Parents Just Don't Understand

I know, I know, I am not a parent. I don't claim to be nor do I claim to know anything about raising a child to the age of thirteen. However, I do know something about seventh graders as I have spent a good chunk of my life with them for the past two years. And I know a thing or two about how seventh graders think, and how public schools run. And if you are a parent, I beg you to consider that not all seventh graders are perfect angels and that it might not be the teacher's fault when your kid screws up.

Yeah, today was one of those days. I wanted to take a personal day. I wanted to be home writing my novel and walking with my iPod on and making a healthy dinner but no, I went to work. I went to work because I am a good employee and I knew there would not be enough substitute teachers today. Surprise! I was right.

And during the course of my day I had two sets of parents show up at the school demanding to see me and my team of teachers. Now, please, parents, think this through if you ever want to talk to a teacher. Guess what we are doing in the middle of the day...TEACHING YOU CHILD. Yep, yep, we can't just sneak out for a meeting. And certainly not six teachers at once.

One mom rescheduled until Friday. It doesn't help that she doesn't speak English so I couldn't talk to her while she was standing there in the office, I've called home three times for her daughter who's failing, and this morning her precious one told me she doesn't know why she hasn't turned in her poetry book. She just doesn't care. Yeah. Did I mention we turn grades in on Monday? As in five days from now? Yeah. Good time to call for a meeting with your kid's teachers. Eleven days before the end of the school year.

The other parents refused to leave until we met with them. So they waited, over an hour. And on our prep my team met with them. And told them the same thing we've told them at several other meetings: we don't know what to do either. You kid is smart, very smart. But he's a kid, an immature, little kid. Seriously folks, I can only do so much, I cannot parent your child as well.

From my short tenure in the classroom I've seen a lot of parents who seem very unequipped to do their job, to parent a teenager. And it's sad. A lot of them are younger than me, and I KNOW I couldn't do it. That's why I don't have a teenager.

So yeah, it was a long day. A day capped off by a grading session during which I discovered one of my students had plagiarized poems in her book. Yeah, Chris Brown doesn't get by me, no seventh grader writes poems that sound like multi-platinum hit songs. Thank goodness for google.