incompetent teacher -- what can parents do?

[Anonymous]

I have worked in a few schools in MCPS and that wouldn't fly. Sometimes teachers will ask me for a kid but I have never kept a kid out of a teacher's class by teacher request. We also won't do that for parents unless there's actual past abuse or the like. As a teacher your job is to deal with who you get. We will balance for IEP, 504 and esol numbers, and by gender and overall class size, so teachers have fair workloads, but it's absolutely not done on a student by student basis. To the HCPS teacher, that's really unprofessional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do not "ride" the teacher. Word will spread like wildfire. Good teachers will go out of their way to make sure your kid doesn't land in their class.
Everyone gets bad teachers and bad bosses once in awhile. Make it a learning experience in "coping." Move on.

That's bullshit. Teachers have no say over who is in their class. Trust me I know. I do the scheduling.

Disagree. I teach in MCPS. My team definitely goes over the rosters during pre-service to make requests of the counseling dept to switch students. 90% of the time, it is about balancing a class better or separating students who don't work well together. However, the remainder are based on past student or parent behavior. I pulled up my rosters on myMCPS last week and already know that I will ask to have a particular student swapped. His mother was a piece of work for three years with the older sibling. No one ever wants her kids because of her. I will gladly take two other kids with behavior issues to avoid ever having to speak to her again. If I can't evade him, I will cc my RT on every communication with her.

[Anonymous]

Counselor here: If a teacher told me she was abused by a parent for three years that might be something in the best interests of everyone to avoid. BUT the question was about making waves over a horrendously awful teacher. Any parent who complains to the principal or community superintendent about a teacher isn't going to have their kid penalized by the counseling dept. It just won't happen. The parent can do that without worries that their kid will be put in bad teacher's classes or that good teachers will ask to avoid the kid. The only one who might ask for a pass on the kid is the horrible teacher, and it's their own doing. I will say this to the teachers asking to move kids--we counselors find it seriously annoying and unprofessional, no matter how pleasant we are to your face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Counselor here: If a teacher told me she was abused by a parent for three years that might be something in the best interests of everyone to avoid. BUT the question was about making waves over a horrendously awful teacher. Any parent who complains to the principal or community superintendent about a teacher isn't going to have their kid penalized by the counseling dept. It just won't happen. The parent can do that without worries that their kid will be put in bad teacher's classes or that good teachers will ask to avoid the kid. The only one who might ask for a pass on the kid is the horrible teacher, and it's their own doing. I will say this to the teachers asking to move kids--we counselors find it seriously annoying and unprofessional, no matter how pleasant we are to your face.

I should clarify that I wasn't mistreated by this parent for 3 years. She mistreated about 20 teachers during the three years her older child attended our school.

[Anonymous]

Then I blame your principal for not laying down the law with her. I've had a principal forbid a parent from entering the main office . She was that crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Then I blame your principal for not laying down the law with her. I've had a principal forbid a parent from entering the main office . She was that crazy.

Is that legal? We had a parent who was only allowed to email administrators because she was so abusive, but can a parent be banned from a public school if they weren't being violent?

[Anonymous]

A parent can be banned from central office too! Legal tho, who knows...

[Anonymous]

You wouldn't believe the crazy parents out there (well, maybe you would)! Ranging from outright harassment of teachers because of the grades their child earned, to picking up the kid 15-20 minutes early every day (parent didn't like waiting on the carpool line) and making the front office staff crazy to get the child out NOW, to verbal abuse of the front office staff, administrators, building services, etc. YES, a school can get a restraining order forbidding a parent from coming on the MCPS property. After what I've seen, deserving so!

[Anonymous]

I feel I have to jump in to say that my experience as a teacher is that the parents are very supportive. It's hard to control the truly crazy ones, but most parents are awesome. I've actually had far worse experiences dealing with nasty coworkers than parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel I have to jump in to say that my experience as a teacher is that the parents are very supportive. It's hard to control the truly crazy ones, but most parents are awesome. I've actually had far worse experiences dealing with nasty coworkers than parents.

I can agree with that only because of the years that I worked in higher poverty areas where we rarely had interactions with parents. Stressed out to the point of mentally ill coworkers can make everyone miserable. But once I transferred to a W feeder school, the pendulum has definitely swung toward supportive coworkers and nutso parents. Most of the crazy parents are moms, but when you get an unbalanced dad who is verbally abusive, it ratchets up the fear factor.

[Anonymous]

We moved to Fairfax after a principal at my child's MOCO school told me the teacher was "untouchable". He had been trying to get rid of her for almost six years. 9 parents from the classroom met with the principal to try to get her out. The principal told me he couldn't stand her. He admitted she had no business in the classroom. But again, she was untouchable. Fairfax was dramatically better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher with HCPS, I have a large say of who is and who is not in my class.

This, in my experiences, depends on how tight you are with the counselors. I had a brilliant student in my 9 honors English years ago, for example, who was enrolled in a semester B class with a very under-performing teacher. Because the counselor and I had a good working relationship, it was easy enough to flip the student's schedule so that he would return to me. This easy flip isn't always the case, however, especially if there's a singleton course that locks up the schedule.

Trust me when I say that good teachers do what they can to work around the bad teachers, as they tarnish our reputation in the eyes of the public.

I have to say this, HCPS teacher, that determining which kids to weed out, if that's your point, is indeed very unprofessional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel I have to jump in to say that my experience as a teacher is that the parents are very supportive. It's hard to control the truly crazy ones, but most parents are awesome. I've actually had far worse experiences dealing with nasty coworkers than parents.

I can agree with that only because of the years that I worked in higher poverty areas where we rarely had interactions with parents. Stressed out to the point of mentally ill coworkers can make everyone miserable. But once I transferred to a W feeder school, the pendulum has definitely swung toward supportive coworkers and nutso parents. Most of the crazy parents are moms, but when you get an unbalanced dad who is verbally abusive, it ratchets up the fear factor.

Yes, that's the trade off in our county. sad to say that the stereotypes are true in most cases . . .

[Anonymous]

I have taught in high and low poverty schools. The teachers were nastiest in a W feeder. I think it's because they have too much time on their hands. They're not worrying about hungry kids, so they have time to mess with one another. It was the pits and I went back to a high needs school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Counselor here: If a teacher told me she was abused by a parent for three years that might be something in the best interests of everyone to avoid. BUT the question was about making waves over a horrendously awful teacher. Any parent who complains to the principal or community superintendent about a teacher isn't going to have their kid penalized by the counseling dept. It just won't happen. The parent can do that without worries that their kid will be put in bad teacher's classes or that good teachers will ask to avoid the kid. The only one who might ask for a pass on the kid is the horrible teacher, and it's their own doing. I will say this to the teachers asking to move kids--we counselors find it seriously annoying and unprofessional, no matter how pleasant we are to your face.

In my experiences (over 20 years), I've encountered few counselors worth their salt. The ones who work with me to benefit a kid (I posted earlier about saving a student from losing a semester with a terrible teacher.) have been few and far between. I understand how the job at the secondary level - HS in particular - turns into a scheduling act. But the job is one that fits under the SEL realm, and to ignore that is inexcusable.

So you can play the hypocrisy game, but I have your number.