The Usual Stresses

Ah, yes. Now I remember why teaching is so stressful. I've had 2 parents contact me this week about their little darlings not understanding the material. These are "honors" level students. One parent said that her daughter was struggling to understand mitosis. This concept should have been understood by the 7th grade! I know this because I used to teach 7th grade gifted students and I went over mitosis thoroughly. *sigh* The other parent complained that her child was having to study 3 hours per night just to keep up with Biology. I find this fascinating since I give about 2 evenings of homework per week and the students usually complete the work in a few minutes. I also find it interesting that neither of these students have ever graced my door for extra help though I offer it each morning. When I suggested to the parent and assistant principal that the child was misplaced and should be transferred to a regular class the parent suddenly said "never mind" and dropped the discussion. Sometimes parents just want to whine and complain about teachers. These guys don't want their child moved out of the class because it would disrupt their social lives. I hate the games and politics wrapped up in teaching. I am working my ass off this term trying to teaching these kids. The last thing I need is a parent giving me a hard time for no reason just because their child whines that they are being worked too hard. Trust me, they are not working that hard either in or out of the classroom. With their dating, phone calls, and visits from friends I am surprised they have any remaining time to even think about school. That may be the main problem. School has a priority level right below cleaning the grout on their bathtubs. Sorry if I sound a little bitter here but my patience for this sort of crap has diminished over the years. I am not as politically correct as I used to be. I should be like the new teachers here and just pretend that the kids are progressing great in my class when, in fact, they are doing the bare minimum to get by. I find it hard to believe that these parents are so naive as to believe their kids' excuses when they come home with a low test grade. Has it been so long that they don't remember trying the same cons on their own parents? Maybe they don't want to face it because then they might have to face the fact that their darlings are not the perfect students they pretend to be. I keep having to tell myself that I am talking about perhaps 5% of the parents here. The other 95% are very supportive of their kid's educations and of teachers' efforts.

Let's put all of the garbage aside and look at a nice backlit photo I took down the street of a squirrel eating a pine cone. The squirrel was young and he was having a tough time hanging onto this large cone. He managed to whittle the whole thing down while we watched and eat the seeds inside.