An uphill battle

I've spent considerable time on this blog documenting the struggles of being a teacher in a public school in the inner-city. There are so many factors working against me on a daily basis. It feels like an uphill battle and a battle that I'm losing on a daily basis. I realize there are students I'm affecting that I'm not aware of and students whom I've helped that I will never know about. However, I have to admit I'm a bit envious of people like construction workers. They work for months building a house and when the job is done they can look at it and say,"Look what I built!" Dentists have a patient come in with a terrible toothache. After a little while in the chair, the damage is repaired and the dentist knows he helped somebody that day. A fireman helps put out a fire and goes back to the firehouse knowing they saved somebody's property. All these jobs have a "product" when the job is done... an end result. With teaching it's not so much that way. At least not at my school. Not only am I battling students who do not value education and have absolutely no desire to be in school, but I'm battling their parents too. I'm not just talking about students living in horrid conditions or parents being unsupportive of their child's education. I'm talking about adults walking into the school and directly disrupting the learning process. Here are a few examples:

There is a parent who comes to the school every day wearing a sweatshirt that reads, "If you think I'm a B****, you should meet my daughter". What kind of person wears something like that to an elementary school? There is just no way to combat that type of mentality. This parent is also the first to holler if she doesn't agree with something the school does.

I had a parent two years ago sit in on one of my classes. She wanted to observe her son. (This is a very common practice and teachers welcome such things). This parent sat in the front row of my classroom and proceeded to take a call on her cell phone and carried on a two minute conversation as I was trying to teach. I was so flabbergasted that I didn't even ask her to take her conversation out of the room. I was struck speechless by this woman's actions. Again, there is no combating that type of mentality.

Just last week a colleague of mine reported the following incident. A mother showed up unannounced to observe her daughter in class. I mentioned that teachers welcome this practice, but the visit should be scheduled with an appointment. Showing up unannounced just isn't appropriate. Anyway, this mother is observing class and proceeds to put a set of fake, scary Halloween teeth in her mouth. She then starts looking around the room "smiling" at the students distracting them. She was a complete disruption. Again I say, there is no combating that type of mentality.

Also last week we had an angry mother barge into a classroom and start screaming at a student. Apparently this mother thought her child was being picked on and went in to confront the alleged bully. It turns out the situation was not at all what the mother thought it was. And I will say for the last time, there is no way to combat that type of mentality.

This job can be mighty discouraging at times. It can feel a lot like pounding your head against the wall. However, there are those rare moments that can be rewarding. You just have to press on.