What Made Sense After Meeting A Students Parents? (Teacher Stories r/AskReddit)

teachers of Reddit what clicked about a pupil after meeting their parents student teaching for high school seniors and juniors I had this guy that was a shady eighty no specific problems just very low intelligence but this guy worked his ass off never a late assignment did all extra credit that was offered made flashcards for like every test and quiz even though I never said to model student just had low test scores if it was an assignment that could be done with time and effort he did it unfortunately tests aren't like that and that's where he had the most problems back-to-school night comes along and I meet his dad and Co in the Marines courteous well-spoken and completely knowledgeable about all of his son's upcoming assignments and grades totally made sense kid is getting through with hard work and dedication and pulling off a B average amazing what support from parents can do in most cases a kid like this would probably be failing most of his classes had an eighth grade student great kid 100% responsible academically talented and would always speak and short clip sentences and look like he was a frightened dear about to belt had a conference with him and his parents together in which the kid was supposed to be leading the conference reflecting on his growth and identifying his challenges every time the kid opened his mouth to say something he'd get halfway through the sentence and mom would finish it for him poor kid was always trying to get ideas out quickly so he wouldn't be interrupted I had a second grade student who was constantly getting into pretty serious physical altercations with others stabbing kids with pencils slapping girls across the face etc the first time I met his mom was when she came up to the school threatening to choke me because I said her son couldn't come on a field trip to the pumpkin patch because he was too violent not a teacher but I do volunteer work for a program designed to help students who are habitually truant had one middle schooler who was super bright genuinely seemed to love school got great grades but was absent about half the time he was very evasive about why he wasn't coming to class and I honestly did and put him high on my because he was doing fine even with the mr. days when I was finally able to get a social worker to go by his house it turned out his single mother was having seizures and didn't have any health care so she couldn't get treatment for them and the kid was staying home to take care of both her and his younger brother I felt just terrible for the kid having to be so adult while still in middle school these children there were three of them were known for being difficult at the after-school care I worked in the eldest fifth grade would refuse to listen to us he would often kick other children provoke them by grabbing them and pulling them in clothes or just acts out in a way that was verbally abusive when we asked him to stop he would respond with screw-you the middle third grade struggled to pay attention for more than five minutes and often picked on other kids by intentionally stirring them up and spreading rumors the youngest kindergarten was six but still not entirely toilet trained and had to repeat kindergarten because she wasn't at normal developmental or social levels but one afternoon the eldest is in a pretty good mood because I'm curious I asked and he announces proudly dad is picking me up early at 4 p.m. because we are going to see a movie this afternoon this is awesome because the three kids are always last to be picked up but 4 p.m. comes and goes and there's no sign of dad 4:30 p.m. 5 p.m. 6 p.m. 6:30 p.m. it's closing time we get a call from dad I'm sorry I got caught up it's almost 7 p.m. before dad arrives as the kids grab their bags he tries to explain to me but he's sort of all over the place some actual quotes from our conversation don't tell the kids but I'm so gone right now I stayed back with some mates and had some drinks investment-banking is stressful say you look forward to Friday so you'd be what 20 now what's a young pretty thing like you doing working so late on a Friday night he offers to slip some cash to me and my coworker for the extra time my mate is driving us home I only trust some of my mates with the new Porsche the the coffin was when eldest asked dad I thought you said we were going to see that movie tonight to which he replies simply oh yes sorry mate I forgot and at that moment I realized that these kids were being told over and over and over you don't really matter that much to me I was a teacher in a deaf school for many years kids lived on campus as well I would take the kids home for visits on weekends one kid was a major behavior problem and always screamed and yelled and broke things and was just generally all-around disruptive we got along better than most staff did so I volunteered to took him home one weekend he missed his van when I got to his house none of his family members even looked at him he was a teenager by this point freaking family never took the time to learn sign language yet all his problems made a lot of sense to me at that point not a teacher but a youth worker sibling group all speak as if they are deaf accent incorrect emphasis excluded sounds and exhibit rash impulsive behavior high instances of school refusal but polite ambitious aspirational popular and well-dressed turns out mum had an intellectual disability and was a drug addict so all three kids had IDs and possibly FASD but grandma was a drug dealer so they always had loads of money for clothes and food and drugs kids had just learned to speak like that based on their mum's speech which was affected by her constant drug use when I was student teaching second grade there was a little boy in the class who was just a genuinely friendly and sweet kid he struggled a little academically when it came to learning to read and his handwriting had some problems but he was the hardest worker and never got frustrated or thought that he was stupid like many other students with those difficulties due he was well liked by everyone and didn't have a mean bone in his body and he was extremely well adjusted despite the fact that his parents were divorced I ended up meeting both parents separately during field trips both parents are extremely involved in his life and put him ahead of any of their problems they have with each other they genuinely want what's best for him and it shows the dad takes him out to the sports bar his night where they share root beer which I thought was really cool both parents genuinely are awesome people with great attitudes and it definitely shows in their kid when I was student teaching I had a student who seemed to have textbook fetal alcohol syndrome then one day I saw her with her mother at Target and I recognized her mother as one of the longtime regulars that says chronic alcoholics at a bar I worked at in college the whole thing made sense and it was very sad college freshman was constantly late didn't earn working on time or at all etc she had an excuse for every single thing I wasn't even asking she just volunteered excuses after getting a D in my class which was frankly a bit generous as her actual grade was a high F her mother called me I wasn't allowed to discuss a student's performance with anyone including their parents and I told her as much her mother then unprompted gave me a long string of excuses for her daughter end oddly herself I kind of thought all that makes sense now obviously an extreme example here but I had a student an eighth grader who was quiet to the point of absolute silence but who did extraordinarily well with the written word a few times he showed up with bruises which I naturally reported but he was adamant that they were from other students surprisingly his parents came in for PTC and seemed relatively normal until he went to speak for himself and I saw his father grip his arms so tightly that it left a mark I understood immediately that his parents basically didn't let him speak at all for fear of reprisal a few weeks afterwards the kid stopped showing up to school and word eventually got around that he got caught up in a REM lab explosion in his parents house and was covered head-to-toe and second and third degree burns he came back a month or so later covered in bandages he couldn't move right or really do anything without excruciating pain I'd never cried so hard as I did that day my wife called the students parents to talk about the kids wearing all the time and general bad attitude after explaining to the mum why she was calling I told that goddamn kid a million frickin times to watch his frickin mouth Jesus Christ wait till his frickin daddy gets home this one broke my heart and it's something I still think about from time to time just a few months into my first year several fifth grade students were sent home for lice one was a small blonde girl named Gina was fairly quiet and shy her clothes were always somewhat unkempt and had a strong cigarette smoke odor she very rarely completed her homework and hated answering questions in class however she was kind attentive and performed well on her in-class assignments we had another round off head checking about a week after the first one and found that gene still had lice caught lice again she was sent home with a call to the parents letting them know the next day she walked into the classroom with a shaved head her parents shaved her hair off so that they did not have to deal with the lice again she cried when I asked her about it I felt horrible for her fifth graders a tough place to be when you have something that is obviously different about you that other kids can pick on I could not grow her hair back for her but I did buy her a cute hat that I allowed her wear in my class if she wanted it seemed to help when I met her parents shortly after they showed up with three younger kids that looked about a year apart with the same shaved haircut as Jane the parents smelled like cigarette smoke and pet urine odor and I could hear them cursing at their kids in the hallway before I even saw them a girl in my seventh grade class was really bright it almost never turned in her homework so she just skated by on test scores one time I commended her for helping another student who didn't understand the assignment only to realize that night that she didn't do her own I called her parents in and quickly realized they're the type that have an answer for everything and were all too quick to put the responsibility on me as if I should stand over their daughter to make sure she works I turned to ask the girl once she thought since she had been completely quiet and parents began to answer for her again I put my finger index up and said no you've had your turn I want to hear what she thinks about all this well she apparently really appreciated that because she went on for about 30 minutes about all her views on education at the end I kept her parents quiet and told her that if she's willing to talk such a big game she needs to back it up and do the work without her parents or me interfering she didn't miss another assignment all year proud teacher moment I have a student who is really friendly really smart and amazing at English I am an ESL teacher abroad she is always really friendly to me and always really hard-working she constantly helps other kids in class who struggle with the material and overall just a great girl but I met her dad once at a school event and holy goodness was this guy awesome he was a really genuine and generous character and even invited me to get to know different parts of the city with his family I could definitely tell they had a close bond and that he had raised her really well just an example of good people raising other good people kindergarten teacher here had a student who would much rather sing everything than talk and she was happiest just spinning around in circles and singing met her parents band teacher and a dance instructor such a sweet and happy family my best friend is a teacher he told about this one kid's parents he met the kid was insanely smart genius level he would finish his work and just play on his phone or talk to friends but he had zero homework turning rate my friend requested to meet his parents ended up finding out that his father would beat him repeatedly and the kid would never truly go home but rather take up working instead of being home with his father it was sad because the kid admitted that he was capable of doing his homework but he was too scared and just didn't after all to face his dad apparently later the kid came back to meet a couple teachers and rolled up in a BMW i8 I guess he made it out somewhere this is from back when I was doing my student teaching there was a girl in one of my classes that never did any work in class and in her homework late and would ignore huge projects until literally the last minute and then asked to come and for help every day at lunch after school to make up for the missing work eventually I caught her cheating on a quiz I took her quiz gave her a zero and told her that cheating wasn't allowed about a week later we had parent-teacher conferences the girl came with her mother who took out every assignment that had been graded and handed back and proceeded to argue with me over individual points things along the lines of well she spelled it all right so that deserves some credit right or she circled the right answer so she should still get some credit when that right answer had been crossed off and then another answer had been selected this took nearly an hour to go through finally the mother brought up the quiz and I told her about the cheating the mom said well you should give her some credit on it she was pretty clever to think of that trick from then on I made sure to schedule meetings with myself my mentor teacher and the principal present clearly it wasn't that clever since she got caught I was telling the parent that their child was generally inattentive he would look around fidget and just nod along smiling when I knew had hadn't been listening as I was consulting my notes I looked up to see the parent looking around the room bouncing their leg as soon as they realized that I was done talking they nodded and smiled not a teacher but a student in kindergarten we had this kid who was really odd and smelled funny but he seemed cool so we would hang out at recess I had a birthday party and it was only supposed to last maybe a few hours all of the kids but him went home fairly early but it was really late and his parents still hadn't showed up I was getting tired and wanted to go to bed so my parents set up some blankets for us in the living room and we had a sleepover at 2 a and his parents finally show up after multiple calls with no answer instantly I realized what was up even as a small child I knew these parents were the definition of white trash they wreaked of alcohol my mom's side of the family is full of alcoholics so I knew what it smelled like they also told some story about how they had new tires of the car and the speedometer showed the wrong speed and they got pulled over and some other BS it all clicked why he acted so odd and why he smelled it was cigarette smoke at the start of first grade he never showed up and then like a month into the year he was there for a few days then randomly in third grade he showed back up again for a few weeks I never saw him again after that I looked him up on Facebook awhile back and it looks like he is following in his parents footsteps falling into every white-trash stereotype I asked my parents about this kid awhile ago and they said that the reason he wasn't with us in school for a few years is that he got taken away by Child Protective Services which my mom called then he came back the few times because that's where his parents got him back but he was taken away again and that's why he left us I feel bad for the kid because at first he was really nice but over time as I saw him again he became more mean and rude such crappy parents one of my students is safe playing he won't try any new ideas while doing maths and would frequently look after applying some formulas I used to think that he genuinely is less creative than others it's at times particularly when playing games he would show bursts of real brilliance when I met his mother it clicked why the mother burst into tears saying she was afraid what would happen if the child would fail she really desperately wanted him to succeed and because of this desire has all but sealed closed his chances of success he is so afraid of failure that he doesn't even try had a kid that you looked at and it was very much a lights are on but nobody's home sort of feeling I teach high school so sometimes that's just the phase they're in but this one was basically living perpetually in that mode kid has an IEP individualized educational plan which is a legal special education doc I can't reveal what was in there but it was suffice to say generic so it feels like there are pieces missing days go on this kid is the gold standard of something is up completely illegible handwriting to the point it doesn't resemble writing you asked about what we are doing in class and the answer is so random and off task that if a kid didn't look and act fairly childlike for their age II would assume hardcore drug use with this kid anything had Ralph Wiggum jeans and didn't know what drugs were a mom comes to back-to-school night which is supposed to be five minutes with the class of parents I nice how do you do and everyone moves on she corners me immediately starts telling me about her concerns that I don't fully appreciate her miracle baby who was mute until eight didn't walk until four walked backwards first and had an IQ of about sixty they told how this kid would never make it in school and didn't I think you just couldn't tell anything was ever delayed because this is a miracle that's why she blocked all mention of those conditions from the documents because people would never guess otherwise miracle when the word miracle comes up from a parent's it always explains a lot you found my secret gold stats gold for me and you can have some maybe if you are new to the channel you can subscribe I publish new videos every day until then check another video or don't either way have a great day you magnificent people

Channel: On Tap Studios

Views: 1,053,919

Rating: 4.9345679 out of 5

Keywords: #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, sub, reddit cringe, memes, comment awards, dankify, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, chill, story, stories, reddit on tap, Teacher Stories, teacher, teachers, school, college, parents, clicked

Id: QV5p-MexNsQ

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019