"When Your Child's Teacher Is A Rotten Apple"

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Education Policy and Improving K-12 Education

Sue Schellenbarger who blogs for the Wall Street Journal recently blogged about what to do when your child has a bad teacher.

I found this to be interesting, especially with all the posts here about parent/teacher conflict. In the post the writer reminisces about a time in the life of her family when her daughter had a bad teacher. Looking back, she wonders what/if she could have done differently.

I had a bad teacher in 7th grade and I've hated Science since. This teacher would berate and ridicule me in front of the class and had a serious effect on my self esteem.

How would you handle a bad teacher? Do you think school's are being held accountable for bad hires? Are parents overreacting to their children's complaints? Do better teacher evaluation systems need to be in place?

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Parent Replies to ""When Your Child's Teacher Is A Rotten Apple""

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Everyone has had an experience or two, as it relates to bad teachers. Personally speaking, bad teachers are the reasons why I became a teacher. Now, since I've walked in the shoes of my "hated foe", allow me to stressed that everyone has encountered bullies within their neighborhood - you know, the type who you would like to grab by the hair (regardless of how much is there) and spank their behinds until they actually realize that they have one. There are moments when everyone, anyone, would like to throw the parents of these children in jail just for contributing to the demise of society as a whole. Knowing that all of this is true, remember... You can walk into your house and close the door. Teachers can't do this. Teachers are left to educate the uneducateable, to manage the unmanageable, and to try to maintain some since of maturity due to the immaturity of those that surround them. Children, who grew up into adults, still remember the abuse they encountered from their "bad" teachers, but they don't remember the acts/actions that came from themselves. I call this, "Selected Memory". Sure, there are bad teachers out there, but the question should be, "What or Who facilitated their fall into badness?" Teachers are not employed bad, they learn "bad" from the environment they must manage. A Teacher is only one personality, governing twenty plus. Could you manage the behavior of the kid next door, especially since he/she tends to have a dual personality (one for Mom and one for you). Mom's do side with their child above a stranger, and teachers are strangers... What would you see if you were a teacher? Could you walk out, or into the the classroom and close the door behind you? Leaving the children to themselves? I don't think so...

When your child's teacher is a rotten apple you mostly just have to work hard to get your child through the year with the least damage possible. Unless something extreme happens that you can prove, you're pretty much stuck dealing with the situation. What I have done, and found to be successful, is to make it clear to either the principal or the guidance counselor (in a non-threatening way) that my child has "paid their dues" with whatever the issue was this year and that careful attention needs to be taken with his/her placement for NEXT year.

There is no way to hold schools accountable for bad hires - not in the current scheme of things. It's simply not the culture of schools to take responsibility for it. What is the ladder of accountability in schools? Parents even a group of them can be stonewalled by administration and then there's the School Board.... who usually only take an interest in hiring when they have an unemployed relative.
What do we do in most other spheres of our lives if we're unhappy? If we dislike our physician, we switch doctors. If we find the US Post Service too slow, we use Parcel Post or Fed Ex and pay for it. We often have several hospitals from which to choose or we travel to find a better hospital for our next surgery.
What do we need if we don't like our local school? Charter schools represent an affordable solution but at present there's no other way to register real dissatisfaction as a consumer when it's your public school you're unhappy with. The presence of strong unions and tenure for teachers only complicates the matter further.
I am unaware of teacher evaluation systems but satsifaction surveys given to parents is something every school should be required to do - and the results of those surveys should factor into annual rehiring. Of course some parents are more difficult than others and some children as well but the truth remains - there are bad teachers out there. There are teachers teaching who should never be in authority over young children.

When a child has such a teacher, parents must handle the year and the teacher with kid gloves. Teachers who are abusive in the classroom are not easily changed and certainly don't change overnight. We all can remember such teachers and no parent wants that for their child.

What teacher evaluation systems? You mean the lame little questionnaire the school sends home in April and then you never see the results? How do we verify the results? What were the comments? How did parents feel about particular teachers, curriculum, discipline etc. All I can say is....in your dreams.

I hadn't thought of this in years, but one of the teachers I had in fifth grade allowed other students to pick on me unmercifully.

When I was the narrator of the school play, I was being booed and was afraid to come on stage to take my bow, and he did nothing to stop it. When playing dodgeball, he threw the ball so hard at me, I had a welt on my leg for hours. This guy went on to become a principal, and I can only imagine what a prize he was in that position.

If I ever felt my kids were in that kind of danger, I'd do everything in my power to prevent it. Thankfully my son never had a teacher he couldn't handle, and so far my daughter has had incredible ones.

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