The ultimate success of a student is often times influenced by the attitude of a parent more than the skill of the teacher.
Last week was mid-quarter, a time during the year when teachers are supposed to contact parents if their student is doing poorly. A review of my grade book revealed six students who had a D or F at the time, and their parents needed to be notified. The notification process is entirely unnecessary because parents can check student grades daily online in each of their classes. Our administration is afraid that a “neglectful” parent will fail to check grades regularly. If this happens, and the student ends up failing, they are afraid that the parent will complain. “If I only knew she was doing poorly I could have done something!”, and “Why didn’t the teacher let me know?”
My answer to that question would be that the teacher did let you know; when the grades were posted online you were informed what they were. It is not the teacher’s fault that you didn’t look online any more than it would be if the teacher called you about the grade and you didn’t listen. Unfortunately administrators don’t know how to talk to parents, so parents and students become incompetent and helpless, with all responsibility falling on the teacher.
Anyway, I contacted all six parents by email concerning their student’s grade. One message was returned as undeliverable; a subsequent phone call resulted in no answer and no transfer to voice mail. Three of the messages were delivered, but I got no response. Of those three, two responded when contacted last quarter, but now are apparently giving up on trying to effect any change in their student. The other two replied.
One was a father who apparently grounded his daughter. I had indicated in the message that she was failing because of missing work. She appeared at my desk the next morning and sheepishly handed in the missing work, apologizing for her irresponsibility. The father’s email told me that she was coming to see me and I was to email him again if she failed to show. I graded the missing work, deducting an appropriate penalty for being late, and her grade improved from F to D+ as a result. The father assured me that he would keep a constant tab on her from now on and promised that she would not be so irresponsible again.
The other was a mother who returned my email and asked me to call her on the phone. We spoke that evening and the conversation did not go well from the start. She was contentious, argumentative, and accusatory. She argued that none of her daughter’s scholastic difficulties were her fault—by “her” she meant both herself and her daughter.
The mother told me that the girl’s grade problems were because of two days of school she missed last week because of the snow. Apparently the city snow plow buried the front of her driveway when cleaning the street, making it impossible for her or the daughter to leave home for two days. I tried to respond with compassion and understanding; even though I was sure that the pile of bullshit I was being handed was much higher than the pile of snow at the bottom of her driveway.
The first girl is in honors chemistry, has a GPA of 3.7 and has never been a problem before. The second is in regular chemistry, has a GPA of 1.80, and is absent at least once a week. Hopefully my story explain why.
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