Several years ago I made the mistake of letting myself sit through a conference with two parents who were quite angry at me. I handled myself well, but it made me want to throw in the towel. So last week when I found myself in a similar situation, I pressed the red button.
The seventh grade assistant principal had planned to sit in on the meeting–the mom’s curt emails had suggested she was rather angry at me–but a last-minute emergency pulled her away and I decided to go ahead with it myself.
I’d written several referrals for the boy, for walking out of the room without permission and encouraging other students to do the same (on separate occasions) and for general disruptiveness. I’d also emailed the mom for permission to assign after school detention in accordance with our team policy regarding when a substitute teacher leaves a negative comment about a student.
“I’ll tell you right now,” the mom said, “he is not serving ASD unless you’re going to bring him home. I am not going to come pick him up. And you’re singling him out,” she continued, pretty much spitting the words. “He is being treated unfair and I won’t stand for it.”
Her husband beside her didn’t look much happier; the boy was quietly observing their attack on me.
“Excuse me a moment,” I said, walking to the red button that pages the school office. “If you have concerns about me, then it would probably be good to have an administrator here to listen to those.”
We waited in silence for about five minutes until the sixth grade assistant principal showed up. I had worked with her very little, but she was in control of the meeting from the moment she walked in the door.
“This ASD business,” the stepdad launched into her, “needs to change. The teacher who assigns the ASD needs to be required to stay after, too.”
“We do have a paid position for that,” the principal said, “so a teacher is there with the students. What I think we can do right now is focus on getting through the remaining seventeen days of school. J–,” she said to the boy, “let’s agree that we will treat our teachers with respect and do your best for these last weeks. Can you agree to that?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
“You’ve got to make it through this year,” his mom told him. “I don’t want you to have to repeat this class. Not with this teacher.”
As I was ignoring the not-so-veiled barbs at me, the seventh grade assistant principal walked in, armed with the referrals I’d written. She took one look at the situation and talked only about how respectfully J– always treated her.
She then excused herself, and the first principal thanked the parents for coming; once they’d left the room she said to me, “I knew that mom when she was in school. She was even worse–nasty mean–than J– is. If you know the saying ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ that’s an example, right there.”
I was glad that she had sidestepped the parents’ anger, but my questions–specifically what to do about the ASD assignments–and concerns hadn’t been addressed, either. I closed up shop for the day and was heading out of the building when the seventh grade assistant principal stopped me.
“I’m sorry to come late,” she said.
“That’s alright,” I said. “I called for the other principal after I started the meeting–they were lighting into me pretty badly.”
“What was their concern?”
“That I was singling out J–.”
She looked at me. “You dog. Well, when I walked in I could see bringing up those referrals wouldn’t have helped the situation any, so I’ll just deal with those with in-school suspension.”
The next day it occurred to me that because I actually like the kid, I could pull J– out of in-school suspension at some point to do some reorganizing of my classroom.
“I don’t want to end the year on a bad note with him,” I told the assistant principal.
“Great idea,” she said. “And just food for thought: Doing that sort of thing earlier in the year would maybe help alleviate future problems like you’ve had with J–. If kids know their teacher likes them, they’re often more respectful.”
And J– was a great help; he retrieved a stepladder from (and later returned it to) the custodians so we could run some cables through the ceiling.
“I don’t have anything to give you as payment for your help,” I told him, “but I’d be a reference for you any day.”
A bit later the assistant principal told me, “I saw J– in the hallway today, and said to him, ‘Aren’t you in in-school suspension? Why are you out here in the hallway?’ He stood up straighter and got a proud look on his face and said, ‘I’m helping Mr. Jacobs.’”