By Diana's blog | October 30, 2010 at 01:02 PM EDT | No Comments
I am proud to say that I am not the kind of parent you will see on TV (except maybe Jerry Springer) who hovers over their child -or for that matter even remembers their names. I can never remember who is doing what activity unless I am reminded several times.
When it comes to school, I am not the parent who takes their kids' side on anything. I assume the teacher would not be wasting their time unless there was some issue that my kid was causing. I work with the teachers to make sure that the home/school consequences are in sync.
However, on the extremely rare occasion that I take my kid's side - watch out. Such an occasion has arisen and I am struggling with how to handle it. My over-anxious and meticulous high school student is having trouble in her favorite subject. I have seen the teacher's comments on her papers and read her assignments. In fact, I ended up rereading Macbeth in order to help her with an assignment. Now I am a witch fortelling a scary future. The teacher, who appears to be in her early 20s and in need of some spanx, has left sarcastic comments on her papers that do not help her improve.
Rather, sarcasm from a teacher as well as an obnoxious attitude raises up the Mama Bear in me. At the back to school night, this same teacher said that she didn't expect students to do the assigned outside reading. This is an AP class in a Jewish high school. Are you kidding? There isn't a parent in the room who wouldn't have made sure their child did the reading and wrote an optional report on the book. Some may have arranged for the authors to come visit the house and explain the underlying meaning in their prose.
So on Monday, I will sit face to face with this teacher and try to politely point out that she is not helping her students by being indirect and obtuse. I have to be careful not to use too many big words because I'm sure I don't know their definitions and will misuse them.
It is always difficult to talk to someone who will be with my daughter all year when it is an adversarial situation. I don't want to attack her teaching methods, but I do want her to change them. Even though my kids accuse me regularly of not caring about them because I work full time (don't get crazy stay-at-home moms, they did the same thing when I stayed home full time), I do make sure that at least their academic life will succeed. The last thing I need is for kids to have to live at home when they are older because they never were academically successful enough to parlay that into a job. Anyway, I am gearing up to tell this angry, unattractive 20 something to get her classroom in shape. Not an enviable situation for either of us.
I will keep you updated as to how it turns out. I hope they have internet access in jail, in case things get ugly.