The teacher is a witch! Deal with it!

When my children were in the nice little Montessori Charter school I could call the school anytime about anything. I could go right up there and say my bit, complain, call someone out and protect my child. By the way I loved all of the teachers there.

Now they’re in high school. I don’t even know what most of their teachers look like unless I check a yearbook. We’re in the big league now. That means the kids now have to take care of their own problems. I can’t go up to school and drain the blood out of a teacher just because my kids think she is a bitch. They have to deal with it themselves.

And no, I am not being harsh. First of all they would DIE a thousand deaths if I called the school and complained about anything. Second I owe it to them to force them to learn how to deal with problem people.

Problem teachers include those who have pets, those who have bad tempers, those who can’t teach, those who don’t know their subject, those who are openly hostile and most of all those who don’t listen.

Fortunately 97% of teachers are GREAT teachers. But….

Garrett who is a senior has the school thing down. Plus all of his teaches are pretty awesome. He is a senior and then add to that mix that he is smart, charming and good-looking. He is also sort of goofy and  awkward in an endearing way. There was once coach who had an issue with Garrets hypersensitivity to the sun, but they worked it out. I didn’t go up to the school, my son worked it out.

Yesterday Clara told me that two of her teachers were horrible. That left 4 outstanding teachers. On a good note one of the horrible teachers was only going to be there for three months. Yes, three months to drill into every student’s head what a failure they’ll be in life and that they are totally worthless beings. Welcome to the big league kids. This was the first class on the first day of school too.

I told her to stay positive, listen, do her work, don’t get upset, don’t talk back…and don’t play back into the negativity.

One teacher, who was called in at the last minute, told the kids she didn’t like teaching that class, she didn’t like beginners, she didn’t like freshmen, and she yelled a lot. Two kids got detention for minor things (like blinking). Yes, I could have called the school. I was that pissed off.

That said, my teen is going to have to deal with it. No excuses. She has the book. She has friends she can study with. She has parents who can help her. She can just get through it because it is what she needs to do. No excuses.

And you can’t blame your child’s bad grades on a bad teacher. It doesn’t fly anymore. The blame game is never a good parenting option anyway.

The point of this is that kids will have to deal with bad teachers, bad bosses (Nathaniel are you reading this), bad small town traffic cops who pray on out of state drivers, and all sorts of assholes during their lives. High School is a proving ground where they can learn to deal with these bad/annoying/unfortunate people. As parents we can’t hover and control forever. We have to let go and let our kids learn to become the adults they’ll one day be.

And sure, I could go to school to complain and do weird things (especially being a Vampire mom) but I won’t. It might make things easier for my kids in the sort term, but in the long term it would be doing them an injustice.

So high school kids – if you have a nasty witch for a teacher – go with it. With any luck a house will fall on her and you’ll end up with a nice pair of red shoes! Or at least you’ll prove her wrong by being the best student she has ever seen. And you never know, maybe she’ll come to school one day without the green skin and broom. You never know.

~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman