School Flashbacks

Warning: Heavy use of italics for emphasis—even though I know better—follows:

School has been in session for a month now, and I’m glad I’m no longer in the classroom. I taught for way too long before I took early retirement, and I don’t miss all the hassles. During the last few years, when I taught at a middle school that now no longer exists, one hassle was that some parents became increasingly controlling and—God help us—involved.

For instance—a year before I retired, I remember one, uh, concerned parent who requested a conference of all of her 6th-grade son’s teachers because she was so worried about his progress (Note: he was the best student in my 9-week elective—he never started fights, threw chairs, cussed or jumped off the tables as some of his classmates did). At the after-school conference, she kept us in the teacher's lounge until well after five o’clock while she went on about how she tried to help her child by—I swear I am not making this up!—color-coding everything at home, plus all his school materials.

I’m sure she wanted to impress his teachers about what a good micro-managing mother she was. (I regret that I did not tell this mother what I really thought of her, but it was hard to get a word in edgewise.) Finally the principal, noticing how all us teachers were fidgeting, told the mother that we really had to leave. Or something.

I regret that our school did not have the following message on the answering machine that a school in Queensland, Australia, allegedly had. I don’t think our school even had an answering machine, although this was the mid-90s (we did have a fax and we were beginning to use email—at least until a backhoe working on the baseball field cut the school's DSL line and took us off the Internet).



A former junior high student of mine (whose mother was, as far as I can remember, normal) posted a link on Facebook to the above video. It was too good not to re-post here.

Even though it gave me flashbacks.

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