It’s happened again. If you have ever been in tough conflict with a parent and her wonderful (not) kid, you may want to offer Potter Slatin some suggestions to this post I pulled over from the Forum:
Here is Potter’s situation:
I have a student who refuses to play along in class and, by her own account, hates me because I’m ‘weird.’ She is heavily disrespectful most days, exceptionally disruptive and won’t respond to any kind of intervention, discussion, parent meeting or anything else. She’s a second year now, and last semester she managed to talk over class so frequently and so disruptively that she made little to no progress at all – not because she’s not capable, but because she flat-out refused to. Her parent is confrontational and accusatory.
She failed the class last semester and subsequently withdrawn from it, and after parental complaints, she was placed back in with caveats. Her parent is now requesting that I send home copies of all the assignments from last semester, as well as providing daily handouts and/or book assignments, evidently so she can study for class. I rarely give book assignments (other than reading something together), and much of their graded work is quick comprehension quizzes, small speaking assignments, interpersonal communication grades, and culture assignments. Some of it is pictures they draw or put in order; some is dictatio or similar. Every now and again we’ll do a review or comprehension assignment like ‘speed dating,’ and I’ll give them a grade on that. I almost NEVER give worksheets (the notable exception being if we watch a video), and I give next to no handouts. Much of our work is predicated on listening, responding and understanding.
I’m not sure how to respond to this parent. I have a class set of textbooks and can issue one to this student, although I’m not convinced it’ll do a lot of good since they get embedded versions of everything anyway. Handouts are non-existent, and I could hand back all her graded work (which her parent requested), but it would mostly consist of the student’s own handwriting. I am concerned that if I present this to her, she’ll call me unprofessional and suggest that I have a vendetta against her daughter (which she’s done in the past). I’m having difficulty explaining to this parent that a person learns a language primarily by listening to comprehensible messages, and that any worksheets I can send home would primarily train her to analyze, and not to know, the language.
Can anybody offer suggestions, resources, avenues, etc. with which to present this understandably to the parent without appearing belligerent – or perhaps just for dealing with it myself? I’m not really sure where to go from here.