It’s pronounced ‘Illinoise,” argued one of my favorite students in the eighth-grade history class I was the permanent substitute for (permanent substitutes fill in for one teacher or course, they need to have a degree and are paid more. The term is generally at least four weeks but can be as long as an entire school year).
We went back and forth, with him insisting that the state was indeed pronounced Illinoise. My final Uno card to win this argument, the ‘Oh, I’m finna hurt ‘em with this one!?’ was when I asked, “Wanna know how I know how to pronounce it???…’cause I was born there!”
GOT ‘EM,” I chuckled to myself.
Just seconds later, my glee turned into pity and even irritation when I heard, “nuh-uh Miss Lacey, you said you was born in Chicago.” That was an eighth-grade class and one of my two advanced blocks. I wish I could say that was the day that I was scared for the future, but I actually think it was a few years prior when I was teaching seniors what an adverb was. Recently, someone spoke on social media about how so many children are reading well below grade level and how it only seems to be getting worse, and while there are so many fingers to point in the discussion, one culprit to blame that rarely gets enough smoke for students falling behind are their parents.
Way too many parents have bullied school boards into making sure their child has special treatment. One Twitter user even showed screenshots of her mother going to the school board to complain that her daughter was not able to get DoorDash at school.
WHAT? Because a random person bringing a high schooler food isn’t remotely problematic, right?
In Fulton County, GA, teachers are required to give students at least 50% and sometimes as high as 60% if they do so much as simply write their names and attempt one question. That’s it. Answering one question—not even correctly, I might add. A student getting the wrong answer has earned half the equivalent of work as a student who got 100%. Some children need more time than others, but penalizing the students who do work hard by supplementing the grades of the students who don’t, rewards the students who are not doing well more than it rewards the students who are. This was instituted because parents were complaining about their child not being elevated to the next grade level.
There is no way that your child is consistently taking home failing grades and you do not know about it.
This is not an indictment on children with special requirements at all, but there are many students who do not have to be but are so far behind that their effort seems too daunting and they end up interrupting the rest of the class. Their lack of understanding creates a distraction for the teacher and for other students. So many parents are afraid of the stigma of having their child in a class dedicated to specialized learning that they keep their child floating along—drifting further and further away from where they should be academically.
They weren’t before covid either. In Georgia if a child writes their name and ATTEMPTS to answer one question they at least get a 50, some schools a 60. https://t.co/hsKlRkD60W
— 40 year old Virginia Slims (@Kyla_Lacey) September 20, 2023
School boards are generally made up of locally elected individuals and, therefore, are at the mercy of enraged parents. If we even look at the other side of the spectrum, we see how many white parents are ruining education for other students because they do not want history to be properly taught to their children. That reduction of information affects students inside and outside of their district because many parents have taken their complaints to the state level. Ask any teacher and they will tell you how the parent who did not show up to the open house is also the parent who is the least likely to respond to initiated correspondence by the teacher but the first to send a rude text message or call the principal when they are not pleased with something that has happened to their child.
Teachers are leaving education in droves and some of the reasons they share are bureaucracy and the lack of support by the administration, student behavior, and, of course, compensation, with as many as 50% of teachers leaving within the first five years.
Parents absolutely are the conductors of their children’s education, and that’s not simply by driving them to school. While these same parents are complaining about their school’s curriculum, we saw how terribly ineffective many of them were as interim educators during the pandemic. Hell, the ubiquitous use of “your” as “you’re” in adults should tell you that they are not equipped to be educators but somehow, they are going to dictate how education should be handled.
When you are more concerned with why your child’s teacher took their phone instead of why your child had their phone out, you are the problem.
If you are not actively supporting your children’s teachers by at least being responsive to communication and helping your child focus and helping with their coursework, you may not be their school teacher but you’ve definitely failed them.
Your kid is not doing well in school because you cussed Miss Johnson out for taking away your kid’s cellphone.
— 40 year old Virginia Slims (@Kyla_Lacey) September 21, 2023
