whose job?

so today, for the first time that i can remember in 11 years of teaching, a parent actually followed through and shadowed his kid. she was screwing up royally with her grades and at the parent conference last week her parents were pissed. she didn't know he was coming today, and wasn't very happy to have him there. by the time she got to my class, the last period of the day, she seemed better. i asked him if he wanted to sit by her but he said no so he sat at a table away from her. lol.

anyways, we often have this conversation about whose job it is to make the kids do what they're supposed to do. is it us as teachers? is it the parents? what happens when the parents aren't making the kids do what they're supposed to do? do we say, "well, they no care, i no care too", do we bend over backwards to make them do it, do we do something in the middle? i think the lengths i go to now, as opposed to before caleb and brynna, are different. i had no problem staying until 4 or 430 in the past for tutoring...now, the kids know they have until 330...so i also make sure that in that time they have, they do as much as they can. i treasure my lunch time, so i rarely stay in for kids at lunch, but if they truly needed it, i'd do it. but when kids don't show me effort and aren't caring about their grades, i'll rag them about it, give them the pissed off and disappointed speech, but after a while, it's their choice.

i think that since most of us (teachers) had parents who made us do what we were supposed to and since we were fairly smart, this wasn't an issue for us so it's hard to see why it should be an issue for anyone else. it baffles us that parents can't look at the planner, or check the kid's engrade, or make them do their homework. at the same time, though, i gotta remind myself that not all kids have the white picket fence home life. i mean, sheesh, looking at my own family, there's vast difference educationally between my older siblings, me, and my younger siblings, and we all in the same family (kind of...lol).

i often wonder how dave and i will be as parents, especially when caleb and brynna reach that middle school/hs age. we think we'll be two steps ahead of them and that they'll be model students, but who knows. my aunty, a teacher, was on my cousin choke and he still managed to set himself on cruise control and drive her crazy. so when he wasn't doing his stuff in school, was that her fault? no. was it the teacher's fault? no. it was just him, being him, and i bet he worked for teachers who pushed him and ragged his ass and didn't for the ones he didn't really like.

so i guess i have no answer for this never ending conversation. it is interesting, though, to hear opinions from all different kinds of people.