The Most Supportive Parent Ever

One of the trials of being a high school teacher is dealing with difficult parents. During my teaching career that spanned forty-one years, most of the parents I dealt with were very supportive and appreciative of the job I did with their children. I used to finish my Back-to School Night presentation by asking the parents to trust me.

Some of your kids need to be kicked in the butt, and if not yelled at, spoken to harshly. I won’t accept anything less than what I feel to be their best efforts. Others need someone to believe in them, and I will. I can understand but not excuse. Your job is to love and encourage them, yes even push them to do their best, mostly for the sheer satisfaction and pride of knowing that they did do their best. Loving them does not mean excusing or enabling them, or excusing them from consequences, sometime failure is the best lesson.

The difficult parents divided themselves into three categories. First there were the Helicopter Parents who hover around the students every move. I once had a parent come to me at the 10:00am break and say her student didn’t like the cooperative learning group which he had experienced at 8:00am. She was naturally offended when I suggested she get a job and find another focus in her life. Another emailed me daily until I finally told him that he had used up his quota of email responses through December. It was September.

The second category of difficult parent is what I call the Snow Plough Parent. These people want to plow everything out of the student’s way so they had a smooth ride to their goals, ignoring the fact that overcoming obstacles yourself is one of life’ best lessons. The SPP will actually do a student’s homework or them, even to the point of writing papers, and write notes which they believe will excuse everything from tardiness to late assignments.

The third category of difficult parent is the “I’ll sue you and the school if you don’t do exactly what I tell you.” After a student had confessed to cheating [he actually stole a test from my briefcase], I once in fact had a parent say, “He didn’t mean to.” .... and then later “Well, you can’t prove it.” Unbelievable. At no point did this parent feel there should be any consequences.

Which bring us to the story of Dan.

Dan was an outstanding student in every way. He worked hard in the classroom and on the athletic field. The only thing I wish I could have taught Dan was humility, for although for some reason he possessed the arrogance gene, humility and empathy were quite beyond him. Two examples of Dan’s statements made during class should suffice.

“The smart kids shouldn’t have to go to school with the dumb kids,” he once said. “They slow everything down.”

And I replied, “I don’t think anyone minds having you here.”

Later he said, “These people [immigrants] should go back where they came from, we don’t need them.”

See what I mean?

Finally, Dan was talking about how good he was in basketball, and I couldn’t resist saying,

“Come on, you probably couldn’t beat a broken down history teacher.”

This led to a game of one on one. While Dan was probably a better player than I was, he was after all, a varsity star, but on this day I was on fire. The result was a 10-2 drubbing for Dan. At the time he was speechless, a priceless moment in itself, and so much in shock that he didn’t ask for a rematch.

One would think that losing would have shut him up, but the next day he was loudly full of excuses why he had lost. The following day, it snowed, something that happened in that small town at the edge of the dessert about once in a decade.

And so, when I got out of my car in the teachers parking lot, attired in a tie, starched shirt and sportcoat, and walked toward my classroom, a snowball hit me in the back of the head. This was not a fluffy snowball thrown easily, but a hard packed missile thrown with great velocity from about ten yards away. It hurt and I immediately took off after him. DAN.

Dan was in good shape, but I ran him around the main school building three times, and then accelerated and performed what my principal would later refer to as, “the famous flying tackle.” Dan landed on his stomach and this temporarily knocked the wind out of him when I landed on top of him. [Yes it was a different era]

Placing my knee on his neck, I quickly proceeded to scoop snow on him. As I was enjoying the moment, I looked up to see his mother. Fortunately, she had a good handle on Dan.

“Good job Mister Tomlin, I’m sure he deserves it.”