Mar 18 2008
So Sad and Disgruntled Parent
While driving home today ( 40 minutes) I realized I had a few things on my mind and just decided to write them both on one post. Here goes:
I teach in a rural school. Tomarrow my juniors have their research papers due. The other day I stayed after school with one student who needed some extra help. After we talked about her specific questions, we just started a small conversation. This student happened to mention the trouble she was having typing her paper. Now, mind you, we have been working on this paper for about a month in class. Now that the due date is so close, I tell my students that computer problems, running out of ink, the dog ate it ect. are NOT valid excuses. Anyway my student happened to tell me that he/she is able to type at home but cannot print because dad refuses to purchase the ink cartridge necessary for their printer! I felt so badly for this student. How could a parent deny allowing their child to succeed in school? It just doesn’t seem right to me. Growing up in the suburbs, mostly white collar, I had never experienced anything like this. My friends and I grew up without a want. Working in this district has taught me so much and has showed me how other people live. Some of my students don’t have computers so their assignments for English class are a continual struggle that they must figure out. I finally offered this student the option of e-mailing me the paper in order to save her from typing it out and saving to a disk and then having to come to school to print. These thoughts have remained with me and I continue to wonder how a parent would out and out refuse something of educational value to their child. This leads me to my second issue……
My son is in fifth grade and is very bright. Currently, he is working on three different projects/presentations. The current one that has me all worked up is the president presentation. Each student selected a president to research. Now, the presentation part. Each student must dress like the president,and do an oral speech about that president. Then, each student must bring in a red, white and blue treat for the entire class!!! Now, I ask you, what fifth grader can make a red, white and blue treat for their class???!! These projects become the projects of the parent, NOT the student!! Is this my grade or my son’s grade??? Of course my son had to make the dough and put them on the cookie sheet and then decorate them to be patriotic. So, I guess that was him doing it? Or is it? Secondly, my son had a president who wore a beard. Having no luck purchasing a beard, yes, you guessed it, Mom made the beard, with some help from my son. Why can’t the project be completely student driven? Now, here I am doing what ever it takes to help my son be successful in school. This, of course, is the complete opposite to the student’s situation I described above. Will my son get a better grade because I helped him? Is that fair? What if some of his classmates have parents who work late and don’t or wont make time to help their children?? Should those students get a bad grade because the child’s parent didn’t get involved? Is this the student’s project or the parents?!
2 responses so far
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
2 Responses to “So Sad and Disgruntled Parent”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Yeah…e-mailing is always an option in my classroom. It’s a fight I don’t bother with much anymore. Now what do you do about the student whose parents won’t let them have a laptop like all other kids in our 1:1 program, doesn’t have a computer at home and/or doesn’t have an Internet connection at home. That kid has to work to succeed despite his parents! Only, sometimes, it’s a financial matter…so, who can judge there? Just another thing that makes this gig complicated!
Now consider that in your son’s school (which is in a district I’ve worked in), there are students like the one you mention in the first part of the post. They’re in the minority there but they still exist. That child gets to go to school and see the awesome projects created in homes with loving, caring, capable and financially flush parents. That child gets to feel like less than everyone else every day. While there I was on the diversity committee. The biggest source of diversity there is one of financial resources. Kids were mean to kids by saying things like, “you dress from Walmart and live in a trailer!” as if that was equivalent to having the bubonic plague. I’m thankful I’m here where kids don’t have that pressure and they enjoy teachers like you who can listen and understand that there’s no print at home, with flexibility.