Holding Parents Accountable

09.18.2010

The topics of education, our children’s future and our investment in it have been a passion of mine since I was a kid. Part of the reason is because my mom was a teacher. I grew up witnessing the demands, pressures and rewards that come with serving in education. I myself could only handle it for two years, and the only thing I miss is working with students, though, I try finding different ways of working with them.

As a former full-time educator, and one who still teaches once a week, I think it’s outstanding that steps are being taken to hold teachers accountable. Yes, the current steps don’t take the entire picture into consideration but they’re steps that can re-shaped and reconfigured. Think of all the teachers you’ve had and I’m sure you can think of at least one that should not have been teaching. We make sure that our educators are properly trained and certified so that they can enter a classroom but there’s no guarantee that how they pass along the information will be successful.

Now, what about parents? No one wants to touch this issue but I will. Anyone can be a parent. There is no class you have to take, no lessons to prepare, no certification needed. I understand that enforcing this is impossible because there’s no way to have one manual on parenting, but when are parents going to take responsibility for their and their kid’s behavior? It starts with admitting to who your kid is really. Too many parents convince themselves their kid can do no wrong or has no challenges.

As a teacher, I can immediately figure out what parents value and I can tell what’s going on between them (whether they’re getting along or not). The only other person your kid spends a huge amount of time with (if not more) is a teacher. I’m not saying teachers know it all; they don’t. But the issues you have at home play out in the classroom and a teacher has to deal with it throughout the school day. If you had a bad morning and took it out on your kid, the teacher will have to console or discipline. Abuse happening at home? The teacher deals with it by either trying to get a withdrawn child to focus on his/her work or stop him/her from bullying other kids. Do you know how much time and energy this takes up often during class time? Because of one child’s misbehavior, 20-30 students pay the price.

I’m so tired of teachers getting spat on and looked at as having the easiest job in the world based only on the facts that the day “ends” at 2:30/3 o’clock and that they get so many vacations. You know what I did Thanksgiving 2001? Graded papers the entire 4 days. My 10-day Christmas vacation? Filled with researching projects and lessons. A typical week was 60 hours and my annual salary was $25K with no pay during the summer. This isn’t a “woe is me” story. I would just like to see parents be held more accountable and admit if their kid is having problems (emotional, a learning disability, or something else) because if you don’t try to fix something, it’ll get worse. I promise you. Look at the state of our education system now. No one wants to step forward and say, “Enough. We are in this together. Who is with me?”