Do Bullies Know They're Bullying? Episode III: High School Parents
Today an on-line teaching community I read led me to an interesting (and sobering) article about the bullying of teachers by parents or students.
I've certainly been the victim of some concerted efforts (my administrator's words, not mine) by my students to malign my reputation with false accusations of things I've said or done (or not) in the classroom, but never like the examples shown in the article. I've had a student tell his parents that I told him he's not worth my time, a student tell her parents that I told her there's no hope of her learning anything, and students through and through telling their parents that I never taught the material in the homework. In the first case, there'd been a scheduling conflict and I'd told the boy I couldn't meet with him the very next morning. In the second, the girl had declared on the day before the exam that she didn't understand anything we'd done all year (despite her B average, which still makes me suspicious of her performance), and I'd told her she should've said so much sooner. In each of the other instances, I opened my presentation notes and showed the parent, student, and 3rd-party guidance or administration staff (strongly encouraged at our school for any and all parent meetings) exactly when and how I had taught that concept. I don't believe any of these isolated events to be bullying, but rather the results of students' poor responses to the panic they feel over not having fulfilled their responsibilities. It's in the nature of a teenager to blame someone else for their failings, and I try to remember that before I get too worked up about being lied about.
Not so with my coworkers. Parents of "star" athletes pressure teachers to tweak grades so their kid, more often than not a bench warmer in the first place, doesn't lose eligibility for the team. Strangely, we get that a lot from performing arts parents, too. The worst case I've witnessed involved a harrowing e-mail from a student's dad (who, incidentally, carries a gun at all times). He didn't really mince words in telling my coworker that his son had tried to commit suicide earlier that year and would certainly try again if this coworker failed his son for that class. The student hadn't turned in a single assignment for six weeks, had only taken one test, and laughed when told his only option was to make up some of his work. Somehow somebody talked the kid into taking the missed tests, and he snuck by with a low D. Surely putting pre-emptive blame on a teacher for a student's suicide threat counts as bullying, but there are no consequences for parents who use these tactics. More often than not, it is the teacher who must shoulder the burden of resolution in these matters.
If you didn't before, read some of the comments at the bottom of the linked article. Do the parents I've described and the ones described in these comments know that they're bullying? Or do they see it as defending their kids' futures? Where do we draw the line? How do we draw it, and what should we do when they cross it? The nation's eye has been on student-on-student bullying for some time now. It's time people understood that the students are learning it from their parents, and for people to work together to deal with the source of the problem.
I've certainly been the victim of some concerted efforts (my administrator's words, not mine) by my students to malign my reputation with false accusations of things I've said or done (or not) in the classroom, but never like the examples shown in the article. I've had a student tell his parents that I told him he's not worth my time, a student tell her parents that I told her there's no hope of her learning anything, and students through and through telling their parents that I never taught the material in the homework. In the first case, there'd been a scheduling conflict and I'd told the boy I couldn't meet with him the very next morning. In the second, the girl had declared on the day before the exam that she didn't understand anything we'd done all year (despite her B average, which still makes me suspicious of her performance), and I'd told her she should've said so much sooner. In each of the other instances, I opened my presentation notes and showed the parent, student, and 3rd-party guidance or administration staff (strongly encouraged at our school for any and all parent meetings) exactly when and how I had taught that concept. I don't believe any of these isolated events to be bullying, but rather the results of students' poor responses to the panic they feel over not having fulfilled their responsibilities. It's in the nature of a teenager to blame someone else for their failings, and I try to remember that before I get too worked up about being lied about.
Not so with my coworkers. Parents of "star" athletes pressure teachers to tweak grades so their kid, more often than not a bench warmer in the first place, doesn't lose eligibility for the team. Strangely, we get that a lot from performing arts parents, too. The worst case I've witnessed involved a harrowing e-mail from a student's dad (who, incidentally, carries a gun at all times). He didn't really mince words in telling my coworker that his son had tried to commit suicide earlier that year and would certainly try again if this coworker failed his son for that class. The student hadn't turned in a single assignment for six weeks, had only taken one test, and laughed when told his only option was to make up some of his work. Somehow somebody talked the kid into taking the missed tests, and he snuck by with a low D. Surely putting pre-emptive blame on a teacher for a student's suicide threat counts as bullying, but there are no consequences for parents who use these tactics. More often than not, it is the teacher who must shoulder the burden of resolution in these matters.
If you didn't before, read some of the comments at the bottom of the linked article. Do the parents I've described and the ones described in these comments know that they're bullying? Or do they see it as defending their kids' futures? Where do we draw the line? How do we draw it, and what should we do when they cross it? The nation's eye has been on student-on-student bullying for some time now. It's time people understood that the students are learning it from their parents, and for people to work together to deal with the source of the problem.