The Devil's in the Details ...

As any teacher in the trenches will tell you, it’s not the big “what novel am I going to teach that best represents American Romanticism” decisions that are the most stressful ones to make. The hardest decisions – and the ones that most often come back to haunt you – are the seemingly insignificant ones. Those seemingly little “YES” or “NO” decisions on late work, accepting missing assignments, letting a student re-do a plagiarized paper, giving half credit or no credit, letting the summer reading assignment slide – or hold them to it – all those “insignificant” decisions add up. They set the tone. They are the line drawn in the sand that lets the student – and the parent know – just how far you will go. Just how much they can get away with. And, God forbid, you let ONE kid off the hook and not another. The “should I let this kid turn in his homework late, or not” questions that could have tremendous impact later on – and by “tremendous impact” I’m not talking about a decision of ours affecting a student’s grade – I’m talking about the dreaded “PC” – PARENT CONFERENCE. A dirty little not so secret about teachers is that, while we like your kids. (In fact, we usually love your kids), we don’t always like YOU parents. And we HATE the Parent Conference. The biggest reason is that it’s the parents who give us the most grief.

Of course, there are those – mature individuals who recognize us as professionals and treat us as such – those parents who wouldn’t dare to question our education, experience or motives* any more than they would question their child’s pediatrician. However, those parents – those angels sent from heaven - are as few and far between as the Lions winning a Super Bowl. Ok. Maybe not that rare. You get the picture. Oh how we love those parents who never bother us with “If you don’t let me child turn this assignment in 2 months late, he will lose his standing as Valedictorian” emails*, or phone calls accusing us of changing grades because a coach begged us to* or those “Let’s just see what your principal/superintendent/board member thinks about your decision”* discussions.

Another thing we hate about the Parent Conference – is that it wastes our precious time. If there’s one thing lacking in a teacher’s life, it’s time. Parent conferences usually are given on our prep periods – which, in my case, only come around every other day. Given we have a million papers to copy, papers to grade, lessons to plan, change or modify, our prep periods can fly by in a minute even without sitting in meetings where we find we have to defend our decisions. Those dreaded, little, “it didn’t matter at the time” decisions that we find out, later, too late, made all the difference in the world to that parent. They say “the Devil’s in the details” but when it comes to those of us in the teaching trenches, the Devil is actually in the decisions. ***Indicate all situations, accusations, emails, phone calls and parent conferences I have actually had.