Over the years, my job as a teacher was frequently made easier by some excellent parents and guardians who encouraged their offspring to love learning and who clearly modeled curiosity, self-control and respect for self and others. I developed friendships with some of those individuals which carry over to this day.

And then there were those destructive few. The ones whose unhinged outrage could be seen on the 6:00 news. These folks frequently did the exact opposite of what they should have. With the exception of clueless politicians and other outsiders whose influences have turned education into a toxic wasteland, I lay an equal amount of blame for the current public school problems squarely at the feet of these moms and dads. Herewith, some examples:

***The mom who scheduled a Zoom-style doctor’s appointment for her child DURING my class and then–without permission from building administrators or myself –“excused” that student from the day’s lesson and to the hallway to conduct that appointment.

***The student who “coma slept” through class every single day and when I expressed concern for the child’s ability to participate and absorb information, the exasperated parent informed me that MOST people felt sleepy after lunch and I should consider this normal behavior and stop bothering her.

***The mom who claimed that my practice of recording a zero in the online grade book (traditionally used when work isn’t turned in) was emotionally “triggering” for her child and, rather than insisting her kid actually turn in her work, I should key in a “01” as a gentler substitution code. I’m no math genius, but isn’t ONE as upsetting as a ZERO?

***The sophomore who continually cut school and was not thriving academically. This student consistently lied to her father about her grades, so my emails about failures came as an unwelcome surprise. Instead of using his phone or computer to check his child’s grades online (thus cutting out the mendacious middle man), this father told me that MY job was to:

1) Locate the ONE landline phone in the building that was provided for teachers’ use and

2) Call him every week to report his child’s progress or lack thereof since he could not trust his daughter to tell the truth and my emails would not count as a phone call. Because it would be “easier”. Easier for whom? I had 160 students that year.

***The parent of an 18-year old student who demanded her child’s 102 absences be excused by saying that, due to Covid, “her senior year had not fun and didn’t turn out the way as planned, so she had been too sad to attend class”.

***And then there was the letter from Taylor’s mom. It was, in fact, one of the worst letters I have ever received and I say “worst” because, from a structural viewpoint alone, it was an inarticulate and grossly misspelled screed written during what was clearly an ALL CAPS rage seizure capped off with a Bible verse quotation from the Song of Solomon at its conclusion (???)

According to her, my online grade book (as well as numerous emails from me) falsely reported that Taylor was failing my class with a 39. Defensive about her daughter’s low performance and temporarily fooled by a random screenshot her kid provided which reported a miraculous but completely baseless 87, this mom proceeded to accuse me of failing to update my grade book and pronounced me UNFIT TO TEACH!!! She further called me a discourager of her child’s art pursuits, although I was an English teacher. Art pursuits, in this case, being the pages upon pages of human eyebrows Taylor drew in her composition notebook during class–rather than the required notes on figurative language in the novel OF MICE AND MEN. Administrators later proved to the mom that Taylor was failing all of her classes (and not just mine) and that those screenshots reflected the work of another student and not her daughter. Still waiting on that apology.

Lastly, no list would be complete without the flowchart I drew once when a friend outside the profession asked me to explain why teaching was so stressful. I showed them this as a way to illustrate what happens when you make an assignment:

Note the mention of two students whose tardy excuses were that one kid’s grandmother had been in the process of having a baby and the other one “had seen a ghost”. I wish I was making this up.