Re: parents calling for progress reports. When I was advising at U of M, we were not allowed to provide parents with their child's academic information unless we had formal permission from the student. That made for some pretty heated phone calls that almost universally included references to how much the parent was paying for the education. A valid point, in my opinion, but one that had been overridden by past lawsuits, apparently.
As bung suggests -- and as NT noted in the edit -- in college, parents asking for progress reports is inappropriate. There are privacy issues involved. Basically, parents are allowed to make inquiries, but at my place they have to go through the Dean of Students office, and not contact the professor directly, as that could be seen as... let's say "problematic." Even then, unless the students give express written permission, the dean can't say anything.
seriously- get rid of him/her or get your kid off of the team. If this coach was your kid's second grade teacher acting that way you would be in the principals office in a heart beat ( and rightly so). We let too many people who have NO BUSINESS working with kids get away with too much because of the role of "coach" Apologies for the hijack
Our school district implemented an online device that allows parents (and students) to keep updated on their grades in real-time. It's actually worked out pretty well. Except that there are stories of parents who get mad at teacher's that don't constantly update their grades until the end of the grading period.
Ha. Funny thread. It's hard for me to relate, because I work with low-income urban kids. Disprespect is a way of life for many of them. Values are few and far between. Sometimes I think that life would be so much easier if I taught at a suburban school or a private school. But I always suspect that, in their own way, things would be just as bad. I couldn't deal with micromanaging parents upset at me for giving their son or daughter a "B," or insisting that I indulge their child's imaginary pathologies instead of disciplining him or her. Or arguing with me about how or what I teach. That would drive me mad. Still, some of the threads in this conversation resonate in the inner-city culture too. Especially the part about parents who defend their child no matter what, simply because it's their child. I get a lot of that. A lot of parents who believe every thing their child tells them, while the child lies as a matter of habit. I actually had to tell a mother, "Your son is lying to you." You see, apparently she thought that I was lying. Somehow it seemed reasonable to her that a teacher would just make things up about a student's bad behavior, repeatedly. This seemed more likely than the possibility that her son was lying, repeatedly, to cover up his own bad behavior. Amazing.
"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." - Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC ) So you would be right.
They don't all disrespect teachers or adults. But it's common. Kids will talk back to teachers, defy them, argue with them, ignore them, curse at them, even harass them. They will frequently steal or vandalize school property, or a teacher's property. Occasionally there is physical violence. Kids will throw things at teachers. Some kids will push or shove a teacher who is standing in their way. I've often seen kids engaged in a fight, who continue to flail and throw punches even after a teacher or other adult has physically come between the combatants. Then there are also those special little ones (and not so little ones) who have no problem with simply kicking or punching a teacher or other adult.
Wow. My wife used to work with juvenile deliquents. Although verbal abuse was common (she was called all sorts of disgusting things on an almost daily basis), physical violence was very rare. Thankfully, she was never subject to it, and none of her colleagues were either during the time that she worked there. It must be hard to work in an environment where it is common.
I'm guessing, based on your use of the term "juvenile delinquents," that the kids your wife worked with were already selected out of the general population, either for specific crimes or for repeated delinquent behavior. Please correct me if I'm wrong. What sort of organization or program was it that your wife worked for?
She worked as a counselor in what they call a "closed institution" over here. That's pretty much where they send minors who have committed (smaller) crimes. The kids that commit real serious crimes (like murder) go to juvenile detention centers. So yes, the kids she worked with had all committed crimes that were serious enough to rob them of their freedom.
So it's not too surprising that violence against authority figures wasn't common among them. They were already in trouble for their crimes, and I'm guessing that the institution had some security measures to help deter that kind of behavior. In my experience in NYC public schools, there has been a dangerous combination of delinquent children and poor security/discipline. I find that about 10% of children will be cooperative and civil no matter what; about 10% (maybe a little more) are seriously emotionally disturbed, or so badly parented that nothing the school can do will reign in their unruliness; the remaining 80% or are just products of their environment. They will behave as badly as they are allowed to behave. With the "bottom" 10% constantly testing the boundaries and revealing the weaknesses in the school's discipline, the "middle" kids rapidly escalate their bad behaviors to an extent that most people would find appalling.
What do the schools do with the bottom 10%? I can imagine that some of the things they do are (borderline) criminal, don't they get expelled or suspended? Does the police get involved or does the school try to solve most of the problems themselves?
Really, at the worst schools, nothing is done. There are suspensions, but they're fairly rare at badly run schools. Also, suspension is a very temporary solutions since the child eventually has to come back (often with worse behavior than before). I've even seen kids just continue to come to school when they're supposed to be suspended. Some schools have an in-school suspension room, which can get the problem kids out of a teacher's hair for a few days at a time. But it does nothing to curb future bad behavior when the child returns to class. It also creates problems, as the students will leave the suspension room and run around the school wreaking havoc all day. At better-run schools, in-school and out-of-school suspensions are more common and more consistently used. At well-run schools, the principal will transfer serious problem students out, to another school. I've never seen a principal do this, but I've heard that it does happen. These principals will also get the police involved with any activity that's criminal, including assaults on teachers, theft of property, etc. This year when a student shoved me into a desk, the principal was reluctant to bring in the police. I think it looks bad on the school's record if the police are called too many times. But the deans and assistant principal convinced him to contact the precinct. That student was referred for what's called a "superintendent's suspension," which can be up to 60 days. I had to go to downtown Brooklyn to testify at a hearing, so the Department of Education could determine the child's punishment. I never found out what they decided... but I didn't see the kid around again until a few days ago. This was a tremendous improvement over my previous school, where the principal staunchly refused to take any disciplinary action at all.
The child who shoved me was 14. The kids I teach are 11-12, with a few 13-year-olds in there. FWIW, the 14-year-old is the second child ever to strike me. The first one was 7 years old. That was at my previous school. Nothing ever happened to that child.
In most public schools over here, that kid would be gone after an incident like that. No suspension, but expelled on the spot.
I really don't think it has much to do with size. Yeah, the girl that shoved me probably wouldn't have pushed me as far if I were bigger; but she probably still would have tried. The 7-year-old was tiny compared to me, and I was the third or fourth teacher he had assaulted that year. Size was pretty irrelevant. It's important to note that neither of those children were my own students. In my own classrooms, kids wouldn't dream of laying a hand on me. My first year was a disaster, but nowadays I have above-average control over the kids, and it has nothing to do with my size.