Surprised to find that my kid is the problem student, not sure how to improve

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08/17/2016 18:32

Subject: Surprised to find that my kid is the problem student, not sure how to improve

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Anonymous

I was the daughter and granddaughter of teachers; I'm definitely not the sort of parent to think that my kids are always right or always perfect, and the teacher always too harsh. In fact, I'm pretty demanding on standards for grades and behavior at school. My middle school DD has always gotten A's or B's on the report cards sent home, never had detention, and never had any discipline problems that we were informed of. But now I've got a situation that has me utterly perplexed for what to do about it.

A friend just sent me screenshots of a Facebook post in which one of DD's teachers for the upcoming year complains about having DD and 3 other students in her class. The teacher has our (fairly small) school listed as one of her "networks" on FB, and although only first names were mentioned in the post my DD is the only one with her somewhat uncommon first name in the entire school yearbook, so I'm nearly certain the post was by that teacher and about my kid. It looks like the teacher intended to send the message just to one of her friends, but something must have gone wrong because the friend who sent me the picture of the post was not the named friend to whom the post was addressed, and my friend confirmed that the post is visible to both her and her daughter, which suggests it's publicly available. I'm all for people venting to friends if needed, and if my kid did something to earn a bad reputation amongst the teaching staff then she is just going to have to live with the consequences, however I do wish it hadn't been so public. But that's not the part of this I have any influence over. My part of the problem is to deal with my kid being apparently the bad kid.

I don't like the idea that my kid has a reputation already for being one of the problem students. Especially just starting the year, that's going to give her more hurdles to overcome. And I don't want to have "that kid". So, I sat DD down and I asked her... is there anything you need to tell me about how you have been acting at school? She said no. I asked, if I call the school and ask to see your disciplinary record or your transcripts, are there going to be any surprises I should know about? She again said no, and was confused and offended as to why I was asking. So I showed her the post I had received (I don't have Facebook, and she's not getting one until after the first quarter of school... she just turned 13 this summer). I told her, "Look, I don't know why, but this is what's going around about you. I don't like it. I didn't raise you to be the problem student and I don't think you want that reputation either. So if you can think of what you may have done to be the kind of student a teacher doesn't want, I want you to tell me what's going on and then I need you to commit to changing it this year because that's unacceptable." DD still remained adamant that she had no clue why this teacher dislikes her and she seemed quite upset about it.

Based on all evidence I have, I'm inclined to believe DD that she's not doing anything specific to be a problem student. But she's still got at least one academic teacher who has publicly named her as a student she dreads having. So where do we go from here in order for my kid to have a good year, be successful, and not further aggravate the teacher? Should I ask for a conference fairly soon after school starts and try to address whatever the problem is? I'm inclined to think that DD is at an age where she needs to handle these things, but on the other hand it's a somewhat strange situation. Just ignore it? WWYD?