Today in our after school staff meeting one of the Principals gave a pretty emotional talk about one of his first experiences with parent-teacher conferences as a parent of a Jr. High student. This is the story in a nutshell:
In the hallway during parent teacher conference his daughter didn't want to go in with him to talk to one of her teachers, which was very uncharacteristic of her. He finally got her to open up and this is she told him that she was embarrassed to go in and talk to her teacher.
Apparently, a few weeks earlier her first day back from school after being sick for 4 days she had a test in one of her classes. She reminder her teacher that she had been absent all week because she was sick and did not feel prepared to take the exam. Her teacher made her take it anyways. She scored a very bad grade on said test. She was not allowed to retake it.
She was embarrassed by her grade and didn't want to have to deal with this situation, especially knowing that her dad is a principal (by the way, they live in a different district and the teacher does not know he is a principal).
He convinced her to go in with him. After handing him the progress report the teacher said "Here is her grade, everything looks pretty good." He politely replied, "Um, what about this test score?" The teacher stated, "well, everything but that test score looks pretty good." As he started to ask the next question about the test, the teacher automatically started getting defensive and told him that there was no way she could not retake the test because it was a few weeks ago.
He told her that more than a good grade, he was concerned because he assumed that the bad grade translated to his daughter not learning important material and was only interesting in making sure his daughter was able to learn the material that she obviously had missed. The teacher again repeated that she could not retake the test and would have to accept the grade she got.
He asked her if they could have a copy of the test so they could at least see what materials were covered so they could study it at home, the teacher said, "no way," and that they "didn't let anyone have copies of the exam and that she already told him that she couldn't make up the grade. However, she could do some extra credit if she wanted a better grade."
He then asked her if she could tell her what topics it covered so they could make sure that they could help her at home learn these materials that she needed to understand before leaving 7th grade. The teacher then got flustered and said something to the affect of, "we've already moved on from those topics and they didn't remember exactly what topics the test covered."
A few weeks later his daughter asked him if he could take her to walmart to buy a box of Twinkies (which they never had in their house). He got her to confess that she wanted the Twinkies to cut the box-top off of the box to bring in for some school contest for extra credit for the class she had a bad grade in because of the bad test grade...
I really hope that my students and my parents are having a better educational experience. It was a good reminder to me that every student of mine is important and that my students' learning should be my #1 priority as a teacher. I'm glad my principal understands what being a teacher really should be about.
I hope many of you have had more educational experiences about learning and less about silly policies and stubbornness. I'm grateful for teachers in my life who really understood what it means to be a teacher. My 5th grade teacher, my 9th grade algebra teacher, my AP biology teacher, my botany, genetics, and evolution teachers at UVU. They all understood that it was about passing on the flame that is the love of learning and not about grades, policies, procedures, semantics, money, power, etc. Any of you that are a teacher in any way, shape, or form. Remember it is about your students and not about you.
Take 2 seconds and tell a teacher that has influenced you in a positive way that you are grateful for how they affected your life for the better.
-Oliver
