Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher

I realize that there are awful parents out there.  Horrible ones.  They make the teacher's life a nightmare by playing the role of mini-attorney and best friend to their children.  Others are abusive and destructive, whose actions should not even qualify them to be called parents

I have seen a mentality among some teachers that all parents are the enemy.  They support this view with anecdotal evidence of parent meetings or phone calls when parents were rude or defensive.  Still, I think they begin parent meetings with a mentality that the parents are at fault.  If a student misbehaves, rather than being introspective about their drill and kill style, they jump at the parents and grow accusatory. 

I mention this, because we just had a Family Night.  About twenty families enjoyed our fare of poorly planned games and cheap ice cream.  Many of them walked to school, pushing strollers in the late afternoon heat.  They made every effort to use their broken English to communicate grattitude toward the teachers.  Through the conversations, I met parents who volunteered to work the car wash, to translate fliers and to run trips to the recycling plant. The attendees weren't all the parents of the "good kids" either.  Some were parents of trouble-makers who, when they shared their story, I realized why a kid acted a certain way.  "His brother just died in Iraq,"  a mother explained regarding a student who hasn't finished an assignment in a week. 

When I think of the parents I have met, they have been helpful and supportive.  True, there are a few punks.  .  But even then, the solution seems to be finding a way to get the "bad" parents on track and the.  Either way, I am convince that parents are part of the solution rather than the problem.