To teachers and parents: Have the kids gotten better?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School closures were the most anti-equity thing to happen in the last 50 years at least. The rich kids were largely fine, while the poor kids were largely not. You can do equity initiatives continuously for the next 10 years and still not be able to completely reverse what happened in the last 2.

+1

And education researchers KNEW it and spoke about it, school districts like DC did nothing.

But don’t forget the parents advocating for schools in DC to open were largely white. And the unionized teachers pushing hardest for closure were black. I am a DCPS teacher and the hardest students to re-engage with school, both mentally and in terms of showing up, were black students. It’s been extremely damaging to them and I’m working like hell to try and make up for some of the losses. But it’s going to be a LONG road, especially for students who spent 1.5 years stuck in highly dysfunctional environments with no reprieve and no healthy role models.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Things have gotten worse at my school. Kids have gotten comfortable and spring is here. That means, there has been an uptick in outrageous behaviors. Today, I had to half drag a kindergarten student upstairs to the office because he started hitting/hicking us. This afternoon, the entire downstairs at my school had to listen to screaming from a pre-k kid who has been running laps around the school for the last few weeks. I also have a student who eats everything and anything under the sun. Thankfully her classmates tell me when this happens so I can fish it out of her mouth (today it was a twist tie and a cap eraser). My student with the huge behavior issues was absent today so it was a pretty calm day.

I've heard awful stories from the middle school. The admin is always busy with them so they rarely have time to help us out. We are exhausted and we still have two weeks left before spring break. Teachers call in sick so much due to the stress and exhaustion and there are no subs (who can blame them with these behavior issues?) And our school isn't even that bad compared to others I've heard about.

Parents need to be called to pick up their kids or to sit with them in class if they cannot behave.

So they should just leave work every day to come to school? How realistic is that?

Perhaps that will motivate them to actually parent their out of control kids and/or get them psychiatrist help so that they won’t have to keep missing work. Shrug.

Wow you really hit the low end of DCUM. Shrug.

Gross.

Its gross to do nothing and just send your kids to school pretending its nothing. Some kids have real mental health issues and the schools should focus on helping them. Not the made up mental health issues that parents use to handle their kids poor behavior.

No. That is not a school's job. That is a parent's job. Do your job, parent. Get help for your kids. Schools should focus on teaching and learning. Parents are supposed to focus on everything else. Stop making schools responsible for doing something for your kid because of your inability to do your job as a parent.

I am a parent writing this.

Well current federal law disagrees with you, but I guess you could take it up with your senator and rep.

You write as if it were so easy for any parent to just pick up the phone and schedule free weekly sessions with a qualified therapist within walking distance. There are MAJOR barriers for many parents in this process. None the least of which is understanding mental health, the utility of therapy in it, and trust in a largely white pool of therapists. - a white teacher

I’m sorry to hear that. Your kids’ mental health is still *your* responsibility, not the school’s. Figure it out.

So let’s say that your child comes to me as his/her/they’re teacher to confide that they’ve been sexually assaulted, are suicidal, etc. You would prefer that I shrug and tell them it’s not my responsibility? I guarantee you that many will harm themselves before confiding in a parent. Be careful- it could be YOUR child in a dangerous mental health crisis one day. And, in my experience, the “ tough luck” parents are not particularly approachable for their children.

I would expect you to call and inform the parent of the minor child so they can handle it. If the parent is the abuser, I would expect you to fulfill your duties as a mandated reporter to CPS.

Next question?

No further questions your honor! Thank you for your snappy advice and speedy judgement 🙄. It would be a cold day before I directly called a parent to report their child was suicidal.l or sexually assaulted. Such a call requires great skill, training, and damned good liability insurance. It can be very risky for the person reporting it to the parent and risky for the child too if the parent doesn’t believe them, fails to protect or help them, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I teach in a Title 1 school. Most families in our school live with extended family so childcare was not an issue for most of them. They all got laptops and hot spots and kits of supplies for each child. We reached out to every parent to ask what else they needed. Most of the absences were due to parenting issues. “Larla doesn’t like to _________.” Go to bed, wake up on time, do Zoom school, do class work, participate in class, etc. so our phone calls basically ended up as parenting sessions.

A few months into the Pandemic, I talked to a school counselor at my kid's school. My child (9) was freaking out at any request, throwing tantrums, hiding out in her room for 23 hours a day because anytime we interacted she was ending up with a consequence. The counselor was really helpful. On her recommendation, I focused on positive parenting, reduced my expectations, focused on a few key things that I required. None of us had parented through a pandemic, or been a kid through a pandemic, or taught through a pandemic.

I'm glad you were able to use the help you were given. Most parents weren't interested in help. The pandemic didn't bring up new issues with their parenting. They needed parenting help from the beginning. The teachers all wish we could hire a bilingual parenting coach. This full-time person would hold mandatory meetings with parents about their roles and responsibilities as parents as well as the school's/teacher's roles and responsibilities. They could also have one-on-one family sessions to coach parents on how to parent. They just don't know how and it creates a lot of issues in the classroom. None of this is pandemic-related.

Can you give some more examples of the parents who don’t know how to parent? You mean they don’t send them to bed on time or make them do their homework?

DP but I have many students whose parents allow them to play video games all night, send them to school with exclusively junk food, and don’t enforce any sort of homework/independent reading at home. They come to school and have no motivation to do work, because they’re exhausted and have no stamina for completing tasks. They have no responsibilities or boundaries. I also have students who are 8, 9, and 10 who expect teachers to blow their noses for them. Their parents do everything for them and have taught them no independence. We have kindergarten parents requesting we potty train their kids. None of them know how to tie their shoes. It’s really clear that the parents need support.

My students (elementary) who fall asleep each day tell me school is the only place they CAN sleep. They live in very crowded section 8 apartments. The TV is often on all night, there are many people coming and going and(I suspect) the students are fearful of some of the adults. It’s hard to sleep when you’re gripping a bat under the covers in case uncle Joe comes should slip under the covers with you…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Things have gotten worse at my school. Kids have gotten comfortable and spring is here. That means, there has been an uptick in outrageous behaviors. Today, I had to half drag a kindergarten student upstairs to the office because he started hitting/hicking us. This afternoon, the entire downstairs at my school had to listen to screaming from a pre-k kid who has been running laps around the school for the last few weeks. I also have a student who eats everything and anything under the sun. Thankfully her classmates tell me when this happens so I can fish it out of her mouth (today it was a twist tie and a cap eraser). My student with the huge behavior issues was absent today so it was a pretty calm day.

I've heard awful stories from the middle school. The admin is always busy with them so they rarely have time to help us out. We are exhausted and we still have two weeks left before spring break. Teachers call in sick so much due to the stress and exhaustion and there are no subs (who can blame them with these behavior issues?) And our school isn't even that bad compared to others I've heard about.

Parents need to be called to pick up their kids or to sit with them in class if they cannot behave.

So they should just leave work every day to come to school? How realistic is that?

Perhaps that will motivate them to actually parent their out of control kids and/or get them psychiatrist help so that they won’t have to keep missing work. Shrug.

Wow you really hit the low end of DCUM. Shrug.

Gross.

Its gross to do nothing and just send your kids to school pretending its nothing. Some kids have real mental health issues and the schools should focus on helping them. Not the made up mental health issues that parents use to handle their kids poor behavior.

No. That is not a school's job. That is a parent's job. Do your job, parent. Get help for your kids. Schools should focus on teaching and learning. Parents are supposed to focus on everything else. Stop making schools responsible for doing something for your kid because of your inability to do your job as a parent.

I am a parent writing this.

Well current federal law disagrees with you, but I guess you could take it up with your senator and rep.

You write as if it were so easy for any parent to just pick up the phone and schedule free weekly sessions with a qualified therapist within walking distance. There are MAJOR barriers for many parents in this process. None the least of which is understanding mental health, the utility of therapy in it, and trust in a largely white pool of therapists. - a white teacher

I’m sorry to hear that. Your kids’ mental health is still *your* responsibility, not the school’s. Figure it out.

So let’s say that your child comes to me as his/her/they’re teacher to confide that they’ve been sexually assaulted, are suicidal, etc. You would prefer that I shrug and tell them it’s not my responsibility? I guarantee you that many will harm themselves before confiding in a parent. Be careful- it could be YOUR child in a dangerous mental health crisis one day. And, in my experience, the “ tough luck” parents are not particularly approachable for their children.

I would expect you to call and inform the parent of the minor child so they can handle it. If the parent is the abuser, I would expect you to fulfill your duties as a mandated reporter to CPS.

Next question?

No further questions your honor! Thank you for your snappy advice and speedy judgement 🙄. It would be a cold day before I directly called a parent to report their child was suicidal.l or sexually assaulted. Such a call requires great skill, training, and damned good liability insurance. It can be very risky for the person reporting it to the parent and risky for the child too if the parent doesn’t believe them, fails to protect or help them, etc.

Yikes. Please tell me you at least apprise a school counselor or admin of the situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Things have gotten worse at my school. Kids have gotten comfortable and spring is here. That means, there has been an uptick in outrageous behaviors. Today, I had to half drag a kindergarten student upstairs to the office because he started hitting/hicking us. This afternoon, the entire downstairs at my school had to listen to screaming from a pre-k kid who has been running laps around the school for the last few weeks. I also have a student who eats everything and anything under the sun. Thankfully her classmates tell me when this happens so I can fish it out of her mouth (today it was a twist tie and a cap eraser). My student with the huge behavior issues was absent today so it was a pretty calm day.

I've heard awful stories from the middle school. The admin is always busy with them so they rarely have time to help us out. We are exhausted and we still have two weeks left before spring break. Teachers call in sick so much due to the stress and exhaustion and there are no subs (who can blame them with these behavior issues?) And our school isn't even that bad compared to others I've heard about.

Parents need to be called to pick up their kids or to sit with them in class if they cannot behave.

Another teacher here and of course PP would call CPS, police, tell admin. I agree though that it is absolutely not protocol to directly call parents. Can you imagine that phone call even not as a teacher? The parent might not believe the kid, might do nothing, might continue to put the kid in harms way with the offending adult, scream and threaten the teacher for saying the kid is abused, etc.
So they should just leave work every day to come to school? How realistic is that?

Perhaps that will motivate them to actually parent their out of control kids and/or get them psychiatrist help so that they won’t have to keep missing work. Shrug.

Wow you really hit the low end of DCUM. Shrug.

Gross.

Its gross to do nothing and just send your kids to school pretending its nothing. Some kids have real mental health issues and the schools should focus on helping them. Not the made up mental health issues that parents use to handle their kids poor behavior.

No. That is not a school's job. That is a parent's job. Do your job, parent. Get help for your kids. Schools should focus on teaching and learning. Parents are supposed to focus on everything else. Stop making schools responsible for doing something for your kid because of your inability to do your job as a parent.

I am a parent writing this.

Well current federal law disagrees with you, but I guess you could take it up with your senator and rep.

You write as if it were so easy for any parent to just pick up the phone and schedule free weekly sessions with a qualified therapist within walking distance. There are MAJOR barriers for many parents in this process. None the least of which is understanding mental health, the utility of therapy in it, and trust in a largely white pool of therapists. - a white teacher

I’m sorry to hear that. Your kids’ mental health is still *your* responsibility, not the school’s. Figure it out.

So let’s say that your child comes to me as his/her/they’re teacher to confide that they’ve been sexually assaulted, are suicidal, etc. You would prefer that I shrug and tell them it’s not my responsibility? I guarantee you that many will harm themselves before confiding in a parent. Be careful- it could be YOUR child in a dangerous mental health crisis one day. And, in my experience, the “ tough luck” parents are not particularly approachable for their children.

I would expect you to call and inform the parent of the minor child so they can handle it. If the parent is the abuser, I would expect you to fulfill your duties as a mandated reporter to CPS.

Next question?

No further questions your honor! Thank you for your snappy advice and speedy judgement 🙄. It would be a cold day before I directly called a parent to report their child was suicidal.l or sexually assaulted. Such a call requires great skill, training, and damned good liability insurance. It can be very risky for the person reporting it to the parent and risky for the child too if the parent doesn’t believe them, fails to protect or help them, etc.

Yikes. Please tell me you at least apprise a school counselor or admin of the situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things have gotten worse at my school. Kids have gotten comfortable and spring is here. That means, there has been an uptick in outrageous behaviors. Today, I had to half drag a kindergarten student upstairs to the office because he started hitting/hicking us. This afternoon, the entire downstairs at my school had to listen to screaming from a pre-k kid who has been running laps around the school for the last few weeks. I also have a student who eats everything and anything under the sun. Thankfully her classmates tell me when this happens so I can fish it out of her mouth (today it was a twist tie and a cap eraser). My student with the huge behavior issues was absent today so it was a pretty calm day.

I've heard awful stories from the middle school. The admin is always busy with them so they rarely have time to help us out. We are exhausted and we still have two weeks left before spring break. Teachers call in sick so much due to the stress and exhaustion and there are no subs (who can blame them with these behavior issues?) And our school isn't even that bad compared to others I've heard about.

Parents need to be called to pick up their kids or to sit with them in class if they cannot behave.

Another teacher here and of course PP would call CPS, police, tell admin. I agree though that it is absolutely not protocol to directly call parents. Can you imagine that phone call even not as a teacher? The parent might not believe the kid, might do nothing, might continue to put the kid in harms way with the offending adult, scream and threaten the teacher for saying the kid is abused, etc.
So they should just leave work every day to come to school? How realistic is that?

Perhaps that will motivate them to actually parent their out of control kids and/or get them psychiatrist help so that they won’t have to keep missing work. Shrug.

Wow you really hit the low end of DCUM. Shrug.

Gross.

Its gross to do nothing and just send your kids to school pretending its nothing. Some kids have real mental health issues and the schools should focus on helping them. Not the made up mental health issues that parents use to handle their kids poor behavior.

No. That is not a school's job. That is a parent's job. Do your job, parent. Get help for your kids. Schools should focus on teaching and learning. Parents are supposed to focus on everything else. Stop making schools responsible for doing something for your kid because of your inability to do your job as a parent.

I am a parent writing this.

Well current federal law disagrees with you, but I guess you could take it up with your senator and rep.

You write as if it were so easy for any parent to just pick up the phone and schedule free weekly sessions with a qualified therapist within walking distance. There are MAJOR barriers for many parents in this process. None the least of which is understanding mental health, the utility of therapy in it, and trust in a largely white pool of therapists. - a white teacher

I’m sorry to hear that. Your kids’ mental health is still *your* responsibility, not the school’s. Figure it out.

So let’s say that your child comes to me as his/her/they’re teacher to confide that they’ve been sexually assaulted, are suicidal, etc. You would prefer that I shrug and tell them it’s not my responsibility? I guarantee you that many will harm themselves before confiding in a parent. Be careful- it could be YOUR child in a dangerous mental health crisis one day. And, in my experience, the “ tough luck” parents are not particularly approachable for their children.

I would expect you to call and inform the parent of the minor child so they can handle it. If the parent is the abuser, I would expect you to fulfill your duties as a mandated reporter to CPS.

Next question?

No further questions your honor! Thank you for your snappy advice and speedy judgement 🙄. It would be a cold day before I directly called a parent to report their child was suicidal.l or sexually assaulted. Such a call requires great skill, training, and damned good liability insurance. It can be very risky for the person reporting it to the parent and risky for the child too if the parent doesn’t believe them, fails to protect or help them, etc.

Yikes. Please tell me you at least apprise a school counselor or admin of the situation.

Another teacher here and of course PP would call CPS, police, tell admin. I agree though that it is absolutely not protocol to directly call parents. Can you imagine that phone call even not as a teacher? The parent might not believe the kid, might do nothing, might continue to put the kid in harms way with the offending adult, scream and threaten the teacher for saying the kid is abused, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School closures were the most anti-equity thing to happen in the last 50 years at least. The rich kids were largely fine, while the poor kids were largely not. You can do equity initiatives continuously for the next 10 years and still not be able to completely reverse what happened in the last 2.

At least in my neck of the woods, these was painted as "the poor (and where I am this means Black) families don't want to send their kids to in-person school". So it's this lovely thing where the people most hurt by the policy had the most support for the policy.

Was this because of Covid concern or because their kids weren’t being treated well in school or because virtual learning was so much easier logistically?

Covid concern. The narrative was "Black families are experiencing more illness and death from covid and therefore perceive more risk from sending kids to in-person school." My personal belief is that communicators failed miserably in showing that in-person school did not contribute to a higher likelihood of exposure than what those kids were experiencing alternatively.

Not just Black families but the families of low income workers who were not able to work from home. First, many of those workers who kept their jobs were at a higher risk for exposure to COVID and less likely to have health care that allowed them to go to the Doctor or hospital until they were really sick or sick leave that allowed them to not go to work when they were not feeling well. So there were higher rates of hospitalization and death among low income workers.

Second, many low income workers who have kids were not able to afford child care coverage for their kids who were not in school. So the older kids were expected to keep and eye on and help their younger siblings. You can guess how this influenced those kids ability to attend and complete virtual school. You can also guess how this influenced those kids ability to learn how to socialize and behave in a classroom.

Third, many low income families took advantage of the virtual learning so that their older kids were able to get jobs that helped the family pays its bills. It wasn't just lower income families, I read families of MC and UMC whose kids got jobs because they could. Many of the kids who found jobs did not return to in person school because they wanted to keep their jobs and staying in DL let them do that.

Fourth, even when schools returned to in-person (first 2 days then 4 days in FCPS) low income families who had younger kids at home and who could not find child care coverage, kept their older kids at home to watch their siblings while the parents worked. So while MC and UMC kids were able to return to class, if they wanted to, lower income kids were less likely to return because they were needed at home to watch siblings.

Overall, the pandemic took an exiting educational gap that was already widening and created a gulf. Lower income families bore the brunt of the pandemic in terms of health issues, hospitalizations, and deaths. The kids of these families were less likely to have the resources needed to have a solid chance of making distance learning work (reliable internet, good computers, parents who might be able to help with distance learning) I would fully expect that schools with a higher percentage of low income families are really struggling this year and will continue to struggle for a while.

The MC and UMC kids who are struggling probably is more attributable to parents who decided it wasn't worth the effort and just let their kids do whatever at home for the year. We saw plenty of posts stating that was happening and now those parents are complaining about their kids being behind. A bunch of those families posted that they were not making their kids go back to in-person when their kids really needed to be in-person. And I saw families who looked for ways to help their kids and make the best of the situation with varying degrees of success.

I saw this play out as well among some in our circle. We, on the other hand, took the opportunity to accelerate our elementary-aged kids far beyond what would have been achieved in school. But, to be fair, there are plenty of UMC families who didn't have the ability to work from home or that otherwise lacked the adequate flexibility/bandwidth to aggressively supplement even if they were at home.

Good for you, pp. My family was the one staffing the hospitals. Despite the financial advantage my family had as an UMC family, it was truly brutal for my elementary schooler. We are activly still dealing with/supporting that child in a way that is FAR different than what would have been the case if school had been available. We were able to provide a good and safe environment etc., with adaquate food, adaquate materials, adaquate heating/air conditioning etc/, adaquate IT, and an adult around. We tried to be there for our kid, and we were much more 'permissive' in allowing in-person playdates etc., as comparied to many of her friends (whose parents literally would not allow them to see other kids...or our kid in paticular because of the hospital work situation). The damage/effects of the situation on most children was quite bad....

[Anonymous]

To provide a different perspective, yes, the first half of this year was very, very difficult. Students were feral-like. But at least at my school, we've seen a pretty big turn around. Kids who needed IEP's finally are starting to get them. Kids who needed medication are finally starting on that. Kids who were out of control are doing well on their behavior plans. Kids who were behind are catching up.

I'm in a low to middle income school with about 14 languages spoken. It will probably take another year to see full academic recovery, but most of our students will have made about a year and a half of progress this past year. Some of the behaviors are similar to what we had prior to Covid. But I'm seeing students who can finally walk in a line, follow basic directions such as "put your scissors away" and kids who have some respect for others.

I know other districts and buildings might still be struggling and I hope they start to see successes soon. Even with things getting better in my district, we are still seeing double the amount of retirements and resignations. We may have to shut down our early childhood program because we don't have enough people to staff it. That will be terrible, because that means more kids going without services for too long. But, that's the market. If communities want strong preschools for their high need populations in public schools, I suspect it'll come down to $$ and conditions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parent here. We've finally been able to get in to a therapist this past week (after being waitlisted).

Things still aren't 'normal' (particularly in school) for my young kids and one of mine is still having anxiety that is detrimental to everyday functioning.

That doesn’t sound covid related.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parent here. We've finally been able to get in to a therapist this past week (after being waitlisted).

Things still aren't 'normal' (particularly in school) for my young kids and one of mine is still having anxiety that is detrimental to everyday functioning.

That doesn’t sound covid related.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Why are educators shocked that there was real harm done when the schools went virtual for over a year? That parents still have a chip on their shoulders towards schools because they were closed far longer than any other workplace. They were told schools aren’t daycare so you and your family are on your own figuring out how to help your child learn anything?

Of course parents are throwing their hands up and saying that catching up their kids is the school’s problem. They wanted schools open when their kids were falling behind.

Kids realized that their education mattered pretty little to the adults in their lives. They had 18 months to skate by.

This is the fall out. It will eventually level off but it’s ridiculous to think it will within six months.

Too bad. Do your jobs, Mama Bears. Take full responsibility for YOUR kids.

You do realize that not every parent is a software engineer working from home in their home office, correct?

Remember that next time you ask for the manager at the grocery store.

I think the point is that they are now YOUR responsibility as teachers during the day. Not every parent is home during school hours. Don't complain the kids are tough this year and super behind academically. Most parents did the best that they could in an impossible situation. We are all tryign to support and figure out how to help kids now that they are back in school.
It shouldn't be shocking that the kids are behind, unable to take things seriously and much more aggressive. It's not been a typical or easy few years. Parents are mentally spent after years of juggling.

You are aware that many teachers are also parents, correct? We have our own children to worry about and we are also “mentally spent.” Also, I accept that the students are my responsibility during the school day. I just hope you understand that I’m taking responsibility for over 100 students a day, many of whom are academically behind and some are aggressive. Things are going to slip. I’m not superhuman. Any help you can provide as another parent is always appreciated.

You are aware most parents also have jobs, correct?

See how that works?

So? Why should teachers accept any responsibility for your kids beyond their primary role as educators?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Things have gotten worse at my school. Kids have gotten comfortable and spring is here. That means, there has been an uptick in outrageous behaviors. Today, I had to half drag a kindergarten student upstairs to the office because he started hitting/hicking us. This afternoon, the entire downstairs at my school had to listen to screaming from a pre-k kid who has been running laps around the school for the last few weeks. I also have a student who eats everything and anything under the sun. Thankfully her classmates tell me when this happens so I can fish it out of her mouth (today it was a twist tie and a cap eraser). My student with the huge behavior issues was absent today so it was a pretty calm day.

I've heard awful stories from the middle school. The admin is always busy with them so they rarely have time to help us out. We are exhausted and we still have two weeks left before spring break. Teachers call in sick so much due to the stress and exhaustion and there are no subs (who can blame them with these behavior issues?) And our school isn't even that bad compared to others I've heard about.

Parents need to be called to pick up their kids or to sit with them in class if they cannot behave.

100%! I have been in this situation as a teacher and gone immediately to the mental health team to report it so they could handle it. I followed up with them several times to make sure they did and I obviously monitored the student closely. In this particular situation the parent wanted to approach the perpetrator student in an aggressive manner and try to intervene rather than letting police do their job. It was absolutely best handled by the social worker, who help parent calm down.


So they should just leave work every day to come to school? How realistic is that?

Perhaps that will motivate them to actually parent their out of control kids and/or get them psychiatrist help so that they won’t have to keep missing work. Shrug.

Wow you really hit the low end of DCUM. Shrug.

Gross.

Its gross to do nothing and just send your kids to school pretending its nothing. Some kids have real mental health issues and the schools should focus on helping them. Not the made up mental health issues that parents use to handle their kids poor behavior.

No. That is not a school's job. That is a parent's job. Do your job, parent. Get help for your kids. Schools should focus on teaching and learning. Parents are supposed to focus on everything else. Stop making schools responsible for doing something for your kid because of your inability to do your job as a parent.

I am a parent writing this.

Well current federal law disagrees with you, but I guess you could take it up with your senator and rep.

You write as if it were so easy for any parent to just pick up the phone and schedule free weekly sessions with a qualified therapist within walking distance. There are MAJOR barriers for many parents in this process. None the least of which is understanding mental health, the utility of therapy in it, and trust in a largely white pool of therapists. - a white teacher

I’m sorry to hear that. Your kids’ mental health is still *your* responsibility, not the school’s. Figure it out.

So let’s say that your child comes to me as his/her/they’re teacher to confide that they’ve been sexually assaulted, are suicidal, etc. You would prefer that I shrug and tell them it’s not my responsibility? I guarantee you that many will harm themselves before confiding in a parent. Be careful- it could be YOUR child in a dangerous mental health crisis one day. And, in my experience, the “ tough luck” parents are not particularly approachable for their children.

I would expect you to call and inform the parent of the minor child so they can handle it. If the parent is the abuser, I would expect you to fulfill your duties as a mandated reporter to CPS.

Next question?

No further questions your honor! Thank you for your snappy advice and speedy judgement 🙄. It would be a cold day before I directly called a parent to report their child was suicidal.l or sexually assaulted. Such a call requires great skill, training, and damned good liability insurance. It can be very risky for the person reporting it to the parent and risky for the child too if the parent doesn’t believe them, fails to protect or help them, etc.

Yikes. Please tell me you at least apprise a school counselor or admin of the situation.