I understand, too

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Home : 2002 : December : 8

I understand, too
By Carolyn

I am strict, also, and I am also a veteran teacher. I, too, have been under fire a few times over the last few years. I don't like disorderly conduct in the classroom, the hallways, or anywhere else in the school building.
I do enforce strict conduct codes for behavioral expectations with my fifth grade class, and I don't believe that second graders should be expected to behave less well than older kids, just because they are young.
I taught second grade a few years ago. When the some of kids misbehaved, then it was either "okay" or I was being too hard on their children. One parent told me that her

daughter was "just a little girl," so I couldn't expect her to "be quiet all of the time in class and not talk," when I explained to her that the child talked excessively in class. Moreover, she told me that her child should NOT be deprived of recess because she was chattering incessantly in class. Okay, now you try to come in and teach her things, then, when she isn't listening to you. Don't you want her to get good grades? How is she going to learn what she's supposed to if she can't ever keep still and listen? I said something like this to her as politely as I could. Then there was the parent who felt that because her son wasn't progressing academically (he couldn't read or even write words when he came to me!), his mother said that it was all my fault and that I had a "personality conflict" with her child. She demanded that her child be moved to another teacher's classroom, and the principal moved him.

Teaching fifth grade is really no different. The parents give in to their kids at home. The kids whine and pester them, I suspect, since they try to manipulate me the way I am sure they try to manipulate their parents at home. There is no strict discipline in some of these homes. Kids are being raised by grandparents, aunts, and uncles and being passed back and forth from one family member to another. Then we have to work even harder to get them to "toe the line" at school. I can see it every Monday. Each Monday, I have to get them back into the routine, and it's tough, because I believe that they probably have no discipline all weekend long.

I had a parent at the beginning of this year come in and demand to know what I had against her child. This meeting was held with the principal in the principal's office, and the woman got very irate and lost her temper. I patiently explained that I had nothing against her child. I was only trying to get her child to pay attention in class, stop turning around in his seat, and learn! Her response was that if her child's grades were good enough, then he doesn't have to pay attention all of the time as I expect. He is probably really listening, even if he's not paying attention, drawing, or talking.

When you meet the parents and listen to their own unreasonable expectations and ideas, you don't hesitate to wonder why the children are the way they are.