Beacon Street

I don’t often use my blog as a soapbox, but today I feel like sharing. At the risk of sounding like a whiny parent, I need to relate an incident that recently happened at my daughter’s school. It goes something like this:

Syllabus states that student will keep all schoolwork in a 3 ring binder. Doesn’t have to be singular, it could be a section in a larger notebook. Daughter then proceeds to organize her work neatly, in said binder, taking special care the night before a scheduled “notebook check”.

The next day, daughter is paired with another student to do interactive classwork. The notebook check commences, with the teacher walking around to each student’s desk for said check. Daughter, for some unknown reason, has taken all the organized work out of her binder, perhaps for use with the partner as they work on classwork together. When the teacher stops at her desk, he takes a look at her pages, and asks where her binder is. She gestures, it’s on her desk.

Teacher: “Well, you’ve just earned yourself a fail on this assignment.”

Daughter: “Excuse me?”

Teacher: “What’s the matter, you can’t read?”

Daughter, mortified because the entire class is watching and listening. “I’m sorry.”

This “teacher” – in quotes because I’m using the term loosely – has just lost an opportunity to teach. He’s lost it because he’s lost the respect of his student. This student, my daughter, has been taught to respect her teachers, but in the instant that he chose not to respect her, he’s severed the very relationship he needs in order to teach her. He will likely argue that he did teach her; he taught her not to make this foolish mistake in the future. He taught her that she is not worthy of respect because she messed up something so monumental as placing her classwork back into her binder for inspection.

Across the hall, in another classroom, another teacher would have handled this very differently:

Teacher:  “Hey, what’s up with this? Where is your notebook?”

Daughter:  “Oh crap. It’s on my desk!”

When I learned about this “incident,” I was, naturally, enraged. My daughter is sensitive enough without being humiliated by this instructor. Worse, this seems a repeat of the scenario she faced two years ago, in another school with another teacher.

Now, she must go back into a classroom with a teacher who has treated her unkindly, in a subject where her grade was already suffering. She explained to me that he has treated other students similarly, especially girls, and she thinks he’s a sexist. She and I discussed options, including my intervening again with the counselor and/or principal. But my daughter correctly pointed out that it would likely only result in the teacher going on the defensive. There could be repercussions. After all, what does he have to lose? He’s tenured. And don’t even get me started on that issue.

No, my daughter said, the only way to get back at him would be to excel in the subject. Prove she was better than what he thought. But therein lies the paradox, doesn’t it? How can she excel when she feels at odds with this person, the one who’s supposed to teach her?

I guess the bottom line is, my girl did learn something that day. She learned you can’t expect to be treated with respect if you make a mistake. She learned that teachers are allowed to get angry, and to make judgment calls while angry. She learned there is no consistency in the way she is treated from classroom to classroom, and that teachers just can’t be trusted.

I know some will be critical of my tantrum and say that my daughter should be reprimanded for being unprepared. Yes, she can be an airhead sometimes. Yes, she was mistaken in thinking that the binder was just a place to keep the papers organized, and she probably should have understood better. I don’t dispute her error. I do, however, believe that her teacher is a bully. There is no place for sarcasm and personal attacks in the classroom. And as I’ve said many times before:  for students to be successful, they must feel safe and respected in school. Once those elements are lost, learning ceases.

All comments and opinions welcome.