This week has had a flood of angry parents coming at the teachers on
my team from every direction for the failures we are making in our
classroom. A parent that I have had five in-person meetings with along
with many phone conferences (one of which lasting over half an hour, in
which the mother mostly ranted about how much of a mistake it was to put
her daughter back in a public school), I was cc'd on an email from my
administrator addressing an angry complaint about me to my school's
administration.
She is angry because I threw away her
daughter's work during class. She states in the email to my
administration that she "can't help but come to the conclusion that this
has happened before", and implies that the zeros that her daughter has
received in the past (which I have spent much time explaining to her the
reasons for and explaining how her daughter can make the assignments
up). She states that she is appalled at the unprofessionalism from an
educator that this incident reveals. She compels my administrator to
take this to the school-wide administration.
With
forty minutes left in class, an unknown student came to my room stating
that a teacher wanted the female student (let's call her Kira). I know
that Kira doesn't have the teacher who requested her, but I said she
could step out. However, Kira began packing up all her belongings and
brought her work to me. I told Kira that she could not leave for the
remainder of class. Kira didn't say anything, but just continued to hold
her work out to me. I told her she was no longer excused and should get
back to work. Kira sat her work next to me, and I told her that if she
left class without permission she would receive a zero. Kira walked out
of class.
I looked at her work, and she had filled out
a self-evaluation on classwork that she hadn't even completed yet. As
she had walked out of class and is aware that she cannot evaluate
herself until after she completes the work, I threw her work in the
trash.
Kira came back in over twenty minutes later, and another student
told her I threw her work away. She started yelling in my (for once)
on-task classroom: "Aww no you didn't!". I didn't respond to Kira, but
she muttered "fuck this class" and when I asked her to please leave the
room, she said "no, no, no, shut up."
And her parent, who I have made myself available to on countless
occasions, didn't have the decency to contact me, and instead accuses me
of throwing her daughter's work away on multiple occasions (while Kira
is failing three other classes).
Incidents like this have occurred all year with all of my
colleagues and myself, but it still sucks, for lack of a better phrase. I
spend all day working with children to have their parents come back
with this type of feedback. I understand that after having your child in
bad schools for years, you have to be an advocate. But I don't
understand how any parent believes that this type of hostility is going
to help their children.
If I were any less professional, I would let this taint the way
that I view her child. However, I haven't let Kira walking out of class,
using profanity, or hitting other students stop me from trying to help
her succeed in my classroom. But all of that was surprisingly a lot less
frustrating than reading that email from her mother.
