Anonymous
02/01/2013 18:00
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Altruism is about putting others first and in this case it means a teacher putting the education of their students first. Anyone who has the ability to put their students first would not have time to hang out in the teachers lounge discussing their students and their parents who they have backlisted as CRAZY.
If you consider every student and every parent CRAZY, who asks you a few simple questions then you have obviously chosen the wrong profession. Clearly, your level for tolerating life's minor annoyances is far too low for you to be successful at any profession and especially so for teaching.
The truly great teachers are altruistic. They are not in it for the money, they work many more hours than they are paid creating dynamic comprehensive lessons, they ask probing questions to assess mastery, they read their students essays and problems, they mark them up and grade them fairly, and they develop teacher/student relationships on their own without being mindless slaves to the Teacher's Lounge Groupthink about students, parents, administrators.
Altruistic teachers are kind and gentle, and they put their students first. Great teacher never allow themselves to become part of the cool-teacher clique. They never use uneducated uninformed pejorative terms in which they can't substantiate like crazy, insane, pita and helicoptering. Those are just the verbal expressions of selfish weak minded individuals who have clearly entered the wrong profession.
If your teaching skills are being challenged it's not because your student's parents are crazy, it's because you are less than an effective teacher. If you are a less than an effective teacher then in all likelihood you enter this profession for the wrong reasons. You didn't enter the field of education teach because you have a true passion for the content matter in which you teach, you entered it to have your summers off, or to coach, to be able to pick and choose your teacher's pets, to be the smarty-pants in class again or to one day become an administrator and you can't wait to get out of the classroom.
Take this weekend to think about the real reasons you entered the profession of teaching. If you come up with any other reasons besides having a burning passion to teach children everything you know about your subject and life in general, then you've chosen the wrong profession.
If my advice to you makes me crazy in your opinion then you are a hopelessly flawed human being who has no chance of improvement or ever becoming a skillful teacher.
If you consider every student and every parent CRAZY, who asks you a few simple questions then you have obviously chosen the wrong profession. Clearly, your level for tolerating life's minor annoyances is far too low for you to be successful at any profession and especially so for teaching.
The truly great teachers are altruistic. They are not in it for the money, they work many more hours than they are paid creating dynamic comprehensive lessons, they ask probing questions to assess mastery, they read their students essays and problems, they mark them up and grade them fairly, and they develop teacher/student relationships on their own without being mindless slaves to the Teacher's Lounge Groupthink about students, parents, administrators.
Altruistic teachers are kind and gentle, and they put their students first. Great teacher never allow themselves to become part of the cool-teacher clique. They never use uneducated uninformed pejorative terms in which they can't substantiate like crazy, insane, pita and helicoptering. Those are just the verbal expressions of selfish weak minded individuals who have clearly entered the wrong profession.
If your teaching skills are being challenged it's not because your student's parents are crazy, it's because you are less than an effective teacher. If you are a less than an effective teacher then in all likelihood you enter this profession for the wrong reasons. You didn't enter the field of education teach because you have a true passion for the content matter in which you teach, you entered it to have your summers off, or to coach, to be able to pick and choose your teacher's pets, to be the smarty-pants in class again or to one day become an administrator and you can't wait to get out of the classroom.
Take this weekend to think about the real reasons you entered the profession of teaching. If you come up with any other reasons besides having a burning passion to teach children everything you know about your subject and life in general, then you've chosen the wrong profession.
If my advice to you makes me crazy in your opinion then you are a hopelessly flawed human being who has no chance of improvement or ever becoming a skillful teacher.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 15:41
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I taught in a rural area in the middle of the country. One of my students was very bright, had excellent ACT scores, had great leadership skills and extracurriculars, and was very diligent with her schoolwork. We talked college one day (she was a junior) and I suggested she look at top tier schools, maybe one of the Ivies if any appealed to her. I thought she had a good chance on paper especially since she was coming from a school and area that was essentially not represented at all in any of the schools we were talking about.
Her parents were FURIOUS with me.
Not defending the parents in any way. But I also wouldn't have been happy with you. I can't afford Ivies for my kids and, in most circumstances, I don't think it is wise to go into tens or even hundreds of thousand dollars of debt to go to an Ivy League school. Ability to get in really isn't the only criteria for deciding to apply to a school.
It's wonderful that you were encouraging to this girl, but when you are talking to kids about things their parents will likely be paying for, you really need to be sure the parents are on board.
This has to be one of the dumbest ass things I have read.
That is what a counselor and teacher is for...let you know about your abilities and opportunities...what the student and parent decide to do ABOUT THESE THINGS is their decision...
But you put the choices out there..
What an idiot!
+1. It is not a teacher's job to decide where a student applies and how much debt to take on. But, it is a teacher's job to give the student an accurate understanding of his or her talent, potential, and options.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 12:38
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I taught in a rural area in the middle of the country. One of my students was very bright, had excellent ACT scores, had great leadership skills and extracurriculars, and was very diligent with her schoolwork. We talked college one day (she was a junior) and I suggested she look at top tier schools, maybe one of the Ivies if any appealed to her. I thought she had a good chance on paper especially since she was coming from a school and area that was essentially not represented at all in any of the schools we were talking about.
Her parents were FURIOUS with me.
Not defending the parents in any way. But I also wouldn't have been happy with you. I can't afford Ivies for my kids and, in most circumstances, I don't think it is wise to go into tens or even hundreds of thousand dollars of debt to go to an Ivy League school. Ability to get in really isn't the only criteria for deciding to apply to a school.
It's wonderful that you were encouraging to this girl, but when you are talking to kids about things their parents will likely be paying for, you really need to be sure the parents are on board.
Just for extra info, this family was the wealthiest family in the town (rural does not necessarily mean poor - there are some very well off farming and ranching families, they are just more spread out in rural areas). The private college they ended up sending her to was not cheap and due to a pretty small endowment they had a far less substantial commitment to financial aid to admitted students than any of the Ivies. She asked my opinion on colleges and where she should apply. She was a scholarship candidate anywhere and I told her as much. I had a similar profile to this student when I graduated high school and received full scholarships to several private universities including the one Ivy League school I applied to. I wasn't far removed from that experience at the time, so it was still the way things worked, maybe that is not so true anymore, I haven't taught in a rural area or a non-coastal state in several years now.
I think there is a misconception that nearby or state schools *always* translate to less debt for grads. That can be true, it would almost certainly be true if you were talking UMD vs. say William and Mary for most local kids. It's not necessarily true if you are applying to a school with a strong commitment to aid and you are representing a group that is underrepresented in some way, such as a kid from a rural community in a state that sends very very few people to that school. The counselor for our school was shared between more than one school district (rotated days) due to size and since many of the kids were not college bound, her default was to push the nearby (relatively) religious college or for a top student like this girl she encouraged the closest satellite campus of the state university. There were no college reps visiting this school outside of those 2 schools either so there weren't really any resources for a kid to even learn about any other schools.
As a postscript, she didn't apply to an Ivy, but she did apply to a couple of very competitive private schools. She received really great scholarship offers. At the religious college they didn't have much money to give - I think their largest scholarship was 10,000 for merit at the time. She wouldn't have qualified for need based aid I don't think. FWIW, she ended up at a very well regarded private university in California on scholarship. Last I heard from her she was grad school bound, so everything worked out. I do kind of wonder if her parents ever acknowledged that she was genuinely smart. I hope so.
* sending her brother to (sorry about that, missed a word in typing haste)
And thanks for the validation PP. My folks weren't very knowledgeable about the world of college admissions or financial aid or scholarships. I (and they) were really grateful to a teacher I had who was a Brown grad who said "hey, you have a lot of options" and talked to me about what some of those options were. I really was surprised by the response from her parents. I hadn't run down the school they were targeting for her or anything, she just asked about colleges and we talked about her interests and some different options. I'd hope my kids have a counselor or teacher who says "hey have you looked at X school, they have a really great program in the field you're interested in" when the time comes. My principal supported me when the parents complained to him, so that was good as a young teacher because it could have gone the other way and been incredibly discouraging.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 12:16
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I taught in a rural area in the middle of the country. One of my students was very bright, had excellent ACT scores, had great leadership skills and extracurriculars, and was very diligent with her schoolwork. We talked college one day (she was a junior) and I suggested she look at top tier schools, maybe one of the Ivies if any appealed to her. I thought she had a good chance on paper especially since she was coming from a school and area that was essentially not represented at all in any of the schools we were talking about.
Her parents were FURIOUS with me.
Not defending the parents in any way. But I also wouldn't have been happy with you. I can't afford Ivies for my kids and, in most circumstances, I don't think it is wise to go into tens or even hundreds of thousand dollars of debt to go to an Ivy League school. Ability to get in really isn't the only criteria for deciding to apply to a school.
It's wonderful that you were encouraging to this girl, but when you are talking to kids about things their parents will likely be paying for, you really need to be sure the parents are on board.
This has to be one of the dumbest ass things I have read.
That is what a counselor and teacher is for...let you know about your abilities and opportunities...what the student and parent decide to do ABOUT THESE THINGS is their decision...
But you put the choices out there..
What an idiot!
Anonymous
02/01/2013 11:49
Subject: Re:TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Professional Educators don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. No my teacher friend, they think of them as people with whom they work and interact as part of their profession. Apparently you believe anyone who may be outside of your cozy little clique is crazy.
No. You are incorrect. We do think some of our students and ESPECIALLY our parents are crazy. Crazy as in 100% certifiable. Most teachers could write a book about all the crazy they deal with every day.
Actually, your posts provide pretty good insight into the mind of a crazy parent. Where do you think all the messed up kids come from? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, unfortunately.
Actually, OP, I think the pp meant to say that "good" teachers don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. Only insecure and incompetent ones would even presume to have such a mindset. Which one are you?
NP here. Not a teacher, but a laid back parent. Give me a break!!! Every profession has crazy job stories!!! Why should teachers be different? I am actually liking this thread. As much as DCUM parents trash other parents, their DCs' teachers and school administrators, I think it is only fair for teachers to be able to share their stories too.
+1
There is not a profession in this world that doesn't involve hilarious crazy stories. I am enjoying these as well.
+1. Every profession involves interaction with nuts. I'm not a teacher but my jobs in various fields have confirmed for me that whack-jobs exist in every line of work. Venting here is better than exploding in the nut's face.
IMO the angry poster defines "crazy, aggressive and abusive parent" and proves OP's point that these absolutely exist. The whack-job poster clearly has a huge sense of entitlement and thinks teachers exist to meekly serve his/her abusive demands.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 10:00
Subject: Re:TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Professional Educators don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. No my teacher friend, they think of them as people with whom they work and interact as part of their profession. Apparently you believe anyone who may be outside of your cozy little clique is crazy.
No. You are incorrect. We do think some of our students and ESPECIALLY our parents are crazy. Crazy as in 100% certifiable. Most teachers could write a book about all the crazy they deal with every day.
Actually, your posts provide pretty good insight into the mind of a crazy parent. Where do you think all the messed up kids come from? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, unfortunately.
Actually, OP, I think the pp meant to say that "good" teachers don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. Only insecure and incompetent ones would even presume to have such a mindset. Which one are you?
NP here. Not a teacher, but a laid back parent. Give me a break!!! Every profession has crazy job stories!!! Why should teachers be different? I am actually liking this thread. As much as DCUM parents trash other parents, their DCs' teachers and school administrators, I think it is only fair for teachers to be able to share their stories too.
+1
There is not a profession in this world that doesn't involve hilarious crazy stories. I am enjoying these as well.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 09:47
Subject: Re:TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Professional Educators don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. No my teacher friend, they think of them as people with whom they work and interact as part of their profession. Apparently you believe anyone who may be outside of your cozy little clique is crazy.
No. You are incorrect. We do think some of our students and ESPECIALLY our parents are crazy. Crazy as in 100% certifiable. Most teachers could write a book about all the crazy they deal with every day.
Actually, your posts provide pretty good insight into the mind of a crazy parent. Where do you think all the messed up kids come from? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, unfortunately.
Actually, OP, I think the pp meant to say that "good" teachers don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. Only insecure and incompetent ones would even presume to have such a mindset. Which one are you?
NP here. Not a teacher, but a laid back parent. Give me a break!!! Every profession has crazy job stories!!! Why should teachers be different? I am actually liking this thread. As much as DCUM parents trash other parents, their DCs' teachers and school administrators, I think it is only fair for teachers to be able to share their stories too.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 09:30
Subject: Re:TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Professional Educators don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. No my teacher friend, they think of them as people with whom they work and interact as part of their profession. Apparently you believe anyone who may be outside of your cozy little clique is crazy.
No. You are incorrect. We do think some of our students and ESPECIALLY our parents are crazy. Crazy as in 100% certifiable. Most teachers could write a book about all the crazy they deal with every day.
Actually, your posts provide pretty good insight into the mind of a crazy parent. Where do you think all the messed up kids come from? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, unfortunately.
Actually, OP, I think the pp meant to say that "good" teachers don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. Only insecure and incompetent ones would even presume to have such a mindset. Which one are you?
Do you acknowledge that there are actually unstable people in this world? And maybe some truly not nice people as well? And some of those people have kids. Kids who go to school. A good teacher cares about what is going on with a student outside of school. That means sometimes acknowledging that if a parent is acting unstable/abusive/aggressive/incredibly entitled towards folks at the school then the student is probably dealing with some pretty intense drama at home too. Putting total blinders on is not being a "good" teacher. A professional isn't going to call a parent crazy to their face or post a parent's name alongside an inappropriate note to the teacher on reddit or something, but they will absolutely *think* "crazy" about a person who is acting, well, crazy. That's part of being a human being and not a robot. If you want educators to never have opinions or feelings about interpersonal interactions with parents, then you're going to have to create an educational system that doesn't involve interpersonal interaction.
BTW, I'm not sure altruism means what you think it does. At any rate, bringing it into a rant about teachers viewing certain parental behavior as crazy is a non-sequitur since altruism is about selfless acts, not about the actor having no feelings/opinions about others.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 09:22
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I can't write any here- surely the crazy parents of my students read this!
If you can't write here ... it's only because you never learned to write at all. Stop blaming your students and their parents. Go back to school and actually learn something in college this time. Then go to Ed. School and learn something about teaching methodology, but better yet do yourself and your students the biggest favor of all quit doing this job in which you clearly hate. Get a job at Starbucks and complain for the rest of your life about your how your awful students and their crazy parents drove you out of the profession you loved so dearly.
Back away from the computer and go take your meds, crazy-pants.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 09:07
Subject: Re:TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Actually, OP, I think the pp meant to say that "good" teachers don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. Only insecure and incompetent ones would even presume to have such a mindset. Which one are you?
I do think that poster from the wifi thread has found a new home. Sitting back - this should be fun!
Anonymous
02/01/2013 07:42
Subject: Re:TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Professional Educators don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. No my teacher friend, they think of them as people with whom they work and interact as part of their profession. Apparently you believe anyone who may be outside of your cozy little clique is crazy.
No. You are incorrect. We do think some of our students and ESPECIALLY our parents are crazy. Crazy as in 100% certifiable. Most teachers could write a book about all the crazy they deal with every day.
Actually, your posts provide pretty good insight into the mind of a crazy parent. Where do you think all the messed up kids come from? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, unfortunately.
Actually, OP, I think the pp meant to say that "good" teachers don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. Only insecure and incompetent ones would even presume to have such a mindset. Which one are you?
Anonymous
02/01/2013 07:39
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I taught in a rural area in the middle of the country. One of my students was very bright, had excellent ACT scores, had great leadership skills and extracurriculars, and was very diligent with her schoolwork. We talked college one day (she was a junior) and I suggested she look at top tier schools, maybe one of the Ivies if any appealed to her. I thought she had a good chance on paper especially since she was coming from a school and area that was essentially not represented at all in any of the schools we were talking about.
Her parents were FURIOUS with me.
Not defending the parents in any way. But I also wouldn't have been happy with you. I can't afford Ivies for my kids and, in most circumstances, I don't think it is wise to go into tens or even hundreds of thousand dollars of debt to go to an Ivy League school. Ability to get in really isn't the only criteria for deciding to apply to a school.
It's wonderful that you were encouraging to this girl, but when you are talking to kids about things their parents will likely be paying for, you really need to be sure the parents are on board.
Just for extra info, this family was the wealthiest family in the town (rural does not necessarily mean poor - there are some very well off farming and ranching families, they are just more spread out in rural areas). The private college they ended up sending her to was not cheap and due to a pretty small endowment they had a far less substantial commitment to financial aid to admitted students than any of the Ivies. She asked my opinion on colleges and where she should apply. She was a scholarship candidate anywhere and I told her as much. I had a similar profile to this student when I graduated high school and received full scholarships to several private universities including the one Ivy League school I applied to. I wasn't far removed from that experience at the time, so it was still the way things worked, maybe that is not so true anymore, I haven't taught in a rural area or a non-coastal state in several years now.
I think there is a misconception that nearby or state schools *always* translate to less debt for grads. That can be true, it would almost certainly be true if you were talking UMD vs. say William and Mary for most local kids. It's not necessarily true if you are applying to a school with a strong commitment to aid and you are representing a group that is underrepresented in some way, such as a kid from a rural community in a state that sends very very few people to that school. The counselor for our school was shared between more than one school district (rotated days) due to size and since many of the kids were not college bound, her default was to push the nearby (relatively) religious college or for a top student like this girl she encouraged the closest satellite campus of the state university. There were no college reps visiting this school outside of those 2 schools either so there weren't really any resources for a kid to even learn about any other schools.
As a postscript, she didn't apply to an Ivy, but she did apply to a couple of very competitive private schools. She received really great scholarship offers. At the religious college they didn't have much money to give - I think their largest scholarship was 10,000 for merit at the time. She wouldn't have qualified for need based aid I don't think. FWIW, she ended up at a very well regarded private university in California on scholarship. Last I heard from her she was grad school bound, so everything worked out. I do kind of wonder if her parents ever acknowledged that she was genuinely smart. I hope so.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 07:36
Subject: Re:TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Professional Educators don't think of their students or their parents as crazy. No my teacher friend, they think of them as people with whom they work and interact as part of their profession. Apparently you believe anyone who may be outside of your cozy little clique is crazy.
No. You are incorrect. We do think some of our students and ESPECIALLY our parents are crazy. Crazy as in 100% certifiable. Most teachers could write a book about all the crazy they deal with every day.
Actually, your posts provide pretty good insight into the mind of a crazy parent. Where do you think all the messed up kids come from? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, unfortunately.
Anonymous
02/01/2013 06:41
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Pp is nuts clearly!
I'm not a teacher but I have friends who are, one teaches at a very highly regarded local private with a lot of bigwig parents.
Apparently there at least, the dads are worse than the moms
One year a bunch of juniors had a blowjob party (umm no thanks, I would have to skip out on that one...) of course the parents were appalled that their snowflakes would have done that
One of the dads was a senior partner at a very big law firm, and every single year he would ream out the teachers, sometimes even standing up at back to school night and screaming at the teacher in front of everyone. The head of the school wouldn't stand up for the teachers and would allow this-which is why a good amount of the good teacher left over the past few years.
Not only would he yell at the teachers, he would get together with other parents and trash talk the teachers, then quote the other parents and some students to have a case against the teachers. He would come to them while they were alone, after yelling at them he would say things like "most of the parents are saying you are weak at this and this, and bad at this and that" then he would say things like "even the students have said you refuse to meet with them over bad grades on papers, etc"
Come to find out the people he Was quoting had never even said it! He was such an insane bully, he literally gutted the school of good teachers due to the problems he caused. I know of at least 4 teachers he did this to, they left in tears
Perhaps those teachers were horrible.
Anonymous
01/31/2013 22:44
Subject: TEACHERS: Share your most outrageous parent stories
Anonymous wrote:Crazy parent?
Come on my teacher friend - use your words, just try - try.