One of our PLC members received this email from a parent the other day. I asked and received permission to share it with the group.
Hello Senora (name of teacher) –
Hopefully things are going well for you during these crazy times.
My son, (name of student), is a 7th grade student of yours. Thankfully he, like so many other students, (name of student) has done a good job adapting to the new normal of home and in person schooling. That said, absent a regimented daily schedule and typical in person interactions with the teachers, I have tried being more hands on with his academic progression and discipline.
Recently, I asked him how things were going in Spanish and wanted to review his homework/quizzes/tests. I was a bit surprised when he informed me that he receives very little homework and, even more concerning, he hasn’t had quizzes or tests. I did go through his google classroom to look at all of the required work in more detail and I was a bit confused. While I’m sure there are a wide variety of teaching techniques that don’t involve testing, my real concern is making sure he is advancing in his studies. Without tests, regardless of whether or not they count, self measurement and improvement seem impossible to gauge.
I just dialed into (name of school counselor) morning coffee zoom and learned that next year’s language class is a HS credited class. As such, I am very interested in making sure that (name of student) is getting the necessary language foundation to thrive in the 8th grade class (and beyond). I definitely appreciate that things may be getting lost in translation and figured the best course would be to reach out to you and get a better understanding of your teaching style and potentially the syllabus. I recognize the challenges with teaching in the online environment and appreciate the additional work required of you to make it a success, thank you!
Regards,
(name of parent)
I responded to Danielle:
Danielle just always remember that these parents are exhibiting what is wrong with America. They pick on people. They try to manipulate people into doing things their way. Yes, they even seem to think that they have permission to tell professionals about how things should be done in their fields.
It’s not just due to COVID that the country just lost 600,000 teachers in 2020. It’s also because having to deal with parents like this one, along with all the other stuff we do, can drive us nuts and we rightly quit or find a job somewhere else.
The parents don’t care about us. Rather, we are seen as clueless, esp. when it comes to CI as discussed in yesterday’s post on this topic.
(My hunch on this topic of what is going to happen to us in our professions after Covid is that we are all going to be doing a lot more online language instruction than we think in the future. There might even come a day when, if we live in Illinois, we could be teaching remotely in a high school in Florida. Wouldn’t that be interesting! So many more job opportunities!)
Danielle and I teamed up to craft a response to this parent (who certainly deserved a well-crafted response…).
(to be cont.)