A Scary Grandmother
I'm writing to say that I am officially finished with report cards. Unfortunately, I'm not officially done with the repercussions of report cards. Thursday evening and Friday afternoon were parent teacher conferences. I decided to go the student-conference route - have the kids bring their parents around and lay all the pressure on them rather than me. It's very popular nowadays. Many times, parents come in and see the student's work and .. voila! Questions have disappeared. Their work explains everything.The only family I had trouble with was from one of my stronger students. Her grandmother was sent in to battle me. She is a retired teacher and I was really upset by the time she left. She said a lot of things that were completely uncalled for such as "that's not acceptable". She left me in a state of disaster.. I felt soooo terrible the rest of the evening that I couldn't enjoy the visits from the rest of my kids. How can they expect this NOT to impact how the teacher feels towards their child? I mean, I won't treat this student any differently, but I'll be super cautious about everything I do that is related to her from here on in. And will I ever look forward to having her family come into my classroom? NO WAY. Oh yes, this all had to do with the one C the student got on her home report. Mind you, C is not like C in university.. a C means that they are performing at grade level.. that it's average. The mother and the grandmother were NOT happy with even a B!!! !)@(#. They pulled everything on me.. "you didn't call on her even though she had her hand up for every question you asked", "maybe she's just not good at art, maybe you are just being too picky", "if you don't call on her, how do you know how much she knows?", etc.. It was a total "diss" to my professionalism. My initial reaction (during the confrontation) was that I was going to faint.. just out of pure fear for this b**tchy lady. This later developed into anger..then depression and back to anger.. which it remains up to this point in time.
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We had the meeting right after school today. I'm SOOOO glad my vice-principal was sitting there next to me. I also had another colleague in to come back me up as we had done some collaborative grading. I can just say.. both of them (VP and colleague) were pretty ticked off at what the mother and grandmother had to say. Eventually, my VP started to speak and that seemed to do the trick. I think the mother was still pretty pissed at the grade her daughter received, but grandma seemed to calm down. It was just downright insulting some of the things she questioned.. as if I wasn't professional enough to grade the student fairly. ARGH. Anyhow, to make a long winded story short, she was NOT a pleasant one to deal with. SO, if any of you, someday, are angry at your child's teacher, talk to me about it before you go to the teacher.. it's NOT fun, it's actually pretty devastating when a parent attacks you when all you want is what's best for the child.
THE END (Until next term?)
posted by jaryee @ 5:04 p.m.
2 Comments:
I'd look at it as a valuable learning experience, to help prepare you for other angry parents that you'll surely have to deal with in the future. Maybe normal angry parents will seem a breeze in comparison.
Definitely. I hope.. it added a layer of skin .. so after another 10 or so incidents, I won't even blink. Even more so, is learning to just "talk back" at them so I can better defend myself. Not a fun lesson, but a lesson I learned from.
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