My dd's teacher is driving me nuts

**Sassyclass** · 04-25-2009, 01:13 AM

Originally Posted by Nishu

I am such a deadbeat parent. I hate it when teachers give me homework. Hate it. They have the kids for 8 hours a day and then they feel the need to take up our evening family time too? No thanks. If I wanted to teach my kid at home I ... well we'd still be home schoolers.

I had a problem with only one of my daughters teachers. This was a long time ago as my daughter is now 26 years old, but I'll never forget it. This teacher sent homework in every subject every night. My DD was only 7 years old and she started complaining her shoulders and back were hurting. I finally figured out it was her bookbag, it weighed almost 20 lbs.!!! I wrote the teacher and asked her if Melissa was not doing her work at school. She replied the problem was not with my daughter but that she had a couple of students who disrupted the class and therefore the rest of the class wasn't getting their work done. I immediately went to the principal with the loaded bookbag and the note the teacher sent. I asked why the students who were disrupting class were not removed, why was the teacher even there since I was teaching my daughter, and then I plopped the bookbag onto her desk and told her if it was good enough for a 7 year old to tote around it was good enough for her incompetent teacher to tote around. She tried picking it up and that's all it took. She was furious this teacher was doing this to these little kids. The teacher wasn't there the next year.

Cat

**rasilla** · 04-25-2009, 01:00 PM

1 - "...doing group progects in class and there was no instructions..."
2 - "...Took my daughters sweater and put it in the lost and found to teach her resposibility (my DD has ADD)"
3 - "...why the students who were disrupting class were not removed, why was the teacher even there since I was teaching my daughter..."

I agree with jmd5294, there are two sides to every issue. With the first issue I quoted, the teacher may have given oral instructions in class, or even written on the board. I taught 12th graders and had a parent come in complaining about a project and that her son wasn't "given" instructions only for me to point at the whiteboard. With the second issue, maybe your child really was forgetting her sweater in class. A teacher has 30 kids and sometimes multiple classes. It is not their responsibility to keep track of each kids clothes. Yes, kids can be distracted and forget stuff, but the teacher putting it in the lost and found was the responsible thing for that teacher to do. And the third scenario is my favorite! Or rather the most frustrating for me the third year I was teaching. I had a violent special needs student and a state-wide test that year that my students had to get good scores in or they couldn't take AP courses the next year (limiting some kids college prospects). Special needs laws said that student had to be included in my class, I could not fail him had to do extra lesson adjustments for him (i.e. less time for the other 29 kids in that period), and the lack of funds in the budget meant that he couldn't have an aide. When he had a fit nobody learned anything. Thankfully, I only had him an hour a day as I taught secondary. I hate the fact that I had to send extra homework home with that period - but I don't really know of an alternative. There is so much we need to know about those situations to really make a judgment.

Too often, parents and society put the blame on the teachers rather than on the student. It is sad that your students have teachers that are not doing their jobs or working to the best of their potential. Even if your kids have a horrid teacher, they still need to learn to work with them. I know I am probably in the minority in saying that, but in the real world, if we have a boss we disagree with we have to find a civil way to work around the problem. Having a difficult teacher is a good chance to teach your children the social skills (asking questions to clarify what is wanted for a project, learning how to get along with someone they don't like, respect for authority, how to respond to adversity, etc.). All of these skills they will need to thrive as adults.