Teacher Abuse Becoming a Trend

[amykhar]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/04....ap/index.html

Last night, a father was griping to the school board about his son not making varsity. He was very upset about it (the board blew him off)

Have any teachers here seen out of control parents? How do you deal with them?

[thinkerlady[$]]

Seen them??? They are a regular anymore. Time magazine in Feb? or March? had an excellent article, and it was very true. I have it. Parents are out of control.

I think it is a societal issue, tho. Many parents, moms especially have executive jobs, and are under a lot of stress themselves. When the kid does something stupid, the teacher becomes a natural target.

Mostly, tho, I find the parents that are out of control at the school, have bigger issues in their personal life, and feel that they have no control over them. So they take it out on the teacher.

[hadassahchana[$]]

OMG, this is mind-boggling:

In Dallas, police say, a mother stormed into a classroom, grabbed a teacher's hair, and punched her and kicked her April 1 after the teacher scolded the woman's daughter for loitering outside a locker. The mother is herself a teacher in Dallas.

The woman who assaulted the teacher is- a teacher? What is wrong with this world?


I am so sorry that teachers have to go through this kind of nonsense. There isn't nearly enough gratitude for what teachers do for all of us.

Cindy

[jenninca]

I don't see it so much at my current school (more than half of our parents aren't native English speakers and sometimes I'm glad about that), but at my first school it was ridiculous. One of my favorites was a parent who wrote me a scathing note the morning of a field trip because I let her daughter change groups with someone when both girls came and asked me if they could switch. She said she and her daughter had been up all night crying over it. Another parent requested half a dozen hour long meetings with me, the other 5th grade teacher, and the counselor to discuss why her daughter was having so much trouble getting her homework done after Mom took her off Ritalin. Half the parents complained that we gave too much homework and the other half said we didn't give enough. I hated parent conference night because there wasn't a single aspect of my teaching that didn't get questioned or criticized.

But the absolute worst parent had homeschooled her kids for years and just put them in this school. She came up every week, knocking on back doors until a kid opened them because she knew the office wouldn't let her up to the classroom during class. She would stay forever and just criticize, criticize, criticize, even if she just walked into the classroom in the middle of class. The principal would often hide us in the office to avoid her and once my partner and I locked the door, turned off the lights, and hid in her closet. Then halfway through the year, her other kid's teachers became the bad guys and we became the saints. One day she bought me flowers for no reason and I actually took pictures of them because I (and everyone else) was afraid she might have poisoned them and I would need the pictures for evidence. I kid you not.

At my current school, the worst thing that happened was a parent went to the superintendent to get me fired after I told her that it seemed like her son's reason for coming to school was to play with his pencil, because none of us could get him to work.

Cindy

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Hubby privately told one girl in his class that she needed to stop being such a drama queen (an accurate, if not the best-worded, description of her behavior). Turns out she got her tendencies from Mom, who called a meeting with the principal, wanted Hubby suspended, etc...

[pippadaisy[$]]

Oy.

[eris esoteric]

thinkerlady said

I think it is a societal issue, tho. Many parents, moms especially have executive jobs, and are under a lot of stress themselves. When the kid does something stupid, the teacher becomes a natural target.

Nope, still not a teacher. However, I have to say, as someone who deals with the public (and the segment of the public I deal with is nothing if not interesting) it seems that, more and more, people are forgetting basic concepts like courtesy, discussion, and simply saying please and thank you. I joke at work that the reason I can almost always get my coworkers to do things I want them to do is because I always say please and thank you, and always talk to them with courtesy (yes, even "Alice"!)... but it's not really a joke. When every single person you meet decides to resolve issues by yelling, it makes the one person you talk to who treats you like a human being seem angelic in comparison. Even as a customer, it amazes me to watch other people bitch and moan, and consequently get LESS than they expect, when all I have to do is smile and be pleasent and I get people bending over backwards to help me out.

[Prepoia[$]]

Are you saying that teachers aren't polite anymore or that parents don't use common courtesy?

[drmomentum[$]]

Teachers are a safe scapegoat nowadays.

-JP

[thinkerlady[$]]

I find that parents do not want to take responsibility for their children. The problem parents are pushing responsibility onto teachers, especially by the middles grades.

I have had meetings with parents, who are clearly and blatently neglectful, but have reorganized the situation to make the teacher look incompetent. For example, a student that does not do homework ( and I give very little homework, but what I give, I want done), some parents expect the teacher to give up her 30 minute lunch break, to have this child do homework during school, or expect the teacher to arrive early, so that they can drop the child off at school early to complete their homework. Now, when the assignments aren't done, it is the teacher's fault.

That is an easy example. I could and probably should write a book. Like the time a student had a cold, and literally blew his nose in his hand and wiped it all over the seat of the chair. When the next class came in, a girl sat in the seat, and got his snot all over her. I made the kid clean the chair, and the girl had to go to nurse to get her leg and skirt cleaned. The father of the boy who had the cold blamed me, said I overreacted. Well, if I were the parent of the girl, I would have overreacted. Sometimes it is insane.

[eris esoteric]

Prepoia said

Are you saying that teachers aren't polite anymore or that parents don't use common courtesy?

Trying to figure out how to word this. I think that when we (as a society) engage in relations with a person who we consider to be doing us a service, we, as a society, are forgoing common courtesy and making unreasonable demands that we are incapable of acknowledging as unreasonable.

(And all the teacher I know are polite, too).

(Well, with the exception of a couple of the arts and sciences teacher at the business college I attended )

[ms_n]

I haven't seen a pattern in my experience with parents. Dealing with irate parents comes with the territory. If a person (whether a parent, client or customer) has trouble controlling themselves the issue lies within that person. I don't believe it is a situation exclusive to the teaching profession. Perhaps (oo, I just felt an earthquake) the frustrations among parents are mounting with the increasing criticisms of education in this country which leads to increased occurances. Whatever the case, there is never an excuse to be abusive to a teacher.

It is sad to hear about parents in any situation who react unacceptably. The only thing a teacher can do is to keep accurate records to show what was taught, how it was taught, and how progress was tested and measured. Allowing the principal and other support staff to be alerted to the situation, present during meetings, and approve letters/communication to parents also helps diffuse the situation. As long as the teacher is doing their job and working professionally, that is all they can do.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I'm with Eris in thinking it's taking place all over, and perhaps it's belatedly being felt by professionals like teachers.

When I worked in retail in Buffalo, I could always tell when my customer was a kid from Long Island in town for school - they were demanding and rude, for the most part. Then I moved out here and found out that customer service is so bad, there are times you have to be pretty upfront with your needs as a customer to get them even partially met. I try nice first, but that doesn't always work and I have to shift to "here's what I want" more often than I would like.

But retail has been known for at least the past 10-15 years as a job where you need to have a tough skin. I think it's been a more recent experience for teachers - and the outright assaultiveness that's emerged is just downright ugly.

[eris esoteric]

I don't know why, but tonight, in dealing with the various permutations of "I want a bigger room, but I don't want to pay any money at all," I thought of this thread...

[eris esoteric]

But then he asks an interesting question: Do you yell at a bumbling coworker? Do you yell at the grocery clerk who puts the canned soup in the same bag as the loaf of bread? Do you yell at your child's teacher when you think she's being unfair? Not usually. So why do we feel it's okay to yell at our kids?

New theory... parents are frustrated that they're not allowed to spank their children, and this frustration causes them to verbally abuse people who take care of those children...