As a primary school teacher, I can tell you honestly that most of my interactions with parents are very positive. I’m happy with their child, so they are happy with me. Even the most challenging get an encouraging word from my perspective. Every child has something to work on, and a lot of the behaviors I see are run-of-the-mill, typical actions of young children working their way up the development scale. However …
Once in awhile I find myself picking up phone or pen, in order to convey information that might not be so well received. I promise you in advance that I don’t want to have this conversation; your child forced me to it. Here are some true examples my colleagues and I have shared over the years. They aren’t the most dramatic ones you may read on the internet, but I can attest that every one of them is true.
“Dear Mr./Ms. So-And-So,
I really appreciate (insert name)! [Teaching 101: always start off on a positive, then get to the good stuff]. Unfortunately, today they:
* put a crayon up their nose/in their ear/in a classmate’s nose/ear
* locked four younger students in their bathroom stalls and left for recess
* crawled under a bookshelf during library time and got stuck - our custodian now knows your child very well!
* chewed several large holes in their foam rest mat
* ate the buttons off their shirt and swallowed them (don’t worry, the school nurse says you’ll be getting those back)
* cut another student’s hair/shirt/socks
* flushed a (object larger than an apple) down the toilet
* accused a substitute teacher of trying to kill them
* loosened the screws in our table legs so that they collapsed during math time
* built a block wall around another student and refused to let them out
* gnawed the erasers off the class pencils
* licked all of the door knobs in the room
* tucked a classmate’s skirt into her tights so she mooned the whole cafeteria
* “borrowed” Vaseline from the nurse, greased the class guinea pig, and set it loose in the hall
* snuck into the office during the secretary’s lunch and called home to report that he was sick and needed to be picked up (which, as you know, you obligingly did).
* quietly, and within three minutes’ time filled the boys’ room toilet with two rolls of toilet paper and quite a bit of … other material
* climbed the fence at recess, got stuck and needed wire cutters to be removed (here comes the custodian again!)
* crawled under his lunch table and ate the gum he found stuck there
* discovered that it is possible to sit with only one leg of the chair on the floor, if you grab the neck of the kid sitting next to you
* wiped his nose with his friend’s mitten and then wiped his friend’s nose too (well, he has finally learned to share!)
I can hear what you’re thinking at this point: where was the teacher? Gosh darn it, those teachers aren’t paying a lick of attention to their students—they’re all too busy visiting online dating websites to look up now and then. As interesting as that would be to see on CNN, that’s not the norm. The above behavior is normal, or at least, it happens in every school I know of, and the teachers are highly conscientious and attentive to their students. No, to comprehend how these things happen, all you have to understand is simple math: twenty is greater than one (or two, if the teacher is fortunate enough to have a helper). Look at it this way: what if while driving, you were forced to deal with not one, but two dozen oncoming vehicles? You begin to see my point.
Contrary to popular belief, I was not in the teacher’s room, the copy room, or even the bathroom; like all teachers, I’ve trained my body to go only at 6:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Most children are pleasant individuals, generally cheerful and ready to learn (I mentioned I teach primary school; if you teach high school, you can insert your own descriptors). Being young learners, they are also insatiably curious, and they have an unlimited supply of time and energy on their side. I also suspect, though I am unable to confirm, that they have the power of invisibility, and that they control time when it meets their needs. While I am successfully stopping the near bloodshed in front of me, something from the above list is occurring just out of my peripheral vision.
Still, my classroom is controlled, calm, and a nice place to be. It’s not Animal House. Whenever it is in my power to prevent these incidents, I do. I promise you, my mission in life is not to torment your child and cause them pain. If you happen to get one of these notes from me, rest assured that you are not alone, don’t feel too bad about it, and please be patient with your child’s teacher. You wouldn’t very well want to be in their shoes to deliver the note you got, would you?
