Sympathizer

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Home : 2002 : February : 24

Sympathizer
By Sorry you have to deal with su

...sometimes you can't win for losing in this job. You can take comfort in the fact that if you had continued on without increasing your efforts to help this young man, the mother would have been irate anyway and would have
blamed the school for not having instilled enough discipline in her son. It doesn't sound as though you spoke all that terribly harshly, but only tried to let this student know that he was pushing at your boundaries. He needs to know when this is happening. IMHO, we do a disservice to students when we protect them from every bit of displeasure their behaviour causes. How else will

they get the message that their behaviour is unacceptable? The rest of the world will never be as tolerant as teachers are expected to be (or as we expect ourselves to be). Clearly this mother is not accepting the responsibility of socializing her son -- most likely her anger has more to do with her own feelings of incompetence and frustration. If you really feel badly about the way you spoke to him, apologize to him, say that you are sorry you spoke harshly and let your frustration get the better of you, but that you found his behaviour way out of line. It's okay to make mistakes! Maybe you could work out some kind of signal so that you can let him know when he is going over the top before another confrontation occurs? Maybe arrange a place or task for him to go to whenever you give him the signal. He will probably appreciate your honesty, and at least you will still be sending the message that you haven't given up on him...