All My Friends
Parents just don’t understand. The kids and I were at science camp this past week and all in all it was a great week of learning. One incident really frustrated me though. One of the kids was being disrespectful to his counselor, frustrating the counselor in the process. A fellow teacher spoke to the student and I figured I would call the student’s parent(s) just to inform them about the incident and allow the student to speak to parent(s). Surprisingly, parent was very upset that I believed the adult counselor instead of her son. Her son is very well behaved according to her. It wasn’t my purpose to state otherwise. All I wanted was to inform her of what the child did. She insisted on talking to the counselor. I couldn’t allow that because the counselor was supervising his group of students. I used the word chiquillo to refer to the boy. Did I mention that I was speaking to a parent that only speaks Spanish? The mother went off on me telling me how unprofessional I was for using that derogatory term. I apologized for using what in my opinion is an innocent word. Did I mention that all I wanted was for the parent to talk to her student about how talking back to one’s counselor is bad? “If you think I am being unprofessional maybe you should pick up your student from science camp,” I told her. “Maybe that would make you feel more comfortable,” I stated sarcastically. Well I went into defense mode, pretty much agreeing with every word she said to let the conversation die.
When we arrived back to school I warned my fellow teacher (didn’t go on the trip) about this particular parent. Low and behold parent came in pitbull-attack mode and she pretty much wanted blood. She told my colleague that I was unprofessional and was disrespectful to her on the phone. If we reprimanded her child the teacher (me) must be reprimanded as well. At this point I nearly regretted speaking Spanish to her over the phone. I was trying to bridge the communication gap by speaking Spanish since she didn’t speak English and this is how I was thanked for the courtesy. I speak Spanish better than most but do I speak the language like my cousins in Mexico or my friend from Madrid? (an appropriate response would be hija de puta I suppose) Of course not. After a 15 conversation she left hugging her child all the way to her car one-hundered feet away. Ay pobrecito. Why do children behave the way they do? Blame the parents.
4 Comments