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Forum -> Working Women -> Teachers' Room

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amother

Tue, Feb 12 2013, 4:59 pm

Reports cards must have arrived today, because I'm having a wretched evening. My phone is buzzing with emails from parents demanding an explanation for little genius Johnny's B. I even had one parent ask why an A wasn't and A+! I'm going nuts here. Any advice for dealing with these crazy parents?

cookiecutter

Tue, Feb 12 2013, 5:26 pm

amother wrote:

Have a good reason and don't back down. When I taught, I found that setting strict guidelines for myself to follow upfront saved double the agmas nefesh on the back end, since it forced me to have an easily supported explanation for every grade rather than a mix of grades, intuition, and charity. There's a limit to what parents can do when confronted with facts.

cbsmommy

Wed, Feb 20 2013, 9:18 pm

Personal steps that I have taken:
1) I will NOT give out my personal phone number. Any parent that needs to reach me can do so by calling the school.
2) I give out freely a work email address, but that address does NOT go to my phone. While my inbox also tends to explode shortly after report cards go out, by not hearing it, I don't feel guilty about waiting.
3) Remember that an inbox can be dealt with anytime, not while kids need dinner or while trying to co-ordinate a bed time
4) Keep an excel file (not just a paper grade book) of all of your grades. Make sure you have a column addressing up to 20 points for behavior, 20 points for tardiness, etc and not just for test grades and homework. This way you explain to parents that Johnny got a b+ because he got a 40/45 on test 1, a 10/10 for homework's 1 and 2 but a 6/10 for homework three...

working hard

Wed, Feb 20 2013, 11:17 pm

I taught in a small interesting school and was warned never, ever to give out personal information because some parents would knock on the door at 2AM (It happened to the teacher from the year before!) I called the parents only from the school's phone, never from my home at night. If they were not available during school hours, too bad! They could email me to a separate work account which I responded to promptly. In middle of the year, 1 mother did get hold of my cell phone and called me 6-10 times a day!. After the first one, I did not pick up and after 2-3 days of ignoring her calls, I had the black UPS man with a full black accent answer and tell her to stop calling him. He thought it was the funniest thing and the phone calls stopped. I did call this parent 2-3 times a week from school. I did not ignore her but only on my terms. Yes, this was extreme but it goes to show how careful you have to be. Hatzlacha

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