I know what you mean

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I know what you mean
By Just wondering

I had a very similar experience when teaching in a 6th grade class a couple of years ago. This was in a middle school with grades 5-8. I was the only person on my 4-person team who was not a "townie" born and bred. As
such, I was considered to be an outsider and, therefore, I became fair game for character assassination on the soccer, football and baseball fields by a very vocal group of parents. Many of these same parents insisted that their darlings only had trouble in my class; however, similar problems existed in their other classes as well, a fact that was conveniently over-looked. Unfortunately,

the Principal usually failed to back me up because there had been a long-held expectation that we should cave in to parents in order to not rock the political boat. That year was probably the most discouraging I have ever had. What made it even harder was I spent literally hundreds of extra hours busting my hump to be the best teacher I could be. When I left at the end of that year, the principal and two of my team members never even said good-bye.