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I teach physics, and in the past math as well, at the college level - usually as an adjunct. Try dealing with the crappy comments when you are working your butt off and barely even getting paid. I have learned to take the bad comments with a sense of humor, even hanging one of them on my office wall one year. I would hate having to deal with parents as well as students.</p>
<p>Hang in there. There are always going to be parents who don’t hold their own children to the same standards as they hold teachers and coaches. You cannot let this get to you. As mentioned above, teaching requires a thick skin sometimes. If your administrators support you, you can assume that your classroom practices were professionally appropriate, and the parents are reacting against the possibility that little genius isn’t so brilliant and hardworking after all. There are some parents who will literally do anything to avoid confronting this fact. Don’t let it get to you. Many people are completely irrational when it comes to their own children and you cannot let it affect your teaching practice or morale. Your primary obligation is to all students under your charge, not just the ones with loudmouthed insecure parents. The very fact that you are distressed about this situation indicates that you are not unreasonable or dictatorial in your expectations. Remember, we’re talking about AP, not basic level proficiency. If they can’t take the heat, get out.</p>
<p>I am sorry that you are dealing with potential social fallout with your D, but I do not think that resigning midyear would be helpful. Finish out your contract. I think you will find that this contretemps will blow over. That said, it can be very difficult to teach in the same school/district as your children attend. You are not teaching your own child, I presume (I can’t think of a district that would allow this).</p>
<p>She said her D was in the class.</p>
<p>I am wondering why your D would hear people complaining about you as she left class and be subjected to widespread bullying. Is it a matter of having a few bad apples this year? Surely you are not universally disliked on a personal level…you said kids last year liked you.</p>
<p>Is her D taking the same course in another section, or is she in her mother’s section? Most schools won’t permit parents to teach their own children directly. The conflict of interest is too great. If OP is teaching her own child, that should stop immediately.</p>
<p>Some schools don’t have a choice… my D went to a school small enough that there was only one Chemistry teacher. Her D was in my kid’s class. No issues that I am aware of in that situation, though.</p>
<p>I encourage you to think first of your future career, and decide if breaking your contract will cause you harm on down the road.</p>
<p>Secondly, think about your daughter, and what she is having to put up with at school now. If you leave, how will that affect her? I would get her input on the situation. Would she like to leave the school midyear also?</p>
<p>Not sure if you can complain about the comments your daughter is dealing with, whether they constitute harassment or not?</p>
<p>If you have indeed found a new job, with better pay, and you believe your daughter can handle the fallout from your leaving, I say “go for it” and don’t look back. (I personally vote for taking the daughter out of the school also, but of course I don’t know all the details.)</p>
<p>Best of luck to you!</p>
<p>Three parent complaints and hours of backlash from the students mean something is wrong in the class that can’t be explained by wonderful teaching and high standards.</p>
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<p>Thank you all again for the support. To answer the questions, yes, I do teach my own daughter, and yes, that is a big part of the problem, and no, it isn’t fixable. This is a very competitive class, and rank is important. (Many of the students have maxed out on their AP classes, and only take three classes in a six period day to avoid the GPA “penalty” for taking a regular or honors class.)</p>
<p>I mistakenly believed that I had developed transparent grading policies and communicated enough to allay concerns. (Website, Remind texts, weekly emails, PowerSchool notes, etc.) But, when the other AP classes don’t put in grades for actual work (one has two grades - one for syllabus return - for the semester which ends in five weeks) it makes it seen like I am gunning for their children. </p>
<p>I’m taking a mental health day today, and have an appointment with my principal this afternoon. I’m still not sure what I’m going to say.</p>
<p>Hang in there and try to keep an open mind. If it were me, I think I’d address the teaching and classroom/parent issues first, see how those shake out and then stir the issues with daughter in, knowing that they may ultimately impact what I choose to do, but wanting to take a clean look at career issues. </p>
<p>Curious that in one post you mention receiving supportive emails from other parents and wonder about the context. Are the malcontents attempting to rally others? How are the supportive parents aware of the dilemma? This may provide relevant info as to how to address the problems. Wish you the best. </p>
<p>It’s a small town. 
“Rallying” is perhaps you strong a word, but in the internet age, everyone is connected. One kid writes, “My parents are going to tell her how unfair she is” and there is a chorus. It spreads.</p>
<p>Also, have you changed your teaching methods this year, or is this what you’ve done for many years? (Or, are you a new teacher this year?)</p>
<p>I’m getting an idea why the teachers and admins at my daughters prep school seemed to appreciate me so much.
I never confronted them about any of her grades, although there were regular conferences. It was definitely an " elite" school, so. I imagine there were several parents who demanded special treatment.
I did attend class once when she was in high school and she was complaining about the teacher, but I thought he was amazing and I wished I had teachers like that in high school.</p>
<p>Neither of the high schools that my daughters attended weighted grades, and the private school didn’t rank. I don’t believe that they needed to, their reputation speaks for itself.</p>
<p>Are you new to the school?
If you significantly have increased the AP pass rate, it sounds like you are an improvement over the last teacher regardless of what the parents say.
But if your daughters are being bullied, I would do what I had to to make that stop.</p>
<p>^^ Parents don’t seem to understand what you clearly do. My door is always open - last year, I taught Beowulf in the afternoons to a group of parents that felt it was “too hard”. After four sessions, they stopped complaining, and got on board. I meet parents when they can meet, which is often at 6 or 7 pm, when my day starts at 6:15, and ends at 2. I invite parents to class - they are welcome. I encourage parent meetings. I give parents my cell phone number at the beginning of the year.</p>
<p>Parents have an absolute right to see what goes on in the classroom, and to understand how their students are assessed, and to be given the information and tools to help their kids maximize their potential. They don’t have a right to personally attack teachers, IMHO. While I understand that my measly $32,000 income devalues me in the eyes of parents who only value economic success, it doesn’t make me less of a person.</p>
<p>Apologies for venting - feeling uncharacteristically sorry for myself.</p>
<p>I’m glad you’re meeting with your principal. That should give you important feedback.</p>
<p>Sakacar, you have my sympathies. I gave up teaching ten years ago. Not because of parents–my time was needed elsewhere. I taught HS chemistry and I had very high standards. For many of my students, the B they earned in my class was the first (and sometimes the only) B they earned in high school. It sent some of them into the deepest troughs of despair. Seriously. </p>
<p>The newer paradigms of education teach that As are only about hard work and complying with the teacher’s expectations. The idea that a student can work very hard and nonetheless not be able to earn an A comes very hard to many students and many parents. And yet… not everyone can understand chemistry in just one quarter or one semester, and not everyone will write a wonderful essay on their first or third or thirtieth try. </p>
<p>When parents told me that my class was too hard, I liked to point to my tutorial hours (an hour a week I provided free to the school) and to the fact that some of the students who were doing very well (and some of those are now professional scientists) were doing poorly in other subjects. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>Read this book: <a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Basement-Ivory-Tower-Truth-College-ebook/dp/B004H4XCP0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415639876&sr=1-1&keywords=education+community+college+Professor+X”>http://www.amazon.com/Basement-Ivory-Tower-Truth-College-ebook/dp/B004H4XCP0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415639876&sr=1-1&keywords=education+community+college+Professor+X</a></p>
<p>The fellow’s point is that not everyone should be in college.</p>
<p>IIRC, he also discusses the morals of what grade to give if someone has gone from writing a completely inept, incomprehensible essay with misspellings and no complete sentences or thoughts to writing one that at least has paragraphs and sentences. Do you give an A for effort? Do you just recognize the improvement by bringing the F up to a D? It’s an interesting question.</p>
<p>^ Sounds like the story of my life.</p>
<p>It sounds as if you are actually providing MORE information on an ongoing basis than other AP teachers, therefore these parents and kids make you the focus of all of their anxiety and hostility. You are the only teacher who is providing a target for them to swing at.</p>
<p>BTW, a group of parents actually complained that Beowulf was “too hard”? What kind of idiots are these people? The appropriate response of the school, IMHO, should be “Not every student is suited to studying English literature at the AP level.”</p>
<p>And it seems clear that a large part of the problem is the school’s grade-weighting and ranking system. Students taking on 3 courses because if they sign up for a non-AP subject they will be PUNISHED for learning more? Ridiculous. This is precisely why many good schools simply do away with ranking. </p>
<p>I don’t give A’s for effort. However, I do believe there needs to be (in this school, particularly) a mix of grades - hard work/consistent work should count for something. Not every student comes in with the same level of preparation, and not every student will leave with the same level of mastery.</p>
<p>I teach “regular” English, too, which is more difficult. Kids in those classes range from the third percentile to the ninety-eighth percentile on standardized, nationally-normed tests. Progress for kid A looks very different from progress for kid B. But, they all have to move forward, and do so without feeling despair or losing motivation.</p>
<p>AP classes are different in that there is an expected outcome, and a clear measure of performance. Taking the class is a choice. I feel like it is my moral obligation to grade objectively, because these kids are going from a small pond into the ocean, and if they have never been graded objectively, what happens when they earn that B (or worse) in college? I do allow students to work hard enough for a B-, when they are honestly C- students in aptitude. These kids are going to state schools, which are not the University of Michigan or UVA, where their work will be “good enough”. There is institutional pressure to do this, because I live in an open enrollment state, and unless we keep the parents happy, we’ll lose students (and money).</p>
<p>Beowulf was in regular Brit Lit. The other teacher just has them watch that fine film with Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mom. </p>