Mom Is Teaching

This is part one of two. You can find part two here.

I had no clue that anyone saw the homework issue my way other than the mothers who I’ve been around in recent years.  And, naturally I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings nor do I want teachers to take it out on my child because I’ve spoken up about something that many parents have wanted to approach earlier but were afraid.

It is the belief that if you make a teacher mad, they will take it out on your child.  I can say that in my 40 years, I’ve had 2 teachers do this to me.  Two!  That’s two too many I know, but the fact of the matter is, my dad was in the limelight for quite some time and people grew opinions of him based on that.  And, from that, only two of my teachers ever acted differently toward me.

So, I’m doing some math here, you figure I had about 10 different teachers while in grades K-8, and probably at least 15, maybe 20 in high school, so we’ll call it 18 different and probably at least 30 in college.  Let’s call graduate school 4 different professors and that’s barely 2 % of teachers that worked me over because of something one of my parents did.

One of the teachers was my fifth and sixth grade math teacher.  My dad was president of the teachers association in 1979 when the teachers in our school system went on strike.  The media ate this strike up.  At that time, here was only one other public school system where the teachers had gone through with a strike for any reason. 

Anyway, before this gets too long, this math teacher crossed the picket line.  And, once as she approached the parking lot of my school, my dad walked up to her window to speak to her.  She shoved a microphone out a tiny crack in the window.  I was there, I  know this to be a fact.  I would never allow someone to tell me that a teacher would act so immature unless I saw it for myself. 

The teachers were on strike for several weeks but many teachers and students crossed the picket line.  One of those students that crossed just happened to have been my babysitter.  So, that left me with no where to go.  So, I followed my dad around all those weeks, meeting and learning lots of real life stuff.  I remember a lot about that short few weeks watching my father in a professional situation and his behavior .  Either way, I met numerous teachers during that time that I would never have myself and I watched them act professionally.  This is one of those issues that I talk about where parents have to behave in a manner that teaches children basic skills.

How do I keep getting away from the point of this post?

So, that math teacher never really done anything to me that anyone could have called harassment but what she did was ask me questions that she wouldn’t other wise have asked and that she didn’t ask anyone else.  For instance, the spring after that strike, she called me up in front of the class, asked me if my father and I were going to the beach for spring break and then wanted to know why not. 

Side Bar: I might add here that at that time, spring break here was called AEA week because that’s when all the teacher conferences for NEA and the like would get together.  So, the point in this teacher asking me such a question was to find out if my father was going to skip out on the meetings or go to Florida.

Well much to her dismay (and rudeness), he did both.  He was still president of the local educators group so he obviously had to go to the meetings.  Someone else then picked me up on the last day of the meetings, took me to him and away we went. 

Let’s just say that teacher wasn’t amused.

Ok, this will need to be a two-part post.

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