The woes of teaching

I came home from school yesterday with one thing to say to Bruce.
"Only three more quarters to go - that's only 75 cents; I can do this!"

Depending on the day, this is not that uncommon of a statement in the life of a middle school teacher. A typical day for me however, is generally not that bad. Occasionally I run into some small mishaps and unexpected encounters with students that kind of throws off my grove. However, I can usually deal with the orneriness of a student. They're 12, 13, and 14 and a little bit of verbal immaturity is expected. However, the audacity and complete rudeness of a parent who honestly has no idea what it is like to be a classroom teacher, and doesn't know or appreciate how hard I work and how much I actually do for my students, is appalling.

I sincerely believe that the parents in my school district have a love/hate relationship with me. They either love me and the things that I do, or they hate me. There isn't much in between.
Last year I had a parent who wrote me sincere notes every month on how much she admired what I was doing for her two boys. She made it a point to mention how many good things she thought I was doing for her boys. She mentioned in 6th grade her boys hated reading and dreaded anything to do with language arts. They complained every day on how much they hated English and reading. They used to struggle to get C's in both classes. When they came into my class for both 7th and 8th grade, a transformation took place. My approach to teaching was vastly different than what they were used to. By the end of 1st quarter, both boys had an enthusiasm for language and reading. Both boys began to love reading and became my most creative students. The complaints about language class were never heard at their house. They both earned high A's in my classes. Of course, their mother loved me. This is a rare and miraculous story. But, her notes of encouragement and appreciation offset the bad moments I had that first year. This is the kind of support and position parents should take when their children have good teachers.

Unfortunately this is not always what happens. Yesterday's experience will prove that. This particular parent has already threatened to sue our school district if her son's IEP (individualized education plan) accommodations were not met. Her lawyer sent our principal an official letter at the beginning of the year. We were specially instructed by our superintendent to clearly and accurately document any way that we were meeting his accommodations and document any contact we had with the parent in regards to his IEP. His IEP is specific for language and reading. Go figure! Quite frankly, every teacher in our school knows that this parent does her son's homework. In class, he can't answer a simple question, respond in writing to a prompt relating a personal experience in his life, or tell us how to double space or indent a paragraph on Microsoft Word; yet he can turn in perfectly polished college level written papers. This really strikes a cord with me. If I am going to go out of my way to meet the demands of his IEP, then I expect her to do the same, and let him complete his own work.

Last month I was trying to help this student come up with ideas to add to his groups adventure story. This was a creative writing assignment. Even when I gave him ideas - he still didn't write anything down. Everything I started for him, he ended up deleting. I had been writing down this particular assignment in his planner for an entire week. The night before the assignment was due (approx. 10:00 at night), his mother sent me an email stating how confused this student was about what he was supposed to do, and how irritated she was that I wasn't willing to help him.

I responded that I had tried multiple times to help him, and he wouldn't take my suggestions into consideration. I also told her that I wasn't willing to sit next to him and tell him word for word what to write because that would defeat the purpose of seeing what he is actually capable of. She called me and proceeded to tell me over the phone how offended she was because of my rudeness in my email, and so forth. I apologized to her stating that I wasn't meaning to be rude, I just wanted to let her know of my concerns - that he wasn't doing his part, and I didn't want him to start using his IEP as a crutch. 25 minutes later I thought we had come to some kind of agreement and solved the problem.

A week and a half later, I get a call from my superintendent stating that I needed to call this mother to talk out some issues she brought up in her email to him, and never to email her again because emails can be misinterpreted. If I had an issue with her from now on, I needed to call rather than email. She sent an email to my superintendent saying how rude I am, that I am insensitive, incompetent, ir-respectful and that I don't understand students with IEP's; that I am not willing to help students, and that if I need to repeat myself hundreds of times - so be it! This time, my principal listened through speaker phone to our conversation and kind of kept her under control. I had to apologize again, but tell her that I stood behind my concerns. Once again I thought we had it under control.

This week, this student turned in a paper that was extremely sophisticated and much better written than any 8th grader (even the smartest ones) are capable of putting together. It was especially better than any student with an IEP in language could come up with. Besides that, he used sources of information that I found on the Internet and didn't cite them - that is plagiarism. I pulled the student aside during class time to talk with him about his paper and what my concerns were. I had him circle the words he didn't understand, bracket the words his mom told him. I asked him how long he spent on the paper, where he found his sources, who helped him and how much that person helped him. I wrote down all of his answers to my questions. My concerns were: 1) that he used sources without citing them and that was plagiarism, and 2) that he is getting too much help from home.
I was meaning to call his mother that same day after school, but I was in charge of D-hall, and practice started immediately afterwards. So, I called her Thursday morning. (By the way, my superintendent read the paper too, and agreed with me - that the student didn't write it)

The conversation did not go well. She demanded to know why I would pull a student aside, talk to them about something, doubt their abilities, and make them feel like an idiot. When I told her what the student told me about the paper, she told me that it wasn't true! (In my mind that means that either the son or the mother is lying to me). (The rest of the conversation will be paraphrased and shortened for the sake of confidentiality). She was yelling in the phone so loud, I couldn't put it to my ear and my principal sitting 5 ft away from me could hear everything she was saying. She was irate and yelled that her son was not a liar, the paper wasn't plagiarized, she didn't help him at all. She was infuriated that a teacher would doubt his abilities, and how sick and tired she was of her son having to write these idiotic papers and do these idiotic assignments for language when he already has enough other things to do. She wanted to know how unfair and impartial I was going to be after her son brought in the URL he used for research. She didn't want me calling her for anything about anything with the next assignment because he worked his butt off on it. She accused me of a bunch of nasty things, wouldn't give me a chance to talk or defend myself, and hung up on me when she was finished raving.
I had to call my superintendent and let him know how our conversation went. He tried talking to her about the situation, but she was just as mad at him as she was at me.

Experiences like this leave a sour taste in my mouth about teaching. Sometimes I wonder why I put forth all the effort I do, when I get responses like this. That is why I have to remember the good experiences and try to forget about the bad. (Being screamed at on the phone over being unfair and unjust to a student for 20 minutes (in which she called me by my first name nonetheless) is really hard to forget.)

Who was more rude in this situation?

I guess as another one of my students likes to say "Chin up kid!"