok until 3 a.m. and you can’t get him to go to bed, I promise it’s not because I made him diagram two and a half sentences.
But I digress.
Most parent teacher conferences are brutal.
I once sat in a conference in May when a mom said she really wanted to help her son, but she wanted to let him hit rock bottom first. There were four days of school left, and he had a 13 average.
I exercised great restraint. Instead of saying, “Rock bottom would have been back in February when he had a 54 average. He’s a decades old coral reef stuck in a window of the Titanic now,” I simply nodded my head and replied, “I understand.”
Another time I called home because a boy was being disrespectful in class. The mom said he was the same way to her and begged me not to tell him I called home because she didn’t want him to get upset.
Say What!
I shudder to think what would have happened if a teacher had ever called Bonnie (my mother) to say I had been disrespectful in class. All that would be left of me would be a bent barrette in a greasy oil spot.
The times they are a changin’ I suppose.
Most parents still care and want the very best for their children, but the ones who don’t seem to overshadow the ones who do. It takes a toll after awhile.
I once heard of an English teacher (not me) who stepped into a conference with an irate parent over the grade her son made on an essay. The English teacher sat down, looked the parent in the eye, and said, “Let’s stop this charade by you telling me what grade you want me to put on that essay. I’ll put it on there, and then we can all leave.”
I don’t know how to fix this disconnect, but I do believe it starts by answering the question with, “Whatever grade you think he has earned."
This level of accountability may not keep all kids from hitting rock bottom, but it couldn’t hurt either, could it?
-CDB