Teaching

Our cluster team has been meeting with many parents lately due to poor behavior (and consequentially poor performance) of the kids at school. X's parents are a shock to me. I could not imagine that X has been facing such problems at home. The parents were divorced a year ago and the mother badmouth X's father in front of all teachers and also her child and her ex-husband. From the conversation, the mother was telling everyone that X's father is soon getting married and becoming a father once again without disclosing much information to X. I was realy shocked after listen to X's mother statement. She was making very personal statements in front of X and the school teachers. Have she ever thought about X's feeling at all because X has to face all these people in school eight hours per day everyday. Through out the whole conversation, she tried to blame everything on X and X's father kept looking at the watch as if he was in a hurry to leave the meeting.

After two years teaching, I came across all kind of parents. We have MIA parents (we have to send police officers to send letters home), 24/7 parents who always want to make sure their child is the top 15% in class, rude parents and etc. However, many parents share a common trait as they like to blame all faults on the kid and the teacher, and parents always think they have done everything possible.