Today was one of those days that you look back on that think "no wonder the burnout rate for teachers is so high."

If I look at the day as a whole and focus on the children, I would say that today was a pretty good one. Book clubs went beautifully, and thank goodness because I had invited the principal to join us (since we can't seem to get her anywhere near the classroom unless she has an engraved invitation). The students were insightful, I was productive, and I even closed the lesson with a reader's response - which I've been slowly trying to incorporate to get them to practice quality writing (believe me, they need it!). I gave a math test, and there were very few questions, and not nearly as many pained faces as the last test I gave. They asked great questions in science - a few that were more advanced than my knowledge (aka, my ultimate fear as a science teacher, and something that occurs far too often).

But the problem was that today I was not able to focus on the children. Today was taken away from me by a parent.

You see, I have this kid in my room who is a worrier. He's got anxiety as a fifth grader. And supposedly it's anxiety that is crippling - like tantrum style, can't function. But the kid I see in class is composed, involved, participatory, and productive.

His mother, on the other hand, displays far more of these symptoms of anxiety than her son. There have been several (yes, several, and we have only had 7 weeks of school) incidents this year in which I have received a phone call (or multiple phone calls!!!) during the school day that I have stopped teaching in order to answer to listen to this parent tell me that her child is very upset, worried that I'm going to be mad, trying desperately to get him to calm down and "our priority is to get him to school" and "he's so worried that this will affect his grade."

Now, the only information I ever received about this child was from his mother. We talked before the year started about his anxiety and that sometimes he gets worried about things. I explained my personal experience with anxiety in school, thinking that this was a totally normal part of being a type A personality. Well now that I'm 7 weeks in, I'm finding out that mom totally downplayed the issue. Apparently this child has been diagnosed by a doctor as having anxiety and he is on medication that is being tweaked. But did his mother tell me any of this so I could make appropriate accomodations and provide him tools to be more successful? NO NO NO NO NO. In fact, she STILL HASN'T SAID A DAMN WORD TO ME!!


I am going to stop writing about this because it has raised my blood pressure. But I have to say that as a teacher, if anyone is going to make me feel like I want to cry before 7:45 in the morning, it should not be a parent. I have teacher friends that are dealing with children that make them cry, but I am not allowed to focus on the kids in my room because of the selfishness of one parent. There is so much more to this story. I could probably tell it over a period of hours. But seriously.

Seriously.