Food for Thought

As finals week is upon us, we seem to be relegated to frozen dinners like popcorn shrimp or chicken strips coupled with leftover party food like potato salad or vegetable dip and chips. This makes it difficult to discuss "good eats" as Alton Brown would say. However, one thing I'm not short of is parent and student complaints and whines. (Yes, I'd like to say, "That's a nice domestic. Have you tried some smoked Gouda on rye with that?")

It seems everyone is for high standards in education until they apply to his or her particular student. For example, I caught a kid cheating on a novel assignment last week. The kid admitted it to me, but denied it to the parent. Now, the parent is bombarding me, the counseling office, and administration with e-mails saying the kid should not receive a zero for the assignment, even though the kid had a D before the zero and still has a D (albeit a lower one) after the zero. (As a matter of fact, the kid has had a D for 15 of the 18 weeks that comprise the semester.) While I truly believe it is the parent's job to be an advocate for the student, it astounds me that so many parents don't believe their cherubs could possibly be lying. As the mother of a soon-to-be-16-year-old boy, I'm confident that I've been lied to on several occasions when he wanted to get out of trouble.

Another student brought his parent to my room yesterday afternoon and said, "I have a bad grade. What can I do to raise it?" Of course, the answer is nothing because it is too late - the kid will take the final exam in two days. However, I spent the next 45 minutes explaining every bad grade for the entire semester to the parent (to which she responded several times, "Well, he's never had to read this much," or "He really doesn't like all the reading" or "He doesn't have time for much homework because he plays soccer.") The whole situation is particularly frustrating because the parents have access to the grades in real time and can check them at their leisure. In addition, this particular student has had a bad grade all semester, and I have emailed the parent several times about his lack of progress. Still, the matter doesn't seem important enough to warrant a discussion until the week that grade will go on his permanent record.

The kicker of all this is that these are honors students. (Yes, you read it right.) While these kids are often the best and brightest, they can just as easily be the laziest and most manipulative. And yet, these students are not allowed to learn some of the most important lessons of high school - those that go far beyond English or social studies, math or science - the lessons that deal with personal responsibility and integrity, those that deal with feeling on top of the world when you give something your all and succeed, and those that deal with learning to pick yourself up to try again when you give your all and fail. These are the real lessons kids need. Many people are capable of teaching grammar and literature, but not many can find the steel backbone to teach these important life lessons in the face of screaming parents and a society that portrays teachers as stupid, vindictive, and villainous.

Lucky for me, I was just born stubborn.