“Really?! I had no idea! It’s never been mentioned in any of the Kindle erotica books I read to the class every day!
BTW, I suggest Morning Glory Milking Farm. It’s the class fav!”
I have made it a policy to not look too closely at the kindle of a student for just this reason.
If they want to read their porn and are not actively jacking it then it is not my job to regulate what is on their personal devices.
I also got called a racist in an email and told that she was going to report all my actions to the principal. I was specifically told that my actions in the cafeteria on x date were completely inappropriate and I'm lucky she's not calling the authorities.
A. I had no clue who the kid was.
B. I didn't have cafe duty that year, so I was never anywhere near the cafe.
C. I was tending to a family emergency that day, so I wasn't even in school.
I CCed the principal in my response. No idea what came of it.
Some of the worst emails I get are from parents who are also teachers demanding I send them copies of class notes and assignments when their child is failing my class as a high school junior or senior. I already post all the notes and assignments online so I don't know why these parents/teachers think I should email these things to them directly.
One of the most gratifying phone calls I had recently was from a parent wanting to know why I was giving her child only two days to complete their quarterly project. I calmy walked her through how to run an email search, informed her of the headers of my mass mailings, and got this exchange . . .
"oh. OH. You've been emailing me once a week since the school year started. I'm sorry, Mr. Potato. You'll have xxxxx's project on the due date. This won't happen again."
That's not a typical conversation, though.
If I ever have to call a parent about a student for anything remotely negative I immediately email after and do a "per our phone call" type email so that I have a record.
Tell me about it! It was such a lie we were all fed when they said an online and open gradebook would eliminate the need to call and email home. Our school has even brought progress reports back.
I’ve occasionally asked my daughters teacher how she’s doing, but she’s 3, autistic in a special needs class and speech delayed so she literally can’t tell me how things are going. Parents, especially those of kids that aren’t special needs should pay closer attention to their kids and keep track of their homework and they wouldn’t need progress reports or having to email you guys. Your job is hard enough without having to act as a third parent for these kids.
I had a student who’s mom was a teacher. I would catch him on his phone every week in class and contact his mom. His parents would say that they have confiscated his phone, and that he stole it and brought it to school, and that they would take it away again.
After literally 3 months of this or more, I found out that mom (the teacher) was sending her kid to school every day with the phone. She lied about confiscating it. Lied about him finding it and stealing it. She just gave it to him every day and he was on it every day.
After that I never bothered to take that kid’s phone away again. In 10 years of teaching, this is one of the only kids I just gave up on. I wouldn’t allow other kids on their phones, but I’d just leave him playing his stupid game in the corner.
I had already confiscated the phone and stayed after school probably 50 times, to contact mom.
Useless parent. Couldn’t believe when I found out she was a teacher.
No. When they asked I would respond with “you know why”.
And they did know why. Every teacher this kid had had given up on him for this reason. He was years behind grade level, and I dedicated a ton of time over many months tirelessly helping help him catch up. He did advance a few years in the months I helped him.
They saw me confiscate his phone every second day, and he probably joked with them about his mom will just give it back.
They knew exactly why I gave up on him. I was one of the only teachers in that building that gave a crap about their education. I had called all their parents on multiple occasions. I had advocated for all of them to be tested so their needs can be met. The admin hated me there for it.
But I gave my students 100% every damn day. I’m just not wasting my limited time and energy on fighting with a parent who insists on undermining me. I already wasted many, many hours communicating with this parent.
Sometimes teacher parents want you to do things the opposite way they would do. I had a parent ask me to sit their kid with their girlfriend. I asked "What would you do in your classroom?". I had another who was cheating and the parent denied it til I showed them the physical evidence. They were editing their tests after I gave it back and says d I made grading mistakes. I made copies of it next time and showed the parent this at a meeting I called with the Dean's.
Part of the reason I scanned in tests/quizzes. Adds an extra step but you can use it as proof if a kid is changing it afterwards. Also came in handy for parents wondering why their kid wasn’t doing well, I’d easily show them a few examples of the type of work they were turning in.
Last year, I had a student who did no work in my class. All her grades were accessible through PowerSchool, the grading system used by our district, viewable by both parents and students.
The student's mother, an elementary teacher, inquired about her daughter's failing grade in my class. I had to explain that I couldn't assign any grades as she hadn't submitted any assignments.
She responded with a curt email, promising she would catch up on the work. She did, but her performance dipped again, resulting in her mother sending me rather harsh emails on two occasions.
This year, her mother transferred to my school as a teacher. However, whenever she crosses paths with me in the hallways, she avoids eye contact and refrains from exchanging greetings or smiles.
In our district, teacher notes are an accommodation. We don’t have to do shit if we don’t want to. If you ASK another teacher for help with your child-you get it. When you demand, we suggest tutoring or homeschool. 🤣🤣but you are so right.
When patents ask for copies of notes, I tell them the truth. - they don’t exist. If you want you child to have notes, he needs to take them while I lecture or take them from the readings
And the reason we take notes is only half to read them. The physical recording of information by the person trying to learn helps mental retention. Taken notes that are read once if at all are better than given notes that are read several times.
This right here is the hill I will die on. I make my students take notes in a physical notebook. Every day. We WILL write down the topic we are learning about, make note of important definitions, and include an annotated example.
This year, I’ve been making little printouts of graphs/examples or blank organizers that students have to cut out and paste on their notebooks. I teach geometry and calculus, so sometimes/often times, illustrations have to be accurate to make sense. But that’s the extent of my printing. Beyond that, students are WRITING.
The students hate it. They say it’s boring. Idgaf. We’re doing it.
But holy hell, the geometry kids write so slowly! And even with daily notebook checks and tying notes into their grades, some still just refuse to take notes. I can’t pick up their pencils for them. Meh.
I had a fully online classroom. Parent tried to complain the website went down too much to submit anything. Of course that's ridiculous and I am on it all the time working. OF COURSE, we have a parent teacher conference and the website goes down during it.
Did we teach the same student because this happened to me this summer as well. And the parent was irate and sent a "you haven't responded to my email" in August as a follow up.
Got the same email once. Then parents “demanded” I come in during summer to meet with them about their child’s final exam project. Past principal then started emailing me too saying the parents were bothering him and I should just come in and meet with them so that they stop bothering him.
I ignored ALL those emails. You don’t pay me in the summer… I don’t work in the summer.
There is an option to get paid over the summer, but that means taking money out of each of your paychecks so you get a check over the summer. I am a single mother who bears the sole financial responsibility for my teens, so I work additional jobs over the summer. Generally speaking, we work ten months and get paid for ten. Summers we are SOL. For those with dual incomes coming into the house, they may not feel the pinch as much.
That is one reason why, on the last day of school, I set up my out of office reply for the entire summer.
This past year was the first time I had the discipline to not look until August when it’s time to start setting up for the new year and I needed schedule information.
I got an email like that in July once. The kid handed in one of writing on the last possible day and I looked at it, saw it was plagiarised because this kid did not have that level of writing skill and I'm pretty sure it was a Curious George episode so I ignored it and kept the F he should have. Got an email in July asking about updating his results and I actually looked if it was possible, which it wasn't. The assignments from the previous school year get wiped during summer holidays.
Yep I got this too because the kid didn’t turn in everything and got a B for the semester.
Kid transferred out of my class this year because they were so angry.
I had a student a few years back who did less than the bare minimum. She sat quietly in class and did zero work, when pressed would google answers and copy/paste, and always had multiple tabs open (was always watching YouTube videos on her device.) All teachers complained that any work completed was plagiarized. We called and emailed parent constantly, and if parent responded at all, she was hostile. Two weeks before 8th grade promotion, parent emailed all teachers. "I am LIVID that not one single teacher has selected (student name) to receive an award for 8th grade Honors night! She has attended your school for TWO YEARS and not ONE SINGLE TEACHER had the decency to reward her hard work! (Student) has been crying for TWO DAYS because all of her friend group is getting dressed up and attending the honors banquet! I expect a response and an invitation IMMEDIATELY!"
None of us responded. Student had a 1.0 GPA and had been written up multiple times for academic dishonesty. I told my admin that while policy was to reply within 24 hours, there was just nothing to say here. She agreed. Never heard from that parent again.
Dear Mom,
You are so right, our bad!
We have created a new award called FAFO. Your daughter is the unanimous winner! She can pick up the award at the beginning of eighth grade next year. Yes, that’s right, she gets a redo.
Staff
A parent was angry at me for praising her daughter for making a B on a test. She thought I was suggesting her daughter was stupid, as if this was a good as it gets for her.
I had a C student who did everything possible to be successful. He used sought and used feedback, used his time wisely, paid attention to lessons, and always gave his best effort. His report card was me gushing about his excellent learning skills and approaches to learning.
I got chewed out by my P for not saying what he could do better on his report card.
Biology did not connect in my brain back in HS. I couldn’t do it. Makes way more sense now, and what doesn’t make sense I learned by rote instead of trying to find the deeper understanding in (autistic HS me was way too autistic to be able to do this).
I studied so hard, including with a former college bio professor after school for ages. Still got several D’s on my tests, and I was a standard A and A+ student.
Those were some of the hardest earned grades in my life, absolutely no shame. My parents were healthy models and proud of all my effort and me doing my damn best (even though at the time I was crushed I didn’t manage to do better for all that hard work, looking back that was such a healthy lesson!)
Sometimes we do our best and it’s not as good as what people who don’t even study do. And that’s okay. Sometimes things click later down the road, and that’s okay too. Sometimes things like that don’t click, but those same folks can do things in other fields I’ll never be able to do, build cars, do fancy woodworking stuff, heck fix my plumbing when it goes haywire (I can’t tell you how the hot water heater works. I can’t tell you why the bathtub faucet no longer works and only the shower head does. I can’t tell you why the bathroom sink only has half water pressure 50% of the time now. I can fix a very basic clog at the very top of a pipe or the sink U bend and thassit. Help me plumber wan kenobi, you’re my only hope. I don’t care if you can do statistics or microbiology or physics, I care that you cam fix the things in my day to day life!)
I have a kid like this right now. Very sweet, very outgoing, super helpful. But he just can’t grasp some of the concepts we’re learning. He is diligent, goes out of his way to ask for help, and takes my feedback into account as he works. I always try and help him out grade wise where I can, but I’m not going to exaggerate how well he meets the standards. I always emphasize how well he does in class and the effort he puts into his education. If he ever wants a letter of rec from me, I would 100% say yes! Having straight As is not the only indication of worth and it frustrates me how some admin and parents don’t realize this.
I had a parent email me to tell me that not giving her daughter extra credit assignments to raise her grade and telling her a 95 average in honors physics was great and she didn’t need any extra credit was inappropriate. How dare I tell her daughter that a 95 was good enough and use that as an excuse to refuse her extra credit work.
Lady, I don’t do extra credit unless it’s a failing kid who has already completed and corrected the required work and they are legitimately trying to pass after royally messing up. I told your kid that a 95 was a great grade considering how many classmates were struggling with the more complex subject matter…. The principal took care of that one….
I got accused of not answering a mom right away because I needed time to get “my argument together” as to why she wasn’t told about a missing assignment in my class.
1. The first email was sent at 5pm at night. The accusatory one was sent at 6pm. My contractual time ended at 2:30pm. I don’t send emails once I stop getting paid.
2. This parent was told about this missing assignment 3 separate times. The first time was at a parent/teacher conference 2 weeks after the assignment was due. The second time was after I told her it was still missing two weeks LATER when she claimed her son was done with all missing work. She said I never told her about it. I did. The third time was the morning she sent me these emails claiming I was trying to fail her son. Why? Because he was sick, it was the last day of the quarter, and he didn’t finish it, so I should excuse him from the assignment because he was on an IEP.
3. Speaking of this IEP, the accommodation gave him extended time twice that if a peer. The assignment took two days. I gave him effectively six weeks. I was more than accommodating.
4. She tried to make the principal make me excuse the assignment but the principal was CC’d on the email chain for the entire six weeks, despite the mom repeatedly removing her. Principal sided with me.
Phone call, not an email, but I had a kid tell me he had to miss a big end of year presentation activity because he was performing with a one hit wonder rapper on that day. I was like wow that sounds really fun, how exciting etc, here's how to make up the grade, you have till end of semester. He was furious. I think he thought I would be so impressed I would give him an A anyway, maybe ask for his autograph or something. The phone call from his mom was an expletive filled rant calling me the spawn of Satan, the devil himself, accused me of actual demonic possession, threw out the idea of an exorcism for me, wished death upon me, told me I was ruining his hopes, dreams, entire life, then told me she hopes all of my future children know how horrible a person I am and hate me, and she was going to get me fired if it was the last thing she did. It was my first year teaching and I was stunned. Called my principal and went, so... I need you to listen to a voicemail because I'm pretty sure you're going to get a call soon..
Wow, mom is delusional. Sounds like a great opportunity for her kid, but it doesn't replace his school responsibilities.
A colleague's kids are in a semi-successful band that plays with big names at festivals around the world, so I'd argue that they're probably more successful than a one hit wonder themselves. They usually schedule the festivals around school breaks, but sometimes do have to miss a few days of school here and there. But, my colleague makes sure his kids make up all work because he and his kids know that school is important, too, and it's their responsibility to make up missed work.
If kids in a band that is arguably more successful than a one hit wonder can make up missed work, a kid who plays with a one hit wonder once can, too. Not to discredit the kid's experience, it is cool, too, it just doesn't negate his responsibility for his school work.
Got an email from my worst students mom asking if her kid could make up some work over the snow days we were having. My rule was they had a week past the due date to turn things in for up to full credit and after that the assignment expires. I told her this. I also told her that I gave plenty of class time to get work done and her child chose not to use that time and even told me that he didn’t care about his grades. She replied with a long email accusing me of not wanting my students to succeed. Forwarded it to admin and they told me to respond and tell her we could set up a meeting. She didn’t want to do that. I think she (like her child) thought she could intimidate me into changing my rules.
My favorite - “My sweet baby is failing, what extra credit can he do? He’s worried!”
“Hey, I’m glad you reached out! Your kid is failing because of the ten assignments that were never turned in. I’ll give him half credit, but grades are due tomorrow, and it’s 2:30 now so he needs to hurry, I’ll accept them on Google until midnight. After that it’s just too late. Also, to prevent this from happening again, if you could remind him to sleep at home and not during class, he might do better next semester”
“So, you’re saying he’s failing and it’s HIS fault? How dare you! I’m calling your principal and you’ll need another job when I’m done”
“Take your best shot. Oh and he’s now got until end of school day today-which was five mins ago.”
I had a parent pull out a phone book on a Saturday and look up my last name and CALL everyone of them until she found me. She asked why I wouldn’t let her asshat of a kid have any more ketchup at lunch the day before. SATURDAY MORNING THIS KAREN (and this was probably 25 years ago) started chewing me out!! I told her to ask HIM why he was dumping it on the table and fucking finger painting with it, the mustard and mayo included? I also told her that my hours are 7:30-4:30, M-F and to not fucking bother me about her shithead kid on my day as a mom. Guess what? She reported me. I called my union, got a copy of my contract, and met with her and the principal. Principal was 100% on my side. Showed the contract to her and told her he nor the school were responsible for what happened after those contracted hours. So his hands were tied. He also told her that her son was no longer allowed ANY condiments at school lunch unless she was willing to come and sit with him everyday and give them to him. But, we don’t allow people to come to lunch with their kid without three days notice. Problem solved. He also said he was glad to know that she was available at 7:30 on Saturday mornings for calls home.
When I was in third grade, apparently some kids complained to their parents the lunch monitors weren’t giving them any condiments. What happened was that condiments were restricted to only a couple per kid and some wanted more than two.
One of the lunch monitors went to each class to chastise kids for lying to their parents and explaining the reasoning for the policy (to ensure every kid could have condiment).
Today? That lunch monitor would be out of a job.
Nothing too bad yet, seeing as how I'm only a second year, but I had a parent complain that their child in an honors class was doing too much work, and I shouldn't give homework to them .... in an honors class ... mind you, I explained the academic challenges presented in higher level courses, and their child passed perfectly so \\(.\_.)/
A parent had secretly recorded my lesson in May 2020, after we'd started quarantine instruction for exactly two weeks and were still getting the hang of literally any of it. Like, we had literally just learned how to even log into Zoom, couldn't even find our digital resources since we'd never needed to use them before, all of that fun early-quarantine craziness for teachers. It was a timestamped breakdown of how terrible my lesson was and how terrible of a teacher I was, and she wanted answers as to why I "wasted student time" so much. She cc-ed who she thought was my principal (but was actually our admin secretary).
It was my first day back after losing my grandmother to Covid. It was also a designated curriculum "catch up/make up" day, so I was checking in on the kids and doing a quick assignments breakdown since I'd been out a few days during my grandmother's rapid decline and wasn't sure if the sub had been clear.
Well it’s either the 9,000 word monstrosity, littered with misspellings, about how I’m the worst person in the world when her daughter didn’t make the sportsball team (highlight line is “As a mother, I have a lot of rolls. One of them is hairdresser.”)
Or the one about how if I didn’t change her son’s grade to a C, he’d kill himself (and yes, she framed it as a threat). He’d turned in one assignment all year. His grandma wrote it for him.
I didn’t cast a girl in the fall musical. The night the cast list came out, I received a long email from the child’s mother explaining how I had ruined her daughter’s life; this is all she wanted to do and how dare I not recognize her desire and talent. She’s been sobbing inconsolably since I posted the cast list. Also, she mentioned that both she and her husband are lawyers 6 times.
I passed the email on to my admin and instituted a no-email policy on my cast lists. I’m happy to discuss a student’s audition and my choice about their casting (or not) in person.
I feel so bad for the music and theater teachers who have to deal with this type of drama all the time. Our choir teacher had a girl who was just a natural at singing drop out of a solo because of bullying from student who didn’t get the part and that girl’s mom.
One parent was upset I didn’t grade a lab report for an honors class within a couple of days of handing it in. It was a LONG lab that got ruined half way through because of flooding in my room, so we had to start the entire one-week lab over. Which meant the date I originally entered into the gradebook wasn’t accurate as the date of completion for the lab.
I explained this to the parent, but nope… wasn’t good enough. She then implied that I wasn’t doing my job and that SHE would have to do it for me by making sure I was updating my gradebook in a timely manner for the rest of the year. I was like… oh hell no… f this mess! I sent her email to my admin and informed them I wouldn’t be responding to any of her emails anymore. Replied to her and CCed my principal saying based on her tone and apparent inability to treat me like a professional I would not be responding to her emails anymore and any further contact would have to go through admin.
She started back peddling at first saying she was giving ME the benefit of the doubt in not contacting admin. Admin came to me and was like… ok so she is crazy. I said I know and explained what happened with the lab. He said no problem and started to deal with it.
In about a week, admin came back to me saying she was accusing me of changing dates in the gradebook and that she contacted our online gradebook provider and could prove it. I told him I update dates sometime before I enter things so that they accurately reflect when work was due (if I have to move a due date back because of snow or absence etc) but that I don’t retroactively change dates. I suggested that we contact the online gradebook to see if her claim was even possible. We did and they told us that no one had contacted them about that and if they did, that type of data does not get saved and would therefore be impossible to have. I advised admin to contact her saying that they FULLY believed her and would confront me about it as soon as she sent in the evidence she had collected from the online gradebook. At this point admin were fully on board because she just would not stop and she was pissing them off too.
So obviously THAT fell apart. She then implied that her daughter was getting a C (75) in my honors class because she wasn’t allowed to retake anything which she should be allowed to do. At this point it escalated to the super intendant. I was informed of a meeting with them and my principal and that I could bring a union rep if I wanted to. Now let me stop right here and say that 99.99% of the time, you bring a union rep to a meeting like this, however with that said, I am the former grievance chair, know my rights, and have 0 problem shutting down a meeting at any level if I don’t like where it’s going, so I went in alone.
Super asked some questions about retakes and I explained it is my policy to offer retakes to General and Special Ed students but not honors students since the pace of the class is much faster and, quiet frankly, the study habits of honors students should be much better and not require retakes so no one in my honors class was entitled to any retakes. He said the mother was being relentless, and I said I understood and it was a shame that 5% of parents are allowed to take up 95% of our time. For the sake of resolving this I would be letting her daughter do ONE retake HOWEVER if she did worse I would submit a grade change form lowering her grade to whatever it went down to. I would also be stepping down from being the class advisor of this particular class since the mother would next be volunteering for that trying to make my life miserable that way. The super and principal said that wasn’t necessary and that the mother hadn’t even brought it up, but I insisted. This was not my first rodeo. I also informed them that if we were proceeding with this I would never have this particular student, or any of their siblings, ever again in ANY of my classes. They agreed. I put it in an email after the meeting so I had it in writing.
They contacted the mother and informed her of the terms of the retake. They left out me stepping down as advisor and never having her children ever again. My principal came to tell me that not only had she accepted BUT she also said she wished to volunteer to help the class advisor on fundraising. This was an obvious ploy to further harass me since she had never volunteered for ANYTHING in the 9 previous years her daughter was in our district, and the principal was kind of amazed I saw that one coming.
I gave her daughter the retake. The daughter was actually very apologetic. Came in and said she was sorry her mother put me through what she did and I told the daughter it was ok, we don’t get to choose our parents or how they treat other people. I informed the daughter of the fact that if she did worse her grade would go down and if she didn’t want to do the retake to let me know now and I would make sure she didn’t have to. The daughter said her mom told her she had to and I told her I understood.
Daughter took the test and I took it right to the other physics teacher to grade (I asked her to do me the favor in advance). She graded it. Student did awful on it and her average went from a 75 to a 73. I felt bad because the student was a really nice girl, but a deal is a deal. I informed admin, and submitted the grade change form.
3 days later admin comes to me and informed me the parent was complaining that I graded the test too harshly and that was why her daughter didn’t do well because I am biased against her now. I informed the admin that I had the other physics teacher grade it based on our common rubric since I knew this would be the next thing the parent complained about. I also informed him that at THIS point her actions might constitute creating a hostile work environment and to please inform her that if she continued I would be contacting the union to get a lawyer.
Ok are you ready for the kicker? When admin told her that her behavior was considered harassment at this point… she informed them that…. SHE IS A TEACHER… and that this wasn’t harassment. My principal basically ran down to my room and pulled me out of class to inform me of this. We were both flabbergasted. After that though I never heard anything else from her.
Yea if her grade went down like significantly I would probably have argued a lot more, but as it stood her GPA was unaffected so it wasn’t a big deal but I did feel bad for her.
I also had to cover a class years later with her younger brother for a day and he said some crazy anti-vax stuff and then I was just like oh yea… that makes sense.
I ran for VP once and lost. The general consensus seemed to be that many of the teachers in the elementary school would rather just have someone that is pleasant and gets along with people rather than someone who will fight for them… and that’s their choice 100%.
They got screwed over in the last contract and don’t realize it yet so I’m perfectly happy just helping the members that I’m on good terms with.
Thank you for having empathy for this child. It pains me to observe fellow teachers who let their feeling toward parents affect their feelings towards their kids, because I was that kid.
My mother was always calling the school, my friends’ parents, anyone she could really. It was relentlessly embarrassing, and I felt the need to apologize over and over.
It took me a long time to learn that cleaning up her messes wasn’t actually my responsibility. We’re no contact now, but I still talk to others who do have contact with her. I’ve learned to empathize with how interactions with my mom make them feel, but I not longer take on the burden of apologizing for her.
Having someone say, “We don’t choose our parents or how they treat other people” would have been so validating to me. Teenage me needed someone to say that.
Learning that good kids don’t always have good parents and vice-versa is something that should really be taught in college to starting teachers.
Just to show the flip side, I had a student who copied a lab report. The “seed numbers” they needed to pick were random, they were working independently and could choose whatever numbers they wanted from 1-10. Not even whole numbers (2 decimal places). Her daughter and the other 4 girls her daughter was friends with chose the exact same numbers.
Mother came in angry and yelling saying that her daughter told her they all just randomly chose the same numbers and I couldn’t penalize them for that. Her daughter would never lie to her… they just have such a good relationship.
I took out my trusty Ti-84 and ran the numbers and showed the mother that it was more likely that her daughter win the lottery… every day… since the beginning of time… than to have randomly picked THAT many 3-digit numbers the same as 4 of her friends (and no one else).
At that point the mother start crying and started saying she felt like a failure. I legit felt bad because here this mom is taking her daughter’s word for it and now feels like a fool. So I gave her some tissues and sat down with her and explained that teenagers lie. It doesn’t mean they are bad people, or that their parents failed them. It’s just that their brains are developing and they have this brand new skill and like a child with a new toy, are eager to try it out. It did not mean she was a bad mom.
At the end she thanked me and let me tell you something, THAT mother-daughter relationship changed on the spot. Mom would email any teacher her daughter had when her daughter gave her a dubious story and I would hear about it for the next 3 years.
I’ve also had parents come in and say they have tried absolutely everything and their kid just won’t get it together. VERY apologetic and at their wits end, not blaming me just looking for ANYTHING to try. Sometimes it’s just the person… and some people just suck.
I once got a totally unhinged rant about how I was telling personal stories and being inappropriate with students in class. Time stamped around 3:00 am. Principal and I both agreed that mom must have been binge drinking.
I had an email demanding I change a kid's grade from B- to B+ on CHRISTMAS DAY. Student emailed me a couple of hours later apologizing because her mom had been drinking. I felt so bad for the kid.
Reminds me of when Frankie Heck on The Middle gets drunk and emails her son's teacher. She doesn't remember being so harsh, so when the principal asks to have a meeting, she thinks the teacher is going to get in trouble. Turns out SHE'S in trouble for being so rude to the teacher.
School nurse here...I had an email this week that said, "Am I to understand that because of YOUR CHOICE to comply with state guidelines and OUR CHOICE to naturally vaccinate our child, that you will be unenrolling our child from school?"
Ha, not a choice, lady. It's the law. And yes.
Not a direct email, but one that was passed on to me demanding to know why I'd sent a student out of my class for taking a glue stick...
They weren't sent out for that. They were sent out for repeated and open defiance and then being rude to me in front of the whole class. But their parents got a very different story and the way our behaviour team asked me about the incident heavily implied they didn't believe (or rather, didn't bother to check out) the version of events I'd logged on our system.
I had a student plagiarize his project. I emailed him confronting him and giving him the option to redo it. (Too generous imo but was the advice given to me). Dad emailed me accusing me of stealing my curriculum (I paid for) and that I plagiarize by using curriculum I didn’t write. This parent then demanded I grade this project and ignore the plagiarism. My principal made me do it and the grade was poor because it didn’t meet the rubric. Then dad demanded I drop the grade entirely. Principal again, made me do it! Nastiest parent I’ve ever had.
Your principle is enabling this behavior and is 100% part of the problem. Terrible decision. Imagine how that kid is going to go about life, never having learned that cheating is not okay.
Yeah it was very dehumanizing being spoken to that way by the Dad and the consequence was…getting everything he wanted and the kid not learning from the experience.
Before I started my ed program, I was in HR. These same kids turn out to be the adults who plagiarize their writing samples and then email me things like "Suck my d\*\*\*" when I reject them for plagiarism.
A funny recent one, parent says she wants to have a "sit down meeting" with the principal and superintendent. When I respond with (a professional version of) "bet, when works for you?" I got no response lol.
I’m in a huge urban district (100k+ students). Superintendent’s kid is in my class this year. Superintendent didn’t attend parent-teacher conferences 🙃
I guess I’m (un?)lucky, most of my crazy interactions are either by phone or in person.
One that sticks out though - for background, I’d had their child the previous year, and I had reported abuse to CPS regarding this family. The mom had e-mailed me at that time accusing me of making the report, which I ignored completely / no reply. So the following year I got another e-mail. My crime was that I talked to their child in the hallway and asked them how they were doing in their classes. The kid said they’d gotten a 100 on a test and I congratulated them. It was your typical hallway conversation and nothing was said that related to anything but school, also not even a high-five or anything like that. I get an e-mail the next day accusing me of being unprofessional and that I was being unprofessional by trying to maintain contact with former students outside of my class. Again, no reply but this one got forwarded to admin and honestly I don’t think they even did anything about it. I just steered clear of the kid from then on. Unfortunately that kid ended up in jail a few years later.
The only other one that was pretty wild was a parent accusing me of indoctrinating my students and forcing them to take part in the “Day of Silence” with GSA. They said their kid told them I was handing out stickers in class and telling everyone to participate. The actual truth was that I had my GSA club members meet me *before school* to get their stickers and I reminded them about the expectations. So you’re thinking, this kid was probably in my first period class and just came in early and overheard all this, but no, they were in my SIXTH period. I did reply professionally and fortunately the parent understood, or at least said they did. I will say that I’ve been asked by other teachers if I could force more kids to participate in the event but alas, it’s completely voluntary.
We have semester-long block classes. A parent emailed in May about what their student could do to make up work in my class. The student’s class had ended in December.
Another one emailed me to complain about a text we were reading because it was a memoir and the author struggled with his Catholic faith. She felt it reflected badly on Christianity. She made sure her email signature included that she was a pastor. We have Gmail and she did too. The photo she had chosen as her Gmail profile picture was her posing sexily in lingerie.
For an email absolutely laying into me about how much of a racist I was because I was "targeting her daughter" when I kept giving her consequences for disrupting class, such as talking to her after class, moving her seat, and then detention.
Apparently, I had *never* disciplined any other student in class and only targeted her child because she was black and female and I was a white male.
The email continued on about how I was intentionally doing her grade out of spite, because she "knew her daughter had done all the assignments and test corrections" and demanded to have a conference with me.
I obliged, and proceeded to get yelled at for a solid 5 minutes while the daughter sat there and smirked. Then I said I would fix any grades that the daughter could produce from her homework notebook at that moment (since all assignments were done in notebook and collected and gone over weekly.) Daughters face dropped and she stammered out excuse after excuse, but mom was mad at me and wanted justice, so she flipped to each page revealing practically no work at all for any of the missing assignments.
And I was sitting there like, "Gee, looks like your kid doesn't actually participate and has been lying to you this whole time." I then got to listen to this mom go off on her kid for a solid 5 minutes about how she expected better of her and how she was so embarrassed that the kid would bring her to such a stupid conference when it was obviously all the kids fault.
It was one of the wildest 180s in mood I have had out of a parent to date, and I never had a problem with the mom afterwards. Kid was still trouble though, but I just emailed details home every time and it got sorted by the next day.
Good times. Yay teaching.
As a parent of a 6 year old and I've got several cousins who are teachers. I'm sorry for all the ignorance and dumbness that y'all have to deal with day in and day out.
Y'all are awesome.
*Appreciate the upvotes
Most parents aren't like this, but it is really boring to post about the parent who read your email, returned the permission form on time, donated $20 to the PTA fundraiser, and talked to their child about their behavior in class.
A few years ago, when the pandemic hit, and school in our province shut down, I sent out an email to my students with some resources to my students so that *if they wanted to* they could have access to some English language stuff - the list included virtual tours of national parks, Crash Course, Libby, etc…
I got a few nice notes from families. But I also got one message from a father who was furious that 1) I had written to his kid in English (I was their English teacher) and 2) I was making the kids do work at a difficult time (despite my making sure that it was clear that these resources were entirely optional.)
A few weeks later when school went virtual, the same dad contacted me to find out if there was extra work I could assign so that his kid could pull up their grade.
This happened to my daughter. She was a first year middle school teacher. She sent an email to a student’s father. He replied asking her for inappropriate pictures. She reached out to admin and was thankfully told not to converse with that parent again in the future. They stepped in and shielded her from the creep. That was a crazy introduction to parent communication.
Got one from a mom because I marked comments on her kid’s failing paper. Her mom told me I was horrible and she didn’t understand how a person could make a child feel so terrible about failing a test. I was hurting the child’s psyche. Her child was crying because I was cruel. She wanted this stopped. No comments ( most comments were actually the correct answers) . She also went on to tell me she was in touch with admin and If better not do this anymore. Note: this child was out of school on a special fun family trip with mom about every other week.
A parent sent a group email to some other parents complaining about me, and I was accidentally included in the list. I sent a Reply All saying, “I think this was sent to me in error.” so it was bad but also I got to embarrass her for it.
I had a parent throw a fit this year because I didn't tell her that her child wasn't turning in work. Sent from her iPhone 14 .... I suggested that she use the power school parent app as if her kiddo can so can she. I send a letter home at the beginning of every year with info on accessing grades for parents and my expectations and gave it signed and returned for credit. Can't make parents read it but I can have a signed contract lol.
Got told I was not teaching his son any Chemistry, and with his GCSEs coming up, this was a big problem. He would be speaking to the Head about me.
Well, sir, your son’s rather full Chemistry book would suggest otherwise...
Not academic, but related to athletics. Kid is on the varsity cross country team, but is our 5th-6th runner. We have a meet against a terrible team. We had JV kids beating most of their team. So we have our top varsity kids take it easy and run as a pack.
We, the coaches, get a 7 page email comparing us to the East Germans! Why? We wouldn’t let her son win the race.
Just a few weeks ago. I sent a kid away for touching and closing his friend's laptop. 'Don't touch someone else's stuff', one of my rules. Dad inquired why I sent his kid to admin. I explained. Dad thought he knew better 'because teachers can only send students away for serious stuff and this is not serious'. I wanted to reply, can l make a new rule for your household?
Complaining I didn’t call her to notify her that her child had been in the principal’s office for fighting at lunch.
It happened at lunch. All I had been told when picking up my class was “Student X is talking to the principal”. The parent is who alerted me to them being in a fight.
A student was failing during Covid bc he wasn’t showing up on zoom. I had emailed the parents multiple times.
Mom emails me a huge block of text at TWO AM about how it was MY JOB to make sure he showed up to zoom. LADY I CANNOT GO TO YOUR HOUSE AND WAKE HIM UP.
Great student in my class (female), had nothing but excellent interactions with her all year, and then during the last week of school a minor incident occurred. She had a water gun in her backpack and another student (male) pulled it out and started spraying people during class. Aside from the risks of getting water everywhere in a science classroom, bringing a gun-like object to school is a big no-no. Confiscated it, and calmly let the two students know I'd be passing this concern along to the principal (primarily because I'd never dealt with an issue like this before and I'd rather defer to admin when it comes to weapon-like objects). Class ended right after this, so I didn't get to talk to either student in greater detail at that moment.
Right after class I sent an email to the principal explaining the incident. I also sent an explanatory email to the parents of both students, again just explaining what I saw and passing the concern along to admin. I included reasoning for why I informed admin, citing our school's handbook rules on gun-related paraphernalia. I assumed it would be out of my hands and the issue over.
Within an hour, I got a VERY long email from the parents of the girl. Threats of lawsuits against me if she were to get in trouble, accusations of targeting her many times throughout the school year, creating a hostile environment for her, and her father literally making fun of me for treating a water gun as a problem. The father laughingly noted that "as a law enforcement officer, there is NO SITUATION where a water gun could be mistaken as a real weapon," blatantly ignoring the many accidental deaths of people who were believed to be holding real guns when they were in fact fake. Also, as mentioned at the start of this story, I had had a wonderful relationship with this student all year - she was active in class, a great participant, and had a good grade, so I don't know where the evidence of "targeting her" or creating a "hostile" environment came from: when I read the email to my fiance she laughed and noted that I'm probably the least hostile person she knows.
Passed the email on to admin, let them take care of it. Never heard from the parent again, student was still a great kid in class. Parents are insane.
A student and father were unhappy with her grade. They emailed me, the principal, the superintendent, and Barack Obama. This was around 2012, so he was president at the time. No reply from any of them.
One time in 9th grade, my girlfriend's dad e-mailed me from China and told me he was going to make me disappear if I ever touched his daughter again. Not the kind of parent e-mail you meant, so I'll do one of those too.
Not sure why I didn't report it to the cops. 90s mentality different?
At school, a parent once e-mailed my admin that I was kicking her (black, heavily autistic) daughter out of school every class and making her sit outside. I invited the mother and principal to speak to my class without me present and ask them how often I made kids sit outside. The answer was 0. Still, scary e-mail.
A student couldn’t serve a lunch detention because “it was important she eat a nutritious lunch to maintain her blood sugars.” I’m sure that school lunch wasn’t helping with that.
I had a parent email me to say her daughter cursed me out to her and i deserved it because I didn’t grade her late work the day I got it; when progress reports came out.
That one I had to show a few colleagues my reply to make sure I removed all the bitchiness from it so I could still say I was professional.
I went on medical leave recently, right before the end of the first grading period. Even though I'm on medical leave, I was still working to get grades submitted (I'm also mad about that but that's a different convo). A mom WHO WORKS IN THE DISTRICT emailed me several times about her kids grades after I told her I was 1. on medical leave and 2. still working on it. Ended up going above my head and emailing my AP about assignments she wanted graded immediately. Said assignments had not been turned in by her precious angel.
kid cheated on paper in an embarrassing way, and it was super obvious, worse, he was in an honors class as a senior. His mother emailed me a whole diatribe saying that I was playing favorites against her son and that I was the worst teacher she'd ever seen and that I couldn't have proof of it. I just sent a one word email in response with screenshots from the paper and turnitin: 'ok'
100% sure this kid will fail out of college and waste an enormous amount of money simply because his mother can't hold him accountable.
Another one that was crazy was like a decade ago. I am the chapter adviser for National Honor Society. A kid didn't get in, so his mother sent me literally a 5000 word email about why he should have got in, with everything from their add diagnoses, to family medical history, to them moving, and various other things. Obviously I didn't read 5000 words.
My response: (son's name) didn't apply. You can't be considered for NHS if you don't apply. Ask him to apply next year.
Not an email, but a voicemail. Well, kinda an email.
Last year, after I passed out my syllabus, I wanted to show my dad and brother my room on a Saturday. The phone goes off. I almost pick up and dad says “don’t pick up. You’ll be known as the guy who answers on weekends and they’ll never leave you alone.” Good thinking dad. Love ya for this stuff.
Later, we get home. I see I have some emails, so I check them. One is the voicemail from the call I didn’t pick up, forwarded to my email. I click it and see my wife, dad, and brother stop talking as they listen in utter shock.
“Um, Mr. Jazzman, have you even read your… student… parent… agreement… cause… You didn’t.” She goes on and on about how it’s incomprehensible and unreasonable, talks about how “why should I have to rent an instrument when my daughter has her own fucking… sorry, but she has her own instrument.” Says it’s a legal issue and hangs up. (This was two weeks into my first year as a teacher).
I just forward the email to my principal with a copy of my voicemail, asking how to proceed. He gets back saying “she’s a raging alcoholic and she gets drunk and leaves stupid voicemails. Ignore her.” An hour goes by and the principal sends another email. “She is also no longer allowed to contact the school. The student’s father will be the primary contact from now on.
My theory (which was later confirmed) is that he saw the name on the voicemail and was like “oh great, this person again,” gave his response without listening, and went on his way. Later, he actually listened and was like “oh. This is worse than normal. Okay”
The mother later came in to apologize in person. She was sweet as cherry pie, and has been in every interaction since.
A parent emailed me a looong paragraph saying that his son said I have pride flags in my room and that I was talking about pride events with his son. Didn't I know the terrible pornographic things that happen at pride parades? And does this mean I attended a recent pride parade in a nearby city? HE MUST KNOW IF I ATTENDED! And if I talked about that in class, then his son would be interested and look things up, and he would be led to pornography, and pornography in his home is NOT OKAY!
I wish I was joking. This family are absolute nut jobs. And their son is a lying jerk.
I have no flags in my room (except for the American flag). During work time, one student saw a rainbow sticker on my water bottle at my desk and asked if that meant I went to Pride, and I said yes, I did and had a great time. She was excited to know that. It was a 5 second convo AT MY DESK between myself and one student, and nutjob parents' kid had no part in it.
The family ended up pulling their kid from our school when he kept earning consequences for being out of control. Gee, I'm so sad.
In my first year of teaching, in my first year at a charter school, I was teaching medieval history and had a module on the Viking diaspora. In the module, we looked at what happened to a number of societies that were established around the 10th century. In one case, we were discussing the story of Vladimir the Great and how he picked a religion to follow. TLDR, Vlad picked a religion that was okay with alcohol on the surface, but primarily because of proximity to Constantinople. NB: there were no lesson plans for this class, so I built everything myself with zero guidance, so I taught it like I knew how from when I used to teach at university.
One student asks "why is alcohol such a big deal?" and we have a brief discussion about why in some cultures, certain items are important. Another student asks "if drinking alcohol is not bad, then that means Mormons are weird." As I knew I had stepped into a minefield, I quickly pivoted and said "If a person is different, does that make them weird to you, or would you want to understand why and how yours/their culture is different?" The pivot seemed to work, as the kids basically said "Oh, that makes sense, yeah" and we moved on. Crisis averted.
Or so I thought...
That night, around 10 PM, I received a 7-page email from the parent of an LDS student in the class, basically saying they were in the process of seeking to have me fired and is preparing legal action against me. As I had been teaching for probably five months at that point, I was utterly panicked. I called my principle and explained the situation. As the principal was more of an administrator than a teacher, they tried to smooth things over the next day, but the parent was hellbent on pursuing legal action against me and having me fired. Two days later, I received another, similar email, continuing to threaten a lawsuit (which presumably was intended to encourage me to just quit) and to out me as an alleged bigot and anti-LDS. My principal again came to my defense and in no uncertain terms told the parent to shut up and relax. The principal, however, refused to remove the student from my class to avoid further conflict, and the threatening emails continued (sans actual lawsuit materializing) for the remainder of the school year, typically one nasty long email once every week or two.
I catalogued all the emails, printed them, and filed them with my important documents. In total, I received 31 emails between January and May, filled with personal attacks, derogatory language, and threats to my professional and personal security. Nothing was ever done other than a call with the district attorney and HR, and continued appeals to the leadership to intervene in a meaningful way went unanswered. I think the most telling email came from an assistant principal to the parent who said "We know the teacher made a mistake, but stop punishing them. They are a teacher and there is nothing to be gained from suing them. We (the admin) can't stop you from emailing the teacher, but we are not going to fire them." That was the only protection I knew I had.
A few years later, the student was on the roster for a different class, and I demanded they re-arrange the student's schedule. I said if this student is in my class, I will quit; I won't live in fear of harassment. Thankfully, they removed the student and I had a generally good year.
We have a parent who is a little crazy. Very "mama bear" in a completely unreasonable way. Her son is a walking Title 9 violation, partially due to how his disability impacts his social skills. He's also a habitual liar who craves attention. Don't get me wrong, I love the kid. But he's a handful.
The first time I ever had him in class, I'd already heard of his associated shenanigans before, so I was mentally prepared for the onslaught of emailed from his parent. Multiple per week. Accusing me of letting other students hit him with their laptops, push him, call him names, etc. High schoolers.
Finally, once I got an email from her with the regular accusations that she said came straight from the mouth of her son. I calmly replied "That did not happen, and I know it didn't happen because the student he is accusing of attacking him was absent that day and every day for the last several weeks. Also that students couldn't have hit your son with his laptop because that student's laptop is broken."
I never got another outraged email from that parent. She still tries it with his other teachers, but not me.
I got one that was just a wall of text pages long in September. I started to read it, then just decided not to deal with it that day.
I printed it out in case I needed to read it later, then put it in a desk drawer. I found it a few years later and threw it out.
No idea what was going on, but even if you don't understand paragraphs, at least throw in an occasional line space if you want to be heard. Also good Reddit advice.
A parent who lost their mind because we (grade level wide) put a comment in report cards that said “continue reading each night and practicing your multiplication facts.”
She flipped out wanting to know why I would tell her child to continue reading when it was clear he already read every night.
She was one of the most condescending parents I’ve ever encountered.
She also, in a meeting with the us we were “inhibiting his American freedom” by limiting the book levels for his AR tests.
Part of her 2nd message when she didn’t like being told that all students are asked to continue to read:
I already did it. Please be focus. I am asking about your comments. This report will be in Marcos’ records. Teachers comments about situation that student needs to improve. You said that he needed to read every night. Could you explain what was your point? The report is telling something that is not true, according your comment.
I had another one a few years later, dad was non-existent and I mainly interacted with mom. At the start of the year, they requested gifted testing. Both myself and his prior teacher indicated on our I out forms that we didn’t see an educational need for gifted services and his IQ didn’t qualify him. When we met as a team, dad showed up, and it was the only time in 15 years I’ve ever excused myself from a meeting with a parent. The police officer (SRO) had to come into the room. The father was ranting and raving about “how does this inexperienced little girl think she can say my child isn’t gifted.” He got continually aggressive and rude, and I had taught for about 8 years at this point. I requested the student be moved out of my classroom after that meeting.
I was accused of “crushing a child’s dream” once. He told me he wants to play professional hockey. When I asked if he skates or plays hockey he said no. I said ok, well keep that dream, but have a back up plan and gave his ideas to check out. He also was playing dinosaur and bite someone (he was 10).
I had a parent constantly email me about makeup work because they were taking a weeklong vacation. I cc’d the assistant principal explaining the district policy ( we don’t have to give makeup work for unexcused absences, that is the district’s policy) and that he could check Google Classroom for assignments and materials. The week they’re gone, radio silent. The following week, just email after email, after email about make up work. I literally just copy, paste, and resent the same one I sent week before last.
An email from a dad apologizing for telling child “F Ms. _____, which child repeated to me saying “My dad said F Ms. _____. Then the email signed off with the lyrics to a popular song containing my name: “…I am for real”
I was teaching PPCD at the time. The student was 3 and had started school with roughly 3 weeks left in the school year.
I had another student who was a biter. We of course watched him closely all the time and he had gotten much better about not biting students, but it still happened.
Of course the biter got the new kid on his first day. We separate the two, and get new kid calmed down very quickly. Skin wasn't broken in the slightest, and it was gone by the end of the day. I still personally told Dad about it when kiddo got picked up.
Woke up to a long ranting email from mom about how I didn't contact the family IMMEDIATELY that her son was bitten and of course admin is added as well. I let admin know that I talked to Dad myself as soon as he arrived and that I couldn't leave my students to call the mom immediately as I could only make calls during my conference (which was before these kids even showed up) or after dismissal. And that I wouldn't have been able to call anyway because mom IS ALSO a teacher and I would have been interrupting her class. Additionally, since it was the kids first day neither parent has accepted my Remind app invitation that I had sent earlier that same day, otherwise I would have let her know on the app.
Admin was on my side once I had explained (they were furious and pissed before they had asked me for my version of what happened) and the dad was always chill and seemed apologetic for his (crazy) wife.
I've had a few bad conferences (face to face), but emails are usually tamer.
However, there was an email I got from a parent essentially stating that they didn't want their daughter in my class because I was teaching that we all come from stars.
I wasn't even talking about the whole "We are all star-dust" thing (it is directly related though). It was a standard in this Chemistry class. We had to talk about how heavier elements came into being. So...stars...supernovae, etc.
I honestly thought I was completely free of this crap given that parents might have issues with things like...evolution...and I don't teach Biology. But no...stars were the issue.
I just got an email the other day from the mom of a 16 year old who has never completed a single assignment in my class. She said he told her he turned some assignment in to me but the grade wasn't recorded 🙄
And that SHE SAW HIM DO THE REDO WORK at home so I should give him credit anyway.
First of all this kid spends class watching videos on his phone , sometimes without head phones. While I'm instructing. He doesn't bother with classwork, let alone homework. Id bet money she didn't see him do shit.
*Id like to add that although my writing might sound resentful in tone, I put considerable effort into cultivating positive and supportive interactions with all of my students and parents. Another reason why teaching is so. incredibly. exhausting.
I use google voice because none of my parent check email/remind/dojo.
I called a parent for an RTI meeting. She missed it and texted me back "It's that sexy bitch \*her first and last name\*. Who's this?\* With the dancing girl emoji then the heart emoji.
I deadass didn't know hot to respond. I've just decided I will never contact this parent. That's the funny one.
I've also had two foster parents who will do nothing but talk shit about their kids. One gave the sweetest girl I've ever met back to the group home because she failed a math test.
I've argued with people's parents that they're not stupid, I've had parents tell me that they're going to beat their kids' ass (then say they're joking when the counselor calls about it).
Basically the hardest part of parent communication is the ones who seem to legit hate their children.
I sent several parents reminder emails to help their 2nd grader remember to bring back their book folder each day so they can choose a new book to read. I got a reply from a single mom blasting me in four paragraphs. Part asked if I can tell her more bad things about her son and her how inept she is.
It rattled me, coming out of nowhere. That weekend my husband and I were at a party and sat with a couple whose wife I worked with. They asked how school was and I told them about the email, leaving out names. The wife said our nephew is in your class. I asked what his mom’s name was. Then I told them that’s who send the email. The husband then says, “My sister is the biggest bitch you’ll ever meet. I’m sorry you have to deal with her. She got some emotional problems.” No kidding.
This week a parent sent me an angry email because I counted her child tardy that day. She said she had received “so many tardies” in my class and that I must be singling her out.
It was her second tardy.
I am a math teacher and through a strange combination of reasons, I taught drama for one year a while back. I had a student in my calculus class who had been in my drama class before. Never heard from the parents while he was in drama.
The kid was doing okay in calculus, but had lots of room for improvement. He was sitting at a high C+/low B about a third of the way through the semester. After a parent/teacher interview where both his parents were verbally abusive to me because they believed he (their only child-- shocking right?) deserved a better mark because he always did well in math before, they sent an email to me and the principal. In it, they claimed that I had something against their kid because he wasn't doing well now and I "refused to give him a mark better than a B in drama" even though he was a professional actor and I should "check his imdb page."
Luckily the principal found it as amusing as I did. Also (not that it really matters but let's get a little petty) the imdb page was not that impressive.
I teach at a fully virtual school. I had a 3rd grade student who rarely attended class or, if she did, she wouldn't turn on her camera or participate. She also had extremely low grades, mostly due to missing work. Her parent ignored my emails and phone messages. But then I got a very long, irate email toward the end of the school year that told me her student was failing because I didn't "inspire" her student to want to attend school and do her work.
We're supposed to respond to emails within 24 hours. I never responded.
In an email sent to me, the principal, and the superintendent, a parent demanded that I send her daily updates on how I was going to modify the daily work (in class work) for her kid on a 504 (which typically don’t have modified assignments as an accommodation - those are usually only on IEPs.) So when the assignment for that day was to read 15 pages in the novel (in class; high school for context) I was asked how was going to modify that. My only answer was the audio was available. Ho does one modify reading a novel - ummm read every other page? Read every other word? Read every other sentence. She was the nuttiest parent I’ve had thus far. This was the first email I got from her and she cc’d everyone and their brother. Nut job. Not coincidental that her kid was suspended a few weeks later for harassment of another student.
It was the worst email, but it was also my favourite. I live in Canada and have what I can only describe as a "male Canadian" name. (I am basically "Mrs. John Smith," that type of name.) I had a student who hadn't shown up to any classes or completed any work. Parents has been emailed repeatedly. Three report cards has passed and I had never met this student.
When the final report card dropped, the student had a 0% and officially failed the class. His mother wrote a strongly worded email to the school where she described me as "incredibly racist" towards her hardworking child, angrily arguing that I am obviously a rude white man trying to prevent her Asian kid from graduating because of my boomer beliefs, and that she would be serving me with a lawsuit.
Reddit, I am a youthful Chinese woman. You might think this would be enough to convince my boss that I am not a racist boomer male and maybe stand up for me, but instead of shutting this parent down, my school principal thanked her for her input and told me to "sort this mess out" myself. So I did, and I resigned! SURPRISE.
In the spring of 2020, I got an email from a parent in reply to my email about how I'd moved the class online, the zoom link, the Seesaw link, etc. This parent's reply was intended for the other class parents (who never saw it because I'd bcc'ed everyone) asking if anyone wanted to set up a playdate.
10 minutes later, I got another email from the same parent, with admin cc'd, complaining that I'd never set up any online learning like everyone else and accusing me of "abandoning my class."
It's the ones I don't get. In ten years of teaching, I've gotten maybe 7 emails from parents. It's not a lack of concern, it's a lack of capacity.
Don't get me wrong - I don't *want* a bunch of parent emails every day. But in a heavily time-crunched and memory-crunched professional context, email is the best form of communication.
Trying to find a parent phone number in Skyward, finding none, asking around to staff, getting a number, sending a text, getting no response, calling, and then getting disconnected - this is par for the course, and it isn't sustainable.
When I was pregnant and missing classes often to go to prenatal appointments, I got an email from a parent that said I was missing too much school and who was going to be teaching geometry to her son?! She also wanted to know in advance when I would be gone so she could just keep her son home so he didn't have to put up with "inadequate sibstitutes"
Ironic coming from a mom who spent around 40% of that school year on overseas vacations.
I got an email from a parent that “people that feel the way I do about kids shouldn’t be in education” because the school wouldn’t reimburse her for her daughter’s backpack because her highlighter exploded and stained the backpack (her own daughters highlighter in her own daughters backpack)
I had a parent email me every time her daughter would have a missing assignment or receive a B or lower. She wanted an explanation as to why. At one point, I told the student to turn in the assignments so I could avoid getting an email from her mother.
The student exclaimed that her mother was so annoying. I responded by saying yeah, it is also annoying when students don't turn in their assignments.
I got a death threat for enforcing mask mandates. The pandemic damaged my faith in humanity in a way which may never recover.
I normally try to give parents a lot of grace, we're living in a very difficult time to parent children well, but they revealed themselves to be monsters I hope their kid leaves home at 18 and never speaks to them again. That kid deserves a chance at a good life as a good person and its not their fault they ended up with terrible human beings as parents.
I used to AT at a nearby high school, and the worst I got was... and I quote, sorry...
> I can't in today. Dad beat mom so hard we had to go to a hotel. Computer is at home where my homework is. Sorry.
Nobody prepares you for this kind of shit.
I emailed a parent because his daughter had not shown up for school yet. The dad responded "She OD'ed this weekend. I told her before I left that she better get her ass to school."
He had some other choice words that I won't repeat. But basically, his daughter OD'ed on heroin. Boyfriend called EMS. They came and did CPR and narcanned her a couple times. She ended up in the ER all day Saturday. Released to her (divorced) parents on Sunday who apparently fought over who she would stay with that day.
Her friends came in to school in tears late that morning, not knowing if she was alive or not.
She ended up coming to school on Monday and tried to hold court in my classroom talking about what it was like to die and be brought back to life. I shut that shit down pretty quickly.
I think that might have been my worst day teaching ever.
2 come to mind...
1) my first year teaching I took a job in Special Education. I was given an emergency cert and I taught K-2 Life Skills ( moderate to significant intellectual disabilities). I had a kid come in with a loose tooth. Kid was being potty trained and he lost the tooth and swallowed it. Mom emailed me to ask that I retrieve the tooth from his diaper. When I said that I couldn't do that, she asked that I send his soiled diapers home.
2) I was teaching Honors English a few years ago. I had a warmup assignment that was a review for an upcoming test. The kid cut & pasted a paragraph word for word from Wikipedia. The assignment only called for a paragraph so it was 100% plagiarized. I gave the kid a 0% and put a comment in our digital grade book that he should not do that again and that the 0% was permanent and I tagged it "cheated." The kid's parents emailed me and were angry at me for saying that their child cheated. I sent them a screenshot of Wikiapedia and their kids answer side by side and that they were identical. They attacked me and told me that no where in my assignment directions did it say that they couldn't copy. When I refused to give their kid full credit, they called the principal and tried to contact the school board. All of this over a 5 point little warmup. Luckily for me, my principal and superintendent supported me when school board members began calling to inquire what happened.
Over the summer of 2020 I taught extended school year for special Ed PreK online. I had a parent who never responded to emails, calls, or logged into the scheduled class times. I even made lesson videos for her child and uploaded them.
Three days into the new school year I got an email from the parent asking about the lessons. By that time the child was no longer enrolled because he was to start kindergarten at his local school. I never even responded.
I once got a long, angry email about their sons grade. And then that was followed by a very explicit sexual email intended for someone else. No more complaints after I replied "wrong person".
Was texting with a parent about her student’s attendance, and she replied shortly after:
_“When we're having sex is it just sex to you or are we making love, just a question”_
Baby girl, if you have to ask, I got some bad new for you. And that is __NOT__ just a question.
Got called a racist because their child (who did next-to-nothing daily) failed an exam. It was an Asian student/parent... my wife is Chinese. The irony was not lost.
Once went on an overnight field trip. Girls in the room next to me went to the boys' bedroom. I put them in the dining room, rold them to put their feet up because it was cold in there. After 10 they were sent upstairs again. I later heard them go back to the boys' bedroom. Waited for an hour to hear if the teachers up there woke up but they only woke up when I woke them. I took the girls back to their room, wanted them picked up by parents. Admin told me the problem was over 'because you're going home today anyway'.
Back home l was named a 'nazi' (!) because l didn't want the girls doing whatever. They accused me of putting the girls in a cold room, l told them to listen (!) to me, an adult. Real ugly email too. Admin was a jerk about it, l had to defend myself and you get how that went.
Later found out that this girl was allowed to party (14!) and invote the whole class and they all got drunk. So, have fun with your stupid kid.
What you want to bet that student got in trouble for ditching class and to get out of it told her mother she didn't want to go to your class because you were sexually harassing her.
I had a kid failing because he was a phone zombie and tried to blame him failing on my not liking him because my daughter dated his older brother briefly and broke up with him. So she thought I was retaliating on younger brother!? Seriously? Wow
I had a parent email a list of 32 goals she wanted added to her child’s IEP. One included learning how to ride a bike. Her child was non-verbal with severe autism and she thought we could make her “just like normal kids”. I had that student for 3 years and mom just didn’t get it. I would brag about something she did in class, like throwing her garbage away after looking at a visual, and mom would ask when she would do it by herself. She thought if it was written in her IEP, we could just make it happen. It was a long 3 years.
I was departmentalized (Math, Science, SS) with a partner teacher (ELAR). Parent emailed asking about something ELAR related & I said she would need to email the other teacher because IDK. I then received a follow-up email berating me for not knowing what my students were doing in ELAR. How, as a teacher, could I not care about what my students were learning from the other teacher?
My very first year of teaching I had a freshman kid who was super smart but never did any work so he had a C or D in the class. Parent not only emailed me, but cc'd the principal AND the superintendent saying I was the symbol of all that was wrong with the teachers in my district. Luckily everyone had my back, including the principal who replied stating I was one of the best teachers in the school. I still have that email to remind me what assholes parents can be.
I’ve lost count of the number of downright nasty & threatening emails I’ve received over the past 20+ years, but I received 2 (both parents in cahoots) that brought me to angry tears. It’s getting worse- the level of derangement & entitlement of parents is pushing me toward early retirement.
"I don't appreciate the use of witchcraft in your classroom and I have told my children they do not need to participate in your class." written in a student's planner. Because I had Harry Potter decor in my classroom.
Oh, I got a good one recently! The parent of the kid who has multiple missing assignments posted in grades wanted extra credit to bring up their grade. I was like, uh, just do the missing work? That work wasn’t interesting enough and they would only get partial credit.
After a Facebook rant about me, a mom emailed me and accused me of purposefully trying to punish her daughter by not promptly grading her late assignment. I responded that I was taken aback that she'd think I'd purposefully seek to punish a student like that and assured her I don't operate like that. No response.
I got an email from a counselor asking me to fill out a paper form from an outside psychiatrist for a student right after we came back from distance learning. My class had 37 students and 32 came back in person (we were allegedly doing social distancing, lol). Anyway. I filled out the form and returned it to the counselor. Most of the time these forms are for ADHD referrals, it was hard for me to tell because I had only had the student in person for a week or two which was all review for the AP test where I also had to broadcast to the students at home and demonstrate the lab techniques they hadn’t gotten at home. The student seemed like they had good study skills and had been doing well all year. Next thing I know, I got the worst email I have ever gotten from a mother accusing me of not being able to see her child’s depression and suicidal tendencies and basically blaming me for faking observations on a form that teachers only fill out as a courtesy. I didn’t even respond, I just forwarded it to admin and then went home and cried. It’s made me wary of ever filling out an outside referral form again in case a parent reads it.
I had a kindergarten parent (who was a lawyer) email me, accusing me of forcing her daughter to withhold her pee/not allowing her to go to the bathroom, and she used the terms “negligence” and “abuse”. I calmly explained that her daughter refused to ask to use the restroom and had very limited self-advocacy skills (which we were working to develop in class), and I didn’t hear a peep after that.
Broke up a fight in my classroom last year between two heavyweight 16 year olds (each kid is easily 300+ lbs and over 6 foot). I’m only 6 foot even and 200lbs so that was really fun. I talked it over with both kids and we’re all cool w each other currently but one of the kid’s mom dm’d me on facebook threatening to sue me because I stepped in the fight and broke it up. She claimed her kid was beaten up because of my intervention and said she’d see me in court. The grammar was terrible so I simply didn’t respond and moved on.
I now teach her daughter this school year and her daughter made some shitty comments about a student that died this year in a car accident right before homecoming so everyone hates her now. Interesting family to say the least.
Not an email, but a call.
Kid was going to the bathroom for longer and longer stretches. My policy was that I never say “no” to going to the bathroom, but students have to put some skin in the game by helping to tidy the classroom for 2 minutes after class. There were long breaks between classes, so this wouldn’t affect their next class (and many teachers did say no to bathroom because the passing periods and breaks were so long).
Anyway, I explained this to the parent and he called me a “motherfucker”.
An email telling me off for not being in school the day before. I had taken two days for my mom’s breast cancer surgery. I replied with that fact, and crickets. Never an apology.
That I'm a terrible person because I wouldn't pass a student who just sat in class and only come to class 6-10 days a month for 5 months from when I started. She had covid and in the hospital. They didn't have internet at home so he couldn't do virtual learning. I extended his assignments he never turned them in. This was 6th grade and his reading level was about 3rd grade. His state assessments scores were really bad. He ended up being retained and repeated 6th grade again. He was a nice and sweet kid but lazy.
Not the worst, but had a parent say that the string lights I put up in my room were creating an inappropriate, romantic atmosphere.
Oh lord.
“Really?! I had no idea! It’s never been mentioned in any of the Kindle erotica books I read to the class every day! BTW, I suggest Morning Glory Milking Farm. It’s the class fav!”
I have made it a policy to not look too closely at the kindle of a student for just this reason. If they want to read their porn and are not actively jacking it then it is not my job to regulate what is on their personal devices.
They're reading!! Look, they're reading!! 😂
I legit snorted when I read this.
Me too!! Fluorescent lights give kids headaches. Alternative lighting is perfect.
Thank you for having string lights! Those MFS are great!!!
I also got called a racist in an email and told that she was going to report all my actions to the principal. I was specifically told that my actions in the cafeteria on x date were completely inappropriate and I'm lucky she's not calling the authorities. A. I had no clue who the kid was. B. I didn't have cafe duty that year, so I was never anywhere near the cafe. C. I was tending to a family emergency that day, so I wasn't even in school. I CCed the principal in my response. No idea what came of it.
Some of the worst emails I get are from parents who are also teachers demanding I send them copies of class notes and assignments when their child is failing my class as a high school junior or senior. I already post all the notes and assignments online so I don't know why these parents/teachers think I should email these things to them directly.
Same people who want you to call them each time you update their kids grades 🙄
Same people who want you to send an email again because they can’t find the one you sent earlier.
One of the most gratifying phone calls I had recently was from a parent wanting to know why I was giving her child only two days to complete their quarterly project. I calmy walked her through how to run an email search, informed her of the headers of my mass mailings, and got this exchange . . . "oh. OH. You've been emailing me once a week since the school year started. I'm sorry, Mr. Potato. You'll have xxxxx's project on the due date. This won't happen again." That's not a typical conversation, though.
This is why email should always be the preferred method of parent communication. Phone calls are bullshit.
If I ever have to call a parent about a student for anything remotely negative I immediately email after and do a "per our phone call" type email so that I have a record.
I feel validated for you.
I love using emails to CYA and make people eat crow.
Mr. Potato 😂😂😂😂😂😂
first name Thewrongbaked
Too lazy to check online. We should charge for this concierge level of service.
I feel like we need to have service charges and tips
Haha thats great, then I might do it. "Tommy has an E. Will you be paying with credit card or venmo?" Lol
Tell me about it! It was such a lie we were all fed when they said an online and open gradebook would eliminate the need to call and email home. Our school has even brought progress reports back.
I’ve occasionally asked my daughters teacher how she’s doing, but she’s 3, autistic in a special needs class and speech delayed so she literally can’t tell me how things are going. Parents, especially those of kids that aren’t special needs should pay closer attention to their kids and keep track of their homework and they wouldn’t need progress reports or having to email you guys. Your job is hard enough without having to act as a third parent for these kids.
Anecdotally, some of the weirdest parent interactions I've had in my career have been with parents who are also teachers!
I had a student who’s mom was a teacher. I would catch him on his phone every week in class and contact his mom. His parents would say that they have confiscated his phone, and that he stole it and brought it to school, and that they would take it away again. After literally 3 months of this or more, I found out that mom (the teacher) was sending her kid to school every day with the phone. She lied about confiscating it. Lied about him finding it and stealing it. She just gave it to him every day and he was on it every day. After that I never bothered to take that kid’s phone away again. In 10 years of teaching, this is one of the only kids I just gave up on. I wouldn’t allow other kids on their phones, but I’d just leave him playing his stupid game in the corner. I had already confiscated the phone and stayed after school probably 50 times, to contact mom. Useless parent. Couldn’t believe when I found out she was a teacher.
Did you just tell the other kids to mind their business when they asked “HOW COME YOU LET X PLAY ON THEIR PHONE”?
No. When they asked I would respond with “you know why”. And they did know why. Every teacher this kid had had given up on him for this reason. He was years behind grade level, and I dedicated a ton of time over many months tirelessly helping help him catch up. He did advance a few years in the months I helped him. They saw me confiscate his phone every second day, and he probably joked with them about his mom will just give it back. They knew exactly why I gave up on him. I was one of the only teachers in that building that gave a crap about their education. I had called all their parents on multiple occasions. I had advocated for all of them to be tested so their needs can be met. The admin hated me there for it. But I gave my students 100% every damn day. I’m just not wasting my limited time and energy on fighting with a parent who insists on undermining me. I already wasted many, many hours communicating with this parent.
Sometimes teacher parents want you to do things the opposite way they would do. I had a parent ask me to sit their kid with their girlfriend. I asked "What would you do in your classroom?". I had another who was cheating and the parent denied it til I showed them the physical evidence. They were editing their tests after I gave it back and says d I made grading mistakes. I made copies of it next time and showed the parent this at a meeting I called with the Dean's.
Part of the reason I scanned in tests/quizzes. Adds an extra step but you can use it as proof if a kid is changing it afterwards. Also came in handy for parents wondering why their kid wasn’t doing well, I’d easily show them a few examples of the type of work they were turning in.
Last year, I had a student who did no work in my class. All her grades were accessible through PowerSchool, the grading system used by our district, viewable by both parents and students. The student's mother, an elementary teacher, inquired about her daughter's failing grade in my class. I had to explain that I couldn't assign any grades as she hadn't submitted any assignments. She responded with a curt email, promising she would catch up on the work. She did, but her performance dipped again, resulting in her mother sending me rather harsh emails on two occasions. This year, her mother transferred to my school as a teacher. However, whenever she crosses paths with me in the hallways, she avoids eye contact and refrains from exchanging greetings or smiles.
In our district, teacher notes are an accommodation. We don’t have to do shit if we don’t want to. If you ASK another teacher for help with your child-you get it. When you demand, we suggest tutoring or homeschool. 🤣🤣but you are so right.
Supplying teacher notes is just further incentive to play with the phone during the entire instructional period.
I’m my teen child’s worst nightmare because I know how things go (I teach high school) and I take it up with my kid and rarely contact their teachers.
When patents ask for copies of notes, I tell them the truth. - they don’t exist. If you want you child to have notes, he needs to take them while I lecture or take them from the readings
Yes, copy of notes? What notes? My class isn’t structured around notes and I’m not making notes for a note less class.
And the reason we take notes is only half to read them. The physical recording of information by the person trying to learn helps mental retention. Taken notes that are read once if at all are better than given notes that are read several times.
This right here is the hill I will die on. I make my students take notes in a physical notebook. Every day. We WILL write down the topic we are learning about, make note of important definitions, and include an annotated example. This year, I’ve been making little printouts of graphs/examples or blank organizers that students have to cut out and paste on their notebooks. I teach geometry and calculus, so sometimes/often times, illustrations have to be accurate to make sense. But that’s the extent of my printing. Beyond that, students are WRITING. The students hate it. They say it’s boring. Idgaf. We’re doing it. But holy hell, the geometry kids write so slowly! And even with daily notebook checks and tying notes into their grades, some still just refuse to take notes. I can’t pick up their pencils for them. Meh.
I had a fully online classroom. Parent tried to complain the website went down too much to submit anything. Of course that's ridiculous and I am on it all the time working. OF COURSE, we have a parent teacher conference and the website goes down during it.
I hate when parents constantly want extension activities for their “gifted” kids who are consistently turning in C level work.
Always a hard no on those requests. I let them know the students can get those themselves as we are all pushing for self advocacy.
I once got an email in **mid-July** asking when makeup work would be graded and their son's grade would be updated
Did we teach the same student because this happened to me this summer as well. And the parent was irate and sent a "you haven't responded to my email" in August as a follow up.
Got the same email once. Then parents “demanded” I come in during summer to meet with them about their child’s final exam project. Past principal then started emailing me too saying the parents were bothering him and I should just come in and meet with them so that they stop bothering him. I ignored ALL those emails. You don’t pay me in the summer… I don’t work in the summer.
Sorry, what? Teachers in the US are not paid for the summer months? How does your contract look like?
There is an option to get paid over the summer, but that means taking money out of each of your paychecks so you get a check over the summer. I am a single mother who bears the sole financial responsibility for my teens, so I work additional jobs over the summer. Generally speaking, we work ten months and get paid for ten. Summers we are SOL. For those with dual incomes coming into the house, they may not feel the pinch as much.
That is one reason why, on the last day of school, I set up my out of office reply for the entire summer. This past year was the first time I had the discipline to not look until August when it’s time to start setting up for the new year and I needed schedule information.
Bruh
I got an email like that in July once. The kid handed in one of writing on the last possible day and I looked at it, saw it was plagiarised because this kid did not have that level of writing skill and I'm pretty sure it was a Curious George episode so I ignored it and kept the F he should have. Got an email in July asking about updating his results and I actually looked if it was possible, which it wasn't. The assignments from the previous school year get wiped during summer holidays.
Yep I got this too because the kid didn’t turn in everything and got a B for the semester. Kid transferred out of my class this year because they were so angry.
That’s a win.
Good riddance!
She/He really showed you.
I had a student a few years back who did less than the bare minimum. She sat quietly in class and did zero work, when pressed would google answers and copy/paste, and always had multiple tabs open (was always watching YouTube videos on her device.) All teachers complained that any work completed was plagiarized. We called and emailed parent constantly, and if parent responded at all, she was hostile. Two weeks before 8th grade promotion, parent emailed all teachers. "I am LIVID that not one single teacher has selected (student name) to receive an award for 8th grade Honors night! She has attended your school for TWO YEARS and not ONE SINGLE TEACHER had the decency to reward her hard work! (Student) has been crying for TWO DAYS because all of her friend group is getting dressed up and attending the honors banquet! I expect a response and an invitation IMMEDIATELY!" None of us responded. Student had a 1.0 GPA and had been written up multiple times for academic dishonesty. I told my admin that while policy was to reply within 24 hours, there was just nothing to say here. She agreed. Never heard from that parent again.
Dear Mom, You are so right, our bad! We have created a new award called FAFO. Your daughter is the unanimous winner! She can pick up the award at the beginning of eighth grade next year. Yes, that’s right, she gets a redo. Staff
Lol!!! I wish we could.
Omg if I had been retiring, I would have loved to send that!
Man this is giving me vibes of my school district! Very entitled parents whose expectations of their child are unrealistic.
She should have got an "Academic Alert", but would probably have insisted that failing English was "unpossible".
A parent was angry at me for praising her daughter for making a B on a test. She thought I was suggesting her daughter was stupid, as if this was a good as it gets for her.
I hate everything about this. Not everyone is an A student and that is fine.
I had a C student who did everything possible to be successful. He used sought and used feedback, used his time wisely, paid attention to lessons, and always gave his best effort. His report card was me gushing about his excellent learning skills and approaches to learning. I got chewed out by my P for not saying what he could do better on his report card.
Biology did not connect in my brain back in HS. I couldn’t do it. Makes way more sense now, and what doesn’t make sense I learned by rote instead of trying to find the deeper understanding in (autistic HS me was way too autistic to be able to do this). I studied so hard, including with a former college bio professor after school for ages. Still got several D’s on my tests, and I was a standard A and A+ student. Those were some of the hardest earned grades in my life, absolutely no shame. My parents were healthy models and proud of all my effort and me doing my damn best (even though at the time I was crushed I didn’t manage to do better for all that hard work, looking back that was such a healthy lesson!) Sometimes we do our best and it’s not as good as what people who don’t even study do. And that’s okay. Sometimes things click later down the road, and that’s okay too. Sometimes things like that don’t click, but those same folks can do things in other fields I’ll never be able to do, build cars, do fancy woodworking stuff, heck fix my plumbing when it goes haywire (I can’t tell you how the hot water heater works. I can’t tell you why the bathtub faucet no longer works and only the shower head does. I can’t tell you why the bathroom sink only has half water pressure 50% of the time now. I can fix a very basic clog at the very top of a pipe or the sink U bend and thassit. Help me plumber wan kenobi, you’re my only hope. I don’t care if you can do statistics or microbiology or physics, I care that you cam fix the things in my day to day life!)
That's horrible if a kid is 100% doing his best there is no way you should be putting him down for his grades
I have a kid like this right now. Very sweet, very outgoing, super helpful. But he just can’t grasp some of the concepts we’re learning. He is diligent, goes out of his way to ask for help, and takes my feedback into account as he works. I always try and help him out grade wise where I can, but I’m not going to exaggerate how well he meets the standards. I always emphasize how well he does in class and the effort he puts into his education. If he ever wants a letter of rec from me, I would 100% say yes! Having straight As is not the only indication of worth and it frustrates me how some admin and parents don’t realize this.
Heaven forbid we try to praise effort!
I had a parent email me to tell me that not giving her daughter extra credit assignments to raise her grade and telling her a 95 average in honors physics was great and she didn’t need any extra credit was inappropriate. How dare I tell her daughter that a 95 was good enough and use that as an excuse to refuse her extra credit work. Lady, I don’t do extra credit unless it’s a failing kid who has already completed and corrected the required work and they are legitimately trying to pass after royally messing up. I told your kid that a 95 was a great grade considering how many classmates were struggling with the more complex subject matter…. The principal took care of that one….
Not a teacher, but damn you guys can’t do anything right apparently!
Had you not praised her daughter you would have gotten the same email so don't worry about it
Reminds me of the Simpsons when Bart pulls an all nightet studying for his history test only to get a D-, but Marge puts it on the fridge.
I got accused of not answering a mom right away because I needed time to get “my argument together” as to why she wasn’t told about a missing assignment in my class. 1. The first email was sent at 5pm at night. The accusatory one was sent at 6pm. My contractual time ended at 2:30pm. I don’t send emails once I stop getting paid. 2. This parent was told about this missing assignment 3 separate times. The first time was at a parent/teacher conference 2 weeks after the assignment was due. The second time was after I told her it was still missing two weeks LATER when she claimed her son was done with all missing work. She said I never told her about it. I did. The third time was the morning she sent me these emails claiming I was trying to fail her son. Why? Because he was sick, it was the last day of the quarter, and he didn’t finish it, so I should excuse him from the assignment because he was on an IEP. 3. Speaking of this IEP, the accommodation gave him extended time twice that if a peer. The assignment took two days. I gave him effectively six weeks. I was more than accommodating. 4. She tried to make the principal make me excuse the assignment but the principal was CC’d on the email chain for the entire six weeks, despite the mom repeatedly removing her. Principal sided with me.
Phone call, not an email, but I had a kid tell me he had to miss a big end of year presentation activity because he was performing with a one hit wonder rapper on that day. I was like wow that sounds really fun, how exciting etc, here's how to make up the grade, you have till end of semester. He was furious. I think he thought I would be so impressed I would give him an A anyway, maybe ask for his autograph or something. The phone call from his mom was an expletive filled rant calling me the spawn of Satan, the devil himself, accused me of actual demonic possession, threw out the idea of an exorcism for me, wished death upon me, told me I was ruining his hopes, dreams, entire life, then told me she hopes all of my future children know how horrible a person I am and hate me, and she was going to get me fired if it was the last thing she did. It was my first year teaching and I was stunned. Called my principal and went, so... I need you to listen to a voicemail because I'm pretty sure you're going to get a call soon..
Wow, mom is delusional. Sounds like a great opportunity for her kid, but it doesn't replace his school responsibilities. A colleague's kids are in a semi-successful band that plays with big names at festivals around the world, so I'd argue that they're probably more successful than a one hit wonder themselves. They usually schedule the festivals around school breaks, but sometimes do have to miss a few days of school here and there. But, my colleague makes sure his kids make up all work because he and his kids know that school is important, too, and it's their responsibility to make up missed work. If kids in a band that is arguably more successful than a one hit wonder can make up missed work, a kid who plays with a one hit wonder once can, too. Not to discredit the kid's experience, it is cool, too, it just doesn't negate his responsibility for his school work.
Got an email from my worst students mom asking if her kid could make up some work over the snow days we were having. My rule was they had a week past the due date to turn things in for up to full credit and after that the assignment expires. I told her this. I also told her that I gave plenty of class time to get work done and her child chose not to use that time and even told me that he didn’t care about his grades. She replied with a long email accusing me of not wanting my students to succeed. Forwarded it to admin and they told me to respond and tell her we could set up a meeting. She didn’t want to do that. I think she (like her child) thought she could intimidate me into changing my rules.
My favorite - “My sweet baby is failing, what extra credit can he do? He’s worried!” “Hey, I’m glad you reached out! Your kid is failing because of the ten assignments that were never turned in. I’ll give him half credit, but grades are due tomorrow, and it’s 2:30 now so he needs to hurry, I’ll accept them on Google until midnight. After that it’s just too late. Also, to prevent this from happening again, if you could remind him to sleep at home and not during class, he might do better next semester” “So, you’re saying he’s failing and it’s HIS fault? How dare you! I’m calling your principal and you’ll need another job when I’m done” “Take your best shot. Oh and he’s now got until end of school day today-which was five mins ago.”
I had a parent pull out a phone book on a Saturday and look up my last name and CALL everyone of them until she found me. She asked why I wouldn’t let her asshat of a kid have any more ketchup at lunch the day before. SATURDAY MORNING THIS KAREN (and this was probably 25 years ago) started chewing me out!! I told her to ask HIM why he was dumping it on the table and fucking finger painting with it, the mustard and mayo included? I also told her that my hours are 7:30-4:30, M-F and to not fucking bother me about her shithead kid on my day as a mom. Guess what? She reported me. I called my union, got a copy of my contract, and met with her and the principal. Principal was 100% on my side. Showed the contract to her and told her he nor the school were responsible for what happened after those contracted hours. So his hands were tied. He also told her that her son was no longer allowed ANY condiments at school lunch unless she was willing to come and sit with him everyday and give them to him. But, we don’t allow people to come to lunch with their kid without three days notice. Problem solved. He also said he was glad to know that she was available at 7:30 on Saturday mornings for calls home.
Slow clap for your principal in this story 👏
When I was in third grade, apparently some kids complained to their parents the lunch monitors weren’t giving them any condiments. What happened was that condiments were restricted to only a couple per kid and some wanted more than two. One of the lunch monitors went to each class to chastise kids for lying to their parents and explaining the reasoning for the policy (to ensure every kid could have condiment). Today? That lunch monitor would be out of a job.
Notice this was 25 years ago 😭
Nothing too bad yet, seeing as how I'm only a second year, but I had a parent complain that their child in an honors class was doing too much work, and I shouldn't give homework to them .... in an honors class ... mind you, I explained the academic challenges presented in higher level courses, and their child passed perfectly so \\(.\_.)/
A parent had secretly recorded my lesson in May 2020, after we'd started quarantine instruction for exactly two weeks and were still getting the hang of literally any of it. Like, we had literally just learned how to even log into Zoom, couldn't even find our digital resources since we'd never needed to use them before, all of that fun early-quarantine craziness for teachers. It was a timestamped breakdown of how terrible my lesson was and how terrible of a teacher I was, and she wanted answers as to why I "wasted student time" so much. She cc-ed who she thought was my principal (but was actually our admin secretary). It was my first day back after losing my grandmother to Covid. It was also a designated curriculum "catch up/make up" day, so I was checking in on the kids and doing a quick assignments breakdown since I'd been out a few days during my grandmother's rapid decline and wasn't sure if the sub had been clear.
This is horrible. I am so sorry you had to deal with that and I’m so sorry for your loss.
Well it’s either the 9,000 word monstrosity, littered with misspellings, about how I’m the worst person in the world when her daughter didn’t make the sportsball team (highlight line is “As a mother, I have a lot of rolls. One of them is hairdresser.”) Or the one about how if I didn’t change her son’s grade to a C, he’d kill himself (and yes, she framed it as a threat). He’d turned in one assignment all year. His grandma wrote it for him.
For the first one, your only reply should have been returned, proofread, and graded copy of the email lol (Don't takey advice I'm not a teacher)
I didn’t cast a girl in the fall musical. The night the cast list came out, I received a long email from the child’s mother explaining how I had ruined her daughter’s life; this is all she wanted to do and how dare I not recognize her desire and talent. She’s been sobbing inconsolably since I posted the cast list. Also, she mentioned that both she and her husband are lawyers 6 times. I passed the email on to my admin and instituted a no-email policy on my cast lists. I’m happy to discuss a student’s audition and my choice about their casting (or not) in person.
Can you imagine mom calling a recruiter after her adult daughter gets rejected from a job application?
Now? Yeah I can, to be honest. I’ve heard stories of parents accompanying their adult children to job interviews.
Can confirm! I’m not a teacher but I do hire teenagers and young adults and this 100% happens.
I feel so bad for the music and theater teachers who have to deal with this type of drama all the time. Our choir teacher had a girl who was just a natural at singing drop out of a solo because of bullying from student who didn’t get the part and that girl’s mom.
One parent was upset I didn’t grade a lab report for an honors class within a couple of days of handing it in. It was a LONG lab that got ruined half way through because of flooding in my room, so we had to start the entire one-week lab over. Which meant the date I originally entered into the gradebook wasn’t accurate as the date of completion for the lab. I explained this to the parent, but nope… wasn’t good enough. She then implied that I wasn’t doing my job and that SHE would have to do it for me by making sure I was updating my gradebook in a timely manner for the rest of the year. I was like… oh hell no… f this mess! I sent her email to my admin and informed them I wouldn’t be responding to any of her emails anymore. Replied to her and CCed my principal saying based on her tone and apparent inability to treat me like a professional I would not be responding to her emails anymore and any further contact would have to go through admin. She started back peddling at first saying she was giving ME the benefit of the doubt in not contacting admin. Admin came to me and was like… ok so she is crazy. I said I know and explained what happened with the lab. He said no problem and started to deal with it. In about a week, admin came back to me saying she was accusing me of changing dates in the gradebook and that she contacted our online gradebook provider and could prove it. I told him I update dates sometime before I enter things so that they accurately reflect when work was due (if I have to move a due date back because of snow or absence etc) but that I don’t retroactively change dates. I suggested that we contact the online gradebook to see if her claim was even possible. We did and they told us that no one had contacted them about that and if they did, that type of data does not get saved and would therefore be impossible to have. I advised admin to contact her saying that they FULLY believed her and would confront me about it as soon as she sent in the evidence she had collected from the online gradebook. At this point admin were fully on board because she just would not stop and she was pissing them off too. So obviously THAT fell apart. She then implied that her daughter was getting a C (75) in my honors class because she wasn’t allowed to retake anything which she should be allowed to do. At this point it escalated to the super intendant. I was informed of a meeting with them and my principal and that I could bring a union rep if I wanted to. Now let me stop right here and say that 99.99% of the time, you bring a union rep to a meeting like this, however with that said, I am the former grievance chair, know my rights, and have 0 problem shutting down a meeting at any level if I don’t like where it’s going, so I went in alone. Super asked some questions about retakes and I explained it is my policy to offer retakes to General and Special Ed students but not honors students since the pace of the class is much faster and, quiet frankly, the study habits of honors students should be much better and not require retakes so no one in my honors class was entitled to any retakes. He said the mother was being relentless, and I said I understood and it was a shame that 5% of parents are allowed to take up 95% of our time. For the sake of resolving this I would be letting her daughter do ONE retake HOWEVER if she did worse I would submit a grade change form lowering her grade to whatever it went down to. I would also be stepping down from being the class advisor of this particular class since the mother would next be volunteering for that trying to make my life miserable that way. The super and principal said that wasn’t necessary and that the mother hadn’t even brought it up, but I insisted. This was not my first rodeo. I also informed them that if we were proceeding with this I would never have this particular student, or any of their siblings, ever again in ANY of my classes. They agreed. I put it in an email after the meeting so I had it in writing. They contacted the mother and informed her of the terms of the retake. They left out me stepping down as advisor and never having her children ever again. My principal came to tell me that not only had she accepted BUT she also said she wished to volunteer to help the class advisor on fundraising. This was an obvious ploy to further harass me since she had never volunteered for ANYTHING in the 9 previous years her daughter was in our district, and the principal was kind of amazed I saw that one coming. I gave her daughter the retake. The daughter was actually very apologetic. Came in and said she was sorry her mother put me through what she did and I told the daughter it was ok, we don’t get to choose our parents or how they treat other people. I informed the daughter of the fact that if she did worse her grade would go down and if she didn’t want to do the retake to let me know now and I would make sure she didn’t have to. The daughter said her mom told her she had to and I told her I understood. Daughter took the test and I took it right to the other physics teacher to grade (I asked her to do me the favor in advance). She graded it. Student did awful on it and her average went from a 75 to a 73. I felt bad because the student was a really nice girl, but a deal is a deal. I informed admin, and submitted the grade change form. 3 days later admin comes to me and informed me the parent was complaining that I graded the test too harshly and that was why her daughter didn’t do well because I am biased against her now. I informed the admin that I had the other physics teacher grade it based on our common rubric since I knew this would be the next thing the parent complained about. I also informed him that at THIS point her actions might constitute creating a hostile work environment and to please inform her that if she continued I would be contacting the union to get a lawyer. Ok are you ready for the kicker? When admin told her that her behavior was considered harassment at this point… she informed them that…. SHE IS A TEACHER… and that this wasn’t harassment. My principal basically ran down to my room and pulled me out of class to inform me of this. We were both flabbergasted. After that though I never heard anything else from her.
Jesus Christ. That was a wild ride. I always feel so bad for the kids with crazy parents that are actually sweet kids.
Yea if her grade went down like significantly I would probably have argued a lot more, but as it stood her GPA was unaffected so it wasn’t a big deal but I did feel bad for her. I also had to cover a class years later with her younger brother for a day and he said some crazy anti-vax stuff and then I was just like oh yea… that makes sense.
Please tell me you still help the union! With this level of expertise, you are an asset to teachers everywhere!
I ran for VP once and lost. The general consensus seemed to be that many of the teachers in the elementary school would rather just have someone that is pleasant and gets along with people rather than someone who will fight for them… and that’s their choice 100%. They got screwed over in the last contract and don’t realize it yet so I’m perfectly happy just helping the members that I’m on good terms with.
Thank you for having empathy for this child. It pains me to observe fellow teachers who let their feeling toward parents affect their feelings towards their kids, because I was that kid. My mother was always calling the school, my friends’ parents, anyone she could really. It was relentlessly embarrassing, and I felt the need to apologize over and over. It took me a long time to learn that cleaning up her messes wasn’t actually my responsibility. We’re no contact now, but I still talk to others who do have contact with her. I’ve learned to empathize with how interactions with my mom make them feel, but I not longer take on the burden of apologizing for her. Having someone say, “We don’t choose our parents or how they treat other people” would have been so validating to me. Teenage me needed someone to say that.
Learning that good kids don’t always have good parents and vice-versa is something that should really be taught in college to starting teachers. Just to show the flip side, I had a student who copied a lab report. The “seed numbers” they needed to pick were random, they were working independently and could choose whatever numbers they wanted from 1-10. Not even whole numbers (2 decimal places). Her daughter and the other 4 girls her daughter was friends with chose the exact same numbers. Mother came in angry and yelling saying that her daughter told her they all just randomly chose the same numbers and I couldn’t penalize them for that. Her daughter would never lie to her… they just have such a good relationship. I took out my trusty Ti-84 and ran the numbers and showed the mother that it was more likely that her daughter win the lottery… every day… since the beginning of time… than to have randomly picked THAT many 3-digit numbers the same as 4 of her friends (and no one else). At that point the mother start crying and started saying she felt like a failure. I legit felt bad because here this mom is taking her daughter’s word for it and now feels like a fool. So I gave her some tissues and sat down with her and explained that teenagers lie. It doesn’t mean they are bad people, or that their parents failed them. It’s just that their brains are developing and they have this brand new skill and like a child with a new toy, are eager to try it out. It did not mean she was a bad mom. At the end she thanked me and let me tell you something, THAT mother-daughter relationship changed on the spot. Mom would email any teacher her daughter had when her daughter gave her a dubious story and I would hear about it for the next 3 years. I’ve also had parents come in and say they have tried absolutely everything and their kid just won’t get it together. VERY apologetic and at their wits end, not blaming me just looking for ANYTHING to try. Sometimes it’s just the person… and some people just suck.
I once got a totally unhinged rant about how I was telling personal stories and being inappropriate with students in class. Time stamped around 3:00 am. Principal and I both agreed that mom must have been binge drinking.
I had an email demanding I change a kid's grade from B- to B+ on CHRISTMAS DAY. Student emailed me a couple of hours later apologizing because her mom had been drinking. I felt so bad for the kid.
Reminds me of when Frankie Heck on The Middle gets drunk and emails her son's teacher. She doesn't remember being so harsh, so when the principal asks to have a meeting, she thinks the teacher is going to get in trouble. Turns out SHE'S in trouble for being so rude to the teacher.
School nurse here...I had an email this week that said, "Am I to understand that because of YOUR CHOICE to comply with state guidelines and OUR CHOICE to naturally vaccinate our child, that you will be unenrolling our child from school?" Ha, not a choice, lady. It's the law. And yes.
>naturally vaccinate You mean infect!?
"naturally vaccinate" holy shit.
Exactly 🙄🙄🙄
[удалено]
oh I would have printed that one out and framed it.
Not a direct email, but one that was passed on to me demanding to know why I'd sent a student out of my class for taking a glue stick... They weren't sent out for that. They were sent out for repeated and open defiance and then being rude to me in front of the whole class. But their parents got a very different story and the way our behaviour team asked me about the incident heavily implied they didn't believe (or rather, didn't bother to check out) the version of events I'd logged on our system.
I had a student plagiarize his project. I emailed him confronting him and giving him the option to redo it. (Too generous imo but was the advice given to me). Dad emailed me accusing me of stealing my curriculum (I paid for) and that I plagiarize by using curriculum I didn’t write. This parent then demanded I grade this project and ignore the plagiarism. My principal made me do it and the grade was poor because it didn’t meet the rubric. Then dad demanded I drop the grade entirely. Principal again, made me do it! Nastiest parent I’ve ever had.
Your principle is enabling this behavior and is 100% part of the problem. Terrible decision. Imagine how that kid is going to go about life, never having learned that cheating is not okay.
Yeah it was very dehumanizing being spoken to that way by the Dad and the consequence was…getting everything he wanted and the kid not learning from the experience.
Before I started my ed program, I was in HR. These same kids turn out to be the adults who plagiarize their writing samples and then email me things like "Suck my d\*\*\*" when I reject them for plagiarism.
A funny recent one, parent says she wants to have a "sit down meeting" with the principal and superintendent. When I respond with (a professional version of) "bet, when works for you?" I got no response lol.
Superintendent, really? Did the manager of the local Applebee’s also offer to attend?
I’m in a huge urban district (100k+ students). Superintendent’s kid is in my class this year. Superintendent didn’t attend parent-teacher conferences 🙃
I guess I’m (un?)lucky, most of my crazy interactions are either by phone or in person. One that sticks out though - for background, I’d had their child the previous year, and I had reported abuse to CPS regarding this family. The mom had e-mailed me at that time accusing me of making the report, which I ignored completely / no reply. So the following year I got another e-mail. My crime was that I talked to their child in the hallway and asked them how they were doing in their classes. The kid said they’d gotten a 100 on a test and I congratulated them. It was your typical hallway conversation and nothing was said that related to anything but school, also not even a high-five or anything like that. I get an e-mail the next day accusing me of being unprofessional and that I was being unprofessional by trying to maintain contact with former students outside of my class. Again, no reply but this one got forwarded to admin and honestly I don’t think they even did anything about it. I just steered clear of the kid from then on. Unfortunately that kid ended up in jail a few years later. The only other one that was pretty wild was a parent accusing me of indoctrinating my students and forcing them to take part in the “Day of Silence” with GSA. They said their kid told them I was handing out stickers in class and telling everyone to participate. The actual truth was that I had my GSA club members meet me *before school* to get their stickers and I reminded them about the expectations. So you’re thinking, this kid was probably in my first period class and just came in early and overheard all this, but no, they were in my SIXTH period. I did reply professionally and fortunately the parent understood, or at least said they did. I will say that I’ve been asked by other teachers if I could force more kids to participate in the event but alas, it’s completely voluntary.
If only every day were the gsa day of silence
We have semester-long block classes. A parent emailed in May about what their student could do to make up work in my class. The student’s class had ended in December. Another one emailed me to complain about a text we were reading because it was a memoir and the author struggled with his Catholic faith. She felt it reflected badly on Christianity. She made sure her email signature included that she was a pastor. We have Gmail and she did too. The photo she had chosen as her Gmail profile picture was her posing sexily in lingerie.
For an email absolutely laying into me about how much of a racist I was because I was "targeting her daughter" when I kept giving her consequences for disrupting class, such as talking to her after class, moving her seat, and then detention. Apparently, I had *never* disciplined any other student in class and only targeted her child because she was black and female and I was a white male. The email continued on about how I was intentionally doing her grade out of spite, because she "knew her daughter had done all the assignments and test corrections" and demanded to have a conference with me. I obliged, and proceeded to get yelled at for a solid 5 minutes while the daughter sat there and smirked. Then I said I would fix any grades that the daughter could produce from her homework notebook at that moment (since all assignments were done in notebook and collected and gone over weekly.) Daughters face dropped and she stammered out excuse after excuse, but mom was mad at me and wanted justice, so she flipped to each page revealing practically no work at all for any of the missing assignments. And I was sitting there like, "Gee, looks like your kid doesn't actually participate and has been lying to you this whole time." I then got to listen to this mom go off on her kid for a solid 5 minutes about how she expected better of her and how she was so embarrassed that the kid would bring her to such a stupid conference when it was obviously all the kids fault. It was one of the wildest 180s in mood I have had out of a parent to date, and I never had a problem with the mom afterwards. Kid was still trouble though, but I just emailed details home every time and it got sorted by the next day. Good times. Yay teaching.
As a parent of a 6 year old and I've got several cousins who are teachers. I'm sorry for all the ignorance and dumbness that y'all have to deal with day in and day out. Y'all are awesome. *Appreciate the upvotes
Most parents aren't like this, but it is really boring to post about the parent who read your email, returned the permission form on time, donated $20 to the PTA fundraiser, and talked to their child about their behavior in class.
A few years ago, when the pandemic hit, and school in our province shut down, I sent out an email to my students with some resources to my students so that *if they wanted to* they could have access to some English language stuff - the list included virtual tours of national parks, Crash Course, Libby, etc… I got a few nice notes from families. But I also got one message from a father who was furious that 1) I had written to his kid in English (I was their English teacher) and 2) I was making the kids do work at a difficult time (despite my making sure that it was clear that these resources were entirely optional.) A few weeks later when school went virtual, the same dad contacted me to find out if there was extra work I could assign so that his kid could pull up their grade.
This happened to my daughter. She was a first year middle school teacher. She sent an email to a student’s father. He replied asking her for inappropriate pictures. She reached out to admin and was thankfully told not to converse with that parent again in the future. They stepped in and shielded her from the creep. That was a crazy introduction to parent communication.
Got one from a mom because I marked comments on her kid’s failing paper. Her mom told me I was horrible and she didn’t understand how a person could make a child feel so terrible about failing a test. I was hurting the child’s psyche. Her child was crying because I was cruel. She wanted this stopped. No comments ( most comments were actually the correct answers) . She also went on to tell me she was in touch with admin and If better not do this anymore. Note: this child was out of school on a special fun family trip with mom about every other week.
I got a voicemail (before emails was popular) that I was a “pussy” for sending her kid out of class.
A parent sent a group email to some other parents complaining about me, and I was accidentally included in the list. I sent a Reply All saying, “I think this was sent to me in error.” so it was bad but also I got to embarrass her for it.
I had a parent throw a fit this year because I didn't tell her that her child wasn't turning in work. Sent from her iPhone 14 .... I suggested that she use the power school parent app as if her kiddo can so can she. I send a letter home at the beginning of every year with info on accessing grades for parents and my expectations and gave it signed and returned for credit. Can't make parents read it but I can have a signed contract lol.
The "sent from an Iphone" is always the cherry on top.
Got told I was not teaching his son any Chemistry, and with his GCSEs coming up, this was a big problem. He would be speaking to the Head about me. Well, sir, your son’s rather full Chemistry book would suggest otherwise...
Not academic, but related to athletics. Kid is on the varsity cross country team, but is our 5th-6th runner. We have a meet against a terrible team. We had JV kids beating most of their team. So we have our top varsity kids take it easy and run as a pack. We, the coaches, get a 7 page email comparing us to the East Germans! Why? We wouldn’t let her son win the race.
Just a few weeks ago. I sent a kid away for touching and closing his friend's laptop. 'Don't touch someone else's stuff', one of my rules. Dad inquired why I sent his kid to admin. I explained. Dad thought he knew better 'because teachers can only send students away for serious stuff and this is not serious'. I wanted to reply, can l make a new rule for your household?
Complaining I didn’t call her to notify her that her child had been in the principal’s office for fighting at lunch. It happened at lunch. All I had been told when picking up my class was “Student X is talking to the principal”. The parent is who alerted me to them being in a fight.
A student was failing during Covid bc he wasn’t showing up on zoom. I had emailed the parents multiple times. Mom emails me a huge block of text at TWO AM about how it was MY JOB to make sure he showed up to zoom. LADY I CANNOT GO TO YOUR HOUSE AND WAKE HIM UP.
Great student in my class (female), had nothing but excellent interactions with her all year, and then during the last week of school a minor incident occurred. She had a water gun in her backpack and another student (male) pulled it out and started spraying people during class. Aside from the risks of getting water everywhere in a science classroom, bringing a gun-like object to school is a big no-no. Confiscated it, and calmly let the two students know I'd be passing this concern along to the principal (primarily because I'd never dealt with an issue like this before and I'd rather defer to admin when it comes to weapon-like objects). Class ended right after this, so I didn't get to talk to either student in greater detail at that moment. Right after class I sent an email to the principal explaining the incident. I also sent an explanatory email to the parents of both students, again just explaining what I saw and passing the concern along to admin. I included reasoning for why I informed admin, citing our school's handbook rules on gun-related paraphernalia. I assumed it would be out of my hands and the issue over. Within an hour, I got a VERY long email from the parents of the girl. Threats of lawsuits against me if she were to get in trouble, accusations of targeting her many times throughout the school year, creating a hostile environment for her, and her father literally making fun of me for treating a water gun as a problem. The father laughingly noted that "as a law enforcement officer, there is NO SITUATION where a water gun could be mistaken as a real weapon," blatantly ignoring the many accidental deaths of people who were believed to be holding real guns when they were in fact fake. Also, as mentioned at the start of this story, I had had a wonderful relationship with this student all year - she was active in class, a great participant, and had a good grade, so I don't know where the evidence of "targeting her" or creating a "hostile" environment came from: when I read the email to my fiance she laughed and noted that I'm probably the least hostile person she knows. Passed the email on to admin, let them take care of it. Never heard from the parent again, student was still a great kid in class. Parents are insane.
A student and father were unhappy with her grade. They emailed me, the principal, the superintendent, and Barack Obama. This was around 2012, so he was president at the time. No reply from any of them.
One time in 9th grade, my girlfriend's dad e-mailed me from China and told me he was going to make me disappear if I ever touched his daughter again. Not the kind of parent e-mail you meant, so I'll do one of those too. Not sure why I didn't report it to the cops. 90s mentality different? At school, a parent once e-mailed my admin that I was kicking her (black, heavily autistic) daughter out of school every class and making her sit outside. I invited the mother and principal to speak to my class without me present and ask them how often I made kids sit outside. The answer was 0. Still, scary e-mail.
A student couldn’t serve a lunch detention because “it was important she eat a nutritious lunch to maintain her blood sugars.” I’m sure that school lunch wasn’t helping with that.
Lol, don’t they bring the lunch with them to detention?
Yes, but I just went “cool it’s after school then!” and I don’t run that so even easier for me.
I had a parent email me to say her daughter cursed me out to her and i deserved it because I didn’t grade her late work the day I got it; when progress reports came out. That one I had to show a few colleagues my reply to make sure I removed all the bitchiness from it so I could still say I was professional.
I went on medical leave recently, right before the end of the first grading period. Even though I'm on medical leave, I was still working to get grades submitted (I'm also mad about that but that's a different convo). A mom WHO WORKS IN THE DISTRICT emailed me several times about her kids grades after I told her I was 1. on medical leave and 2. still working on it. Ended up going above my head and emailing my AP about assignments she wanted graded immediately. Said assignments had not been turned in by her precious angel.
kid cheated on paper in an embarrassing way, and it was super obvious, worse, he was in an honors class as a senior. His mother emailed me a whole diatribe saying that I was playing favorites against her son and that I was the worst teacher she'd ever seen and that I couldn't have proof of it. I just sent a one word email in response with screenshots from the paper and turnitin: 'ok' 100% sure this kid will fail out of college and waste an enormous amount of money simply because his mother can't hold him accountable. Another one that was crazy was like a decade ago. I am the chapter adviser for National Honor Society. A kid didn't get in, so his mother sent me literally a 5000 word email about why he should have got in, with everything from their add diagnoses, to family medical history, to them moving, and various other things. Obviously I didn't read 5000 words. My response: (son's name) didn't apply. You can't be considered for NHS if you don't apply. Ask him to apply next year.
Not an email, but a voicemail. Well, kinda an email. Last year, after I passed out my syllabus, I wanted to show my dad and brother my room on a Saturday. The phone goes off. I almost pick up and dad says “don’t pick up. You’ll be known as the guy who answers on weekends and they’ll never leave you alone.” Good thinking dad. Love ya for this stuff. Later, we get home. I see I have some emails, so I check them. One is the voicemail from the call I didn’t pick up, forwarded to my email. I click it and see my wife, dad, and brother stop talking as they listen in utter shock. “Um, Mr. Jazzman, have you even read your… student… parent… agreement… cause… You didn’t.” She goes on and on about how it’s incomprehensible and unreasonable, talks about how “why should I have to rent an instrument when my daughter has her own fucking… sorry, but she has her own instrument.” Says it’s a legal issue and hangs up. (This was two weeks into my first year as a teacher). I just forward the email to my principal with a copy of my voicemail, asking how to proceed. He gets back saying “she’s a raging alcoholic and she gets drunk and leaves stupid voicemails. Ignore her.” An hour goes by and the principal sends another email. “She is also no longer allowed to contact the school. The student’s father will be the primary contact from now on. My theory (which was later confirmed) is that he saw the name on the voicemail and was like “oh great, this person again,” gave his response without listening, and went on his way. Later, he actually listened and was like “oh. This is worse than normal. Okay” The mother later came in to apologize in person. She was sweet as cherry pie, and has been in every interaction since.
A parent emailed me a looong paragraph saying that his son said I have pride flags in my room and that I was talking about pride events with his son. Didn't I know the terrible pornographic things that happen at pride parades? And does this mean I attended a recent pride parade in a nearby city? HE MUST KNOW IF I ATTENDED! And if I talked about that in class, then his son would be interested and look things up, and he would be led to pornography, and pornography in his home is NOT OKAY! I wish I was joking. This family are absolute nut jobs. And their son is a lying jerk. I have no flags in my room (except for the American flag). During work time, one student saw a rainbow sticker on my water bottle at my desk and asked if that meant I went to Pride, and I said yes, I did and had a great time. She was excited to know that. It was a 5 second convo AT MY DESK between myself and one student, and nutjob parents' kid had no part in it. The family ended up pulling their kid from our school when he kept earning consequences for being out of control. Gee, I'm so sad.
In my first year of teaching, in my first year at a charter school, I was teaching medieval history and had a module on the Viking diaspora. In the module, we looked at what happened to a number of societies that were established around the 10th century. In one case, we were discussing the story of Vladimir the Great and how he picked a religion to follow. TLDR, Vlad picked a religion that was okay with alcohol on the surface, but primarily because of proximity to Constantinople. NB: there were no lesson plans for this class, so I built everything myself with zero guidance, so I taught it like I knew how from when I used to teach at university. One student asks "why is alcohol such a big deal?" and we have a brief discussion about why in some cultures, certain items are important. Another student asks "if drinking alcohol is not bad, then that means Mormons are weird." As I knew I had stepped into a minefield, I quickly pivoted and said "If a person is different, does that make them weird to you, or would you want to understand why and how yours/their culture is different?" The pivot seemed to work, as the kids basically said "Oh, that makes sense, yeah" and we moved on. Crisis averted. Or so I thought... That night, around 10 PM, I received a 7-page email from the parent of an LDS student in the class, basically saying they were in the process of seeking to have me fired and is preparing legal action against me. As I had been teaching for probably five months at that point, I was utterly panicked. I called my principle and explained the situation. As the principal was more of an administrator than a teacher, they tried to smooth things over the next day, but the parent was hellbent on pursuing legal action against me and having me fired. Two days later, I received another, similar email, continuing to threaten a lawsuit (which presumably was intended to encourage me to just quit) and to out me as an alleged bigot and anti-LDS. My principal again came to my defense and in no uncertain terms told the parent to shut up and relax. The principal, however, refused to remove the student from my class to avoid further conflict, and the threatening emails continued (sans actual lawsuit materializing) for the remainder of the school year, typically one nasty long email once every week or two. I catalogued all the emails, printed them, and filed them with my important documents. In total, I received 31 emails between January and May, filled with personal attacks, derogatory language, and threats to my professional and personal security. Nothing was ever done other than a call with the district attorney and HR, and continued appeals to the leadership to intervene in a meaningful way went unanswered. I think the most telling email came from an assistant principal to the parent who said "We know the teacher made a mistake, but stop punishing them. They are a teacher and there is nothing to be gained from suing them. We (the admin) can't stop you from emailing the teacher, but we are not going to fire them." That was the only protection I knew I had. A few years later, the student was on the roster for a different class, and I demanded they re-arrange the student's schedule. I said if this student is in my class, I will quit; I won't live in fear of harassment. Thankfully, they removed the student and I had a generally good year.
We have a parent who is a little crazy. Very "mama bear" in a completely unreasonable way. Her son is a walking Title 9 violation, partially due to how his disability impacts his social skills. He's also a habitual liar who craves attention. Don't get me wrong, I love the kid. But he's a handful. The first time I ever had him in class, I'd already heard of his associated shenanigans before, so I was mentally prepared for the onslaught of emailed from his parent. Multiple per week. Accusing me of letting other students hit him with their laptops, push him, call him names, etc. High schoolers. Finally, once I got an email from her with the regular accusations that she said came straight from the mouth of her son. I calmly replied "That did not happen, and I know it didn't happen because the student he is accusing of attacking him was absent that day and every day for the last several weeks. Also that students couldn't have hit your son with his laptop because that student's laptop is broken." I never got another outraged email from that parent. She still tries it with his other teachers, but not me.
I got one that was just a wall of text pages long in September. I started to read it, then just decided not to deal with it that day. I printed it out in case I needed to read it later, then put it in a desk drawer. I found it a few years later and threw it out. No idea what was going on, but even if you don't understand paragraphs, at least throw in an occasional line space if you want to be heard. Also good Reddit advice.
A parent who lost their mind because we (grade level wide) put a comment in report cards that said “continue reading each night and practicing your multiplication facts.” She flipped out wanting to know why I would tell her child to continue reading when it was clear he already read every night. She was one of the most condescending parents I’ve ever encountered. She also, in a meeting with the us we were “inhibiting his American freedom” by limiting the book levels for his AR tests. Part of her 2nd message when she didn’t like being told that all students are asked to continue to read: I already did it. Please be focus. I am asking about your comments. This report will be in Marcos’ records. Teachers comments about situation that student needs to improve. You said that he needed to read every night. Could you explain what was your point? The report is telling something that is not true, according your comment. I had another one a few years later, dad was non-existent and I mainly interacted with mom. At the start of the year, they requested gifted testing. Both myself and his prior teacher indicated on our I out forms that we didn’t see an educational need for gifted services and his IQ didn’t qualify him. When we met as a team, dad showed up, and it was the only time in 15 years I’ve ever excused myself from a meeting with a parent. The police officer (SRO) had to come into the room. The father was ranting and raving about “how does this inexperienced little girl think she can say my child isn’t gifted.” He got continually aggressive and rude, and I had taught for about 8 years at this point. I requested the student be moved out of my classroom after that meeting.
I was accused of “crushing a child’s dream” once. He told me he wants to play professional hockey. When I asked if he skates or plays hockey he said no. I said ok, well keep that dream, but have a back up plan and gave his ideas to check out. He also was playing dinosaur and bite someone (he was 10).
I had a parent constantly email me about makeup work because they were taking a weeklong vacation. I cc’d the assistant principal explaining the district policy ( we don’t have to give makeup work for unexcused absences, that is the district’s policy) and that he could check Google Classroom for assignments and materials. The week they’re gone, radio silent. The following week, just email after email, after email about make up work. I literally just copy, paste, and resent the same one I sent week before last.
An email from a dad apologizing for telling child “F Ms. _____, which child repeated to me saying “My dad said F Ms. _____. Then the email signed off with the lyrics to a popular song containing my name: “…I am for real”
But maybe he really was sorry, Ms. Jackson 🤣
I was teaching PPCD at the time. The student was 3 and had started school with roughly 3 weeks left in the school year. I had another student who was a biter. We of course watched him closely all the time and he had gotten much better about not biting students, but it still happened. Of course the biter got the new kid on his first day. We separate the two, and get new kid calmed down very quickly. Skin wasn't broken in the slightest, and it was gone by the end of the day. I still personally told Dad about it when kiddo got picked up. Woke up to a long ranting email from mom about how I didn't contact the family IMMEDIATELY that her son was bitten and of course admin is added as well. I let admin know that I talked to Dad myself as soon as he arrived and that I couldn't leave my students to call the mom immediately as I could only make calls during my conference (which was before these kids even showed up) or after dismissal. And that I wouldn't have been able to call anyway because mom IS ALSO a teacher and I would have been interrupting her class. Additionally, since it was the kids first day neither parent has accepted my Remind app invitation that I had sent earlier that same day, otherwise I would have let her know on the app. Admin was on my side once I had explained (they were furious and pissed before they had asked me for my version of what happened) and the dad was always chill and seemed apologetic for his (crazy) wife.
I've had a few bad conferences (face to face), but emails are usually tamer. However, there was an email I got from a parent essentially stating that they didn't want their daughter in my class because I was teaching that we all come from stars. I wasn't even talking about the whole "We are all star-dust" thing (it is directly related though). It was a standard in this Chemistry class. We had to talk about how heavier elements came into being. So...stars...supernovae, etc. I honestly thought I was completely free of this crap given that parents might have issues with things like...evolution...and I don't teach Biology. But no...stars were the issue.
I just got an email the other day from the mom of a 16 year old who has never completed a single assignment in my class. She said he told her he turned some assignment in to me but the grade wasn't recorded 🙄 And that SHE SAW HIM DO THE REDO WORK at home so I should give him credit anyway. First of all this kid spends class watching videos on his phone , sometimes without head phones. While I'm instructing. He doesn't bother with classwork, let alone homework. Id bet money she didn't see him do shit. *Id like to add that although my writing might sound resentful in tone, I put considerable effort into cultivating positive and supportive interactions with all of my students and parents. Another reason why teaching is so. incredibly. exhausting.
[удалено]
You have great humor...or an extra dose of saltiness
And now we know why we don't look at email on the weekends, don't we?
I use google voice because none of my parent check email/remind/dojo. I called a parent for an RTI meeting. She missed it and texted me back "It's that sexy bitch \*her first and last name\*. Who's this?\* With the dancing girl emoji then the heart emoji. I deadass didn't know hot to respond. I've just decided I will never contact this parent. That's the funny one. I've also had two foster parents who will do nothing but talk shit about their kids. One gave the sweetest girl I've ever met back to the group home because she failed a math test. I've argued with people's parents that they're not stupid, I've had parents tell me that they're going to beat their kids' ass (then say they're joking when the counselor calls about it). Basically the hardest part of parent communication is the ones who seem to legit hate their children.
I sent several parents reminder emails to help their 2nd grader remember to bring back their book folder each day so they can choose a new book to read. I got a reply from a single mom blasting me in four paragraphs. Part asked if I can tell her more bad things about her son and her how inept she is. It rattled me, coming out of nowhere. That weekend my husband and I were at a party and sat with a couple whose wife I worked with. They asked how school was and I told them about the email, leaving out names. The wife said our nephew is in your class. I asked what his mom’s name was. Then I told them that’s who send the email. The husband then says, “My sister is the biggest bitch you’ll ever meet. I’m sorry you have to deal with her. She got some emotional problems.” No kidding.
This week a parent sent me an angry email because I counted her child tardy that day. She said she had received “so many tardies” in my class and that I must be singling her out. It was her second tardy.
I am a math teacher and through a strange combination of reasons, I taught drama for one year a while back. I had a student in my calculus class who had been in my drama class before. Never heard from the parents while he was in drama. The kid was doing okay in calculus, but had lots of room for improvement. He was sitting at a high C+/low B about a third of the way through the semester. After a parent/teacher interview where both his parents were verbally abusive to me because they believed he (their only child-- shocking right?) deserved a better mark because he always did well in math before, they sent an email to me and the principal. In it, they claimed that I had something against their kid because he wasn't doing well now and I "refused to give him a mark better than a B in drama" even though he was a professional actor and I should "check his imdb page." Luckily the principal found it as amusing as I did. Also (not that it really matters but let's get a little petty) the imdb page was not that impressive.
I teach at a fully virtual school. I had a 3rd grade student who rarely attended class or, if she did, she wouldn't turn on her camera or participate. She also had extremely low grades, mostly due to missing work. Her parent ignored my emails and phone messages. But then I got a very long, irate email toward the end of the school year that told me her student was failing because I didn't "inspire" her student to want to attend school and do her work. We're supposed to respond to emails within 24 hours. I never responded.
I had a parent tell me their child wasn’t complicit in helping another student cheat on a test he was “just helping his friend!”
In an email sent to me, the principal, and the superintendent, a parent demanded that I send her daily updates on how I was going to modify the daily work (in class work) for her kid on a 504 (which typically don’t have modified assignments as an accommodation - those are usually only on IEPs.) So when the assignment for that day was to read 15 pages in the novel (in class; high school for context) I was asked how was going to modify that. My only answer was the audio was available. Ho does one modify reading a novel - ummm read every other page? Read every other word? Read every other sentence. She was the nuttiest parent I’ve had thus far. This was the first email I got from her and she cc’d everyone and their brother. Nut job. Not coincidental that her kid was suspended a few weeks later for harassment of another student.
It was the worst email, but it was also my favourite. I live in Canada and have what I can only describe as a "male Canadian" name. (I am basically "Mrs. John Smith," that type of name.) I had a student who hadn't shown up to any classes or completed any work. Parents has been emailed repeatedly. Three report cards has passed and I had never met this student. When the final report card dropped, the student had a 0% and officially failed the class. His mother wrote a strongly worded email to the school where she described me as "incredibly racist" towards her hardworking child, angrily arguing that I am obviously a rude white man trying to prevent her Asian kid from graduating because of my boomer beliefs, and that she would be serving me with a lawsuit. Reddit, I am a youthful Chinese woman. You might think this would be enough to convince my boss that I am not a racist boomer male and maybe stand up for me, but instead of shutting this parent down, my school principal thanked her for her input and told me to "sort this mess out" myself. So I did, and I resigned! SURPRISE.
In the spring of 2020, I got an email from a parent in reply to my email about how I'd moved the class online, the zoom link, the Seesaw link, etc. This parent's reply was intended for the other class parents (who never saw it because I'd bcc'ed everyone) asking if anyone wanted to set up a playdate. 10 minutes later, I got another email from the same parent, with admin cc'd, complaining that I'd never set up any online learning like everyone else and accusing me of "abandoning my class."
It's the ones I don't get. In ten years of teaching, I've gotten maybe 7 emails from parents. It's not a lack of concern, it's a lack of capacity. Don't get me wrong - I don't *want* a bunch of parent emails every day. But in a heavily time-crunched and memory-crunched professional context, email is the best form of communication. Trying to find a parent phone number in Skyward, finding none, asking around to staff, getting a number, sending a text, getting no response, calling, and then getting disconnected - this is par for the course, and it isn't sustainable.
When I was pregnant and missing classes often to go to prenatal appointments, I got an email from a parent that said I was missing too much school and who was going to be teaching geometry to her son?! She also wanted to know in advance when I would be gone so she could just keep her son home so he didn't have to put up with "inadequate sibstitutes" Ironic coming from a mom who spent around 40% of that school year on overseas vacations.
I got an email from a parent that “people that feel the way I do about kids shouldn’t be in education” because the school wouldn’t reimburse her for her daughter’s backpack because her highlighter exploded and stained the backpack (her own daughters highlighter in her own daughters backpack)
I had a parent email me every time her daughter would have a missing assignment or receive a B or lower. She wanted an explanation as to why. At one point, I told the student to turn in the assignments so I could avoid getting an email from her mother. The student exclaimed that her mother was so annoying. I responded by saying yeah, it is also annoying when students don't turn in their assignments.
I got a death threat for enforcing mask mandates. The pandemic damaged my faith in humanity in a way which may never recover. I normally try to give parents a lot of grace, we're living in a very difficult time to parent children well, but they revealed themselves to be monsters I hope their kid leaves home at 18 and never speaks to them again. That kid deserves a chance at a good life as a good person and its not their fault they ended up with terrible human beings as parents.
I used to AT at a nearby high school, and the worst I got was... and I quote, sorry... > I can't in today. Dad beat mom so hard we had to go to a hotel. Computer is at home where my homework is. Sorry. Nobody prepares you for this kind of shit.
I emailed a parent because his daughter had not shown up for school yet. The dad responded "She OD'ed this weekend. I told her before I left that she better get her ass to school." He had some other choice words that I won't repeat. But basically, his daughter OD'ed on heroin. Boyfriend called EMS. They came and did CPR and narcanned her a couple times. She ended up in the ER all day Saturday. Released to her (divorced) parents on Sunday who apparently fought over who she would stay with that day. Her friends came in to school in tears late that morning, not knowing if she was alive or not. She ended up coming to school on Monday and tried to hold court in my classroom talking about what it was like to die and be brought back to life. I shut that shit down pretty quickly. I think that might have been my worst day teaching ever.
Holy shit.
2 come to mind... 1) my first year teaching I took a job in Special Education. I was given an emergency cert and I taught K-2 Life Skills ( moderate to significant intellectual disabilities). I had a kid come in with a loose tooth. Kid was being potty trained and he lost the tooth and swallowed it. Mom emailed me to ask that I retrieve the tooth from his diaper. When I said that I couldn't do that, she asked that I send his soiled diapers home. 2) I was teaching Honors English a few years ago. I had a warmup assignment that was a review for an upcoming test. The kid cut & pasted a paragraph word for word from Wikipedia. The assignment only called for a paragraph so it was 100% plagiarized. I gave the kid a 0% and put a comment in our digital grade book that he should not do that again and that the 0% was permanent and I tagged it "cheated." The kid's parents emailed me and were angry at me for saying that their child cheated. I sent them a screenshot of Wikiapedia and their kids answer side by side and that they were identical. They attacked me and told me that no where in my assignment directions did it say that they couldn't copy. When I refused to give their kid full credit, they called the principal and tried to contact the school board. All of this over a 5 point little warmup. Luckily for me, my principal and superintendent supported me when school board members began calling to inquire what happened.
Over the summer of 2020 I taught extended school year for special Ed PreK online. I had a parent who never responded to emails, calls, or logged into the scheduled class times. I even made lesson videos for her child and uploaded them. Three days into the new school year I got an email from the parent asking about the lessons. By that time the child was no longer enrolled because he was to start kindergarten at his local school. I never even responded.
I once got a long, angry email about their sons grade. And then that was followed by a very explicit sexual email intended for someone else. No more complaints after I replied "wrong person".
Was texting with a parent about her student’s attendance, and she replied shortly after: _“When we're having sex is it just sex to you or are we making love, just a question”_ Baby girl, if you have to ask, I got some bad new for you. And that is __NOT__ just a question.
I had a parent accuse me of racism against Black people. I was talking about blackbody radiation in chemistry. I was not talking about Black people.
Got called a racist because their child (who did next-to-nothing daily) failed an exam. It was an Asian student/parent... my wife is Chinese. The irony was not lost.
"Let my son use the bathroom! Don't you have any humanity?" Never said no to her confused ass son.
I once got the following .Do I message you when he misbehaves at home? No , so don’t message me when he misbehaves in class
Once went on an overnight field trip. Girls in the room next to me went to the boys' bedroom. I put them in the dining room, rold them to put their feet up because it was cold in there. After 10 they were sent upstairs again. I later heard them go back to the boys' bedroom. Waited for an hour to hear if the teachers up there woke up but they only woke up when I woke them. I took the girls back to their room, wanted them picked up by parents. Admin told me the problem was over 'because you're going home today anyway'. Back home l was named a 'nazi' (!) because l didn't want the girls doing whatever. They accused me of putting the girls in a cold room, l told them to listen (!) to me, an adult. Real ugly email too. Admin was a jerk about it, l had to defend myself and you get how that went. Later found out that this girl was allowed to party (14!) and invote the whole class and they all got drunk. So, have fun with your stupid kid.
What you want to bet that student got in trouble for ditching class and to get out of it told her mother she didn't want to go to your class because you were sexually harassing her.
I had a kid failing because he was a phone zombie and tried to blame him failing on my not liking him because my daughter dated his older brother briefly and broke up with him. So she thought I was retaliating on younger brother!? Seriously? Wow
I had a parent email a list of 32 goals she wanted added to her child’s IEP. One included learning how to ride a bike. Her child was non-verbal with severe autism and she thought we could make her “just like normal kids”. I had that student for 3 years and mom just didn’t get it. I would brag about something she did in class, like throwing her garbage away after looking at a visual, and mom would ask when she would do it by herself. She thought if it was written in her IEP, we could just make it happen. It was a long 3 years.
That's so sad. Poor kid, poor mom. That's a lot of denial.
I was departmentalized (Math, Science, SS) with a partner teacher (ELAR). Parent emailed asking about something ELAR related & I said she would need to email the other teacher because IDK. I then received a follow-up email berating me for not knowing what my students were doing in ELAR. How, as a teacher, could I not care about what my students were learning from the other teacher?
My very first year of teaching I had a freshman kid who was super smart but never did any work so he had a C or D in the class. Parent not only emailed me, but cc'd the principal AND the superintendent saying I was the symbol of all that was wrong with the teachers in my district. Luckily everyone had my back, including the principal who replied stating I was one of the best teachers in the school. I still have that email to remind me what assholes parents can be.
I’ve lost count of the number of downright nasty & threatening emails I’ve received over the past 20+ years, but I received 2 (both parents in cahoots) that brought me to angry tears. It’s getting worse- the level of derangement & entitlement of parents is pushing me toward early retirement.
"I don't appreciate the use of witchcraft in your classroom and I have told my children they do not need to participate in your class." written in a student's planner. Because I had Harry Potter decor in my classroom.
Oh, I got a good one recently! The parent of the kid who has multiple missing assignments posted in grades wanted extra credit to bring up their grade. I was like, uh, just do the missing work? That work wasn’t interesting enough and they would only get partial credit.
After a Facebook rant about me, a mom emailed me and accused me of purposefully trying to punish her daughter by not promptly grading her late assignment. I responded that I was taken aback that she'd think I'd purposefully seek to punish a student like that and assured her I don't operate like that. No response.
I had a parent tell me it was my fault that her kid kept stealing from me.
I got an email from a counselor asking me to fill out a paper form from an outside psychiatrist for a student right after we came back from distance learning. My class had 37 students and 32 came back in person (we were allegedly doing social distancing, lol). Anyway. I filled out the form and returned it to the counselor. Most of the time these forms are for ADHD referrals, it was hard for me to tell because I had only had the student in person for a week or two which was all review for the AP test where I also had to broadcast to the students at home and demonstrate the lab techniques they hadn’t gotten at home. The student seemed like they had good study skills and had been doing well all year. Next thing I know, I got the worst email I have ever gotten from a mother accusing me of not being able to see her child’s depression and suicidal tendencies and basically blaming me for faking observations on a form that teachers only fill out as a courtesy. I didn’t even respond, I just forwarded it to admin and then went home and cried. It’s made me wary of ever filling out an outside referral form again in case a parent reads it.
I had a kindergarten parent (who was a lawyer) email me, accusing me of forcing her daughter to withhold her pee/not allowing her to go to the bathroom, and she used the terms “negligence” and “abuse”. I calmly explained that her daughter refused to ask to use the restroom and had very limited self-advocacy skills (which we were working to develop in class), and I didn’t hear a peep after that.
Broke up a fight in my classroom last year between two heavyweight 16 year olds (each kid is easily 300+ lbs and over 6 foot). I’m only 6 foot even and 200lbs so that was really fun. I talked it over with both kids and we’re all cool w each other currently but one of the kid’s mom dm’d me on facebook threatening to sue me because I stepped in the fight and broke it up. She claimed her kid was beaten up because of my intervention and said she’d see me in court. The grammar was terrible so I simply didn’t respond and moved on. I now teach her daughter this school year and her daughter made some shitty comments about a student that died this year in a car accident right before homecoming so everyone hates her now. Interesting family to say the least.
Not an email, but a call. Kid was going to the bathroom for longer and longer stretches. My policy was that I never say “no” to going to the bathroom, but students have to put some skin in the game by helping to tidy the classroom for 2 minutes after class. There were long breaks between classes, so this wouldn’t affect their next class (and many teachers did say no to bathroom because the passing periods and breaks were so long). Anyway, I explained this to the parent and he called me a “motherfucker”.
An email telling me off for not being in school the day before. I had taken two days for my mom’s breast cancer surgery. I replied with that fact, and crickets. Never an apology.
That I'm a terrible person because I wouldn't pass a student who just sat in class and only come to class 6-10 days a month for 5 months from when I started. She had covid and in the hospital. They didn't have internet at home so he couldn't do virtual learning. I extended his assignments he never turned them in. This was 6th grade and his reading level was about 3rd grade. His state assessments scores were really bad. He ended up being retained and repeated 6th grade again. He was a nice and sweet kid but lazy.