No parent wants to have their children go through any unfairness or bullying at school. So these parents decide to do something about it. Content has been edited for clarity,
“Your Daughter Is A Compulsive Liar”
“My daughter’s 6th-grade teacher sent a note home explaining, ‘Your daughter is a compulsive liar who expects people to believe that she is Korean when she is obviously not.’
In class, the teacher was talking about where the kids were born. When my daughter said she was born in South Korea, her teacher told her not to lie. My daughter got upset and said she wasn’t a liar and that her mom was in the Army and she was born in South Korea.
The teacher then told her, ‘Sit down and shut up. We all can tell you’re not Korean.’
The next day I went into the school office and asked to speak to the teacher. The principal, upon seeing the note, decided to sit in on the conversation.
The teacher said she was glad I came in and hoped that after this my daughter would learn not to lie! She explained the classroom discussion and stuck to her guns how my daughter was obviously not Korean and therefore a liar!
After 30 minutes we established how my daughter did not claim to be Korean, only that she had been born there. While the principal looked on slack-jawed, I explained how her father and I were both soldiers in the US Army, stationed in Korea, when she was born… and that where you were born does not change the color of your skin.
As I was leaving the last thing I heard was the principal incredulously asking her: ‘You seriously didn’t know Americans could be born overseas?'”
No Excuses For Bad Behavior
“When my stepdaughter was in 5th grade, she came home several days in a row complaining of being bullied by ‘Melissa.’ It wasn’t verbal abuse, but some pushing incidents. Now, in my experience, once a kid feels free to physically shove others, it seldom stops there.
This had actually started the year before, but it was getting worse.
My wife spoke to the administration, and was told there was nothing they could do, due to that family’s ‘situation’, which they were not at liberty to discuss! So, shut up and go away, we’re not gonna do anything?
The next day, I walked into the school and demanded to talk to the Principal. At first, I got an Assistant Principal, so I started there.
When the Assistant Principal repeated the drivel about all the parents having to tolerate the abuse of their children due to the offender’s unnamed ‘situation.’
I said ‘NO! You can’t talk about it, but I can. Melissa told my daughter what the problem is in their family – her dad has AIDS. Well, I’ve got Parkinson’s, so I face an ugly, premature death, too. My daughter knows about it, but we don’t wallow in it, we don’t weigh down her life with it, and we don’t come in here every school year and tell you that you have to tolerate any uncivilized behavior on her part – the entire class does not have to suffer because of MY problem!’
Well! Within 30 seconds, the Principal and two other Assistant Principals were in the room, and I was assured that the problem would be addressed – they would require a meeting with Melissa’s parents before the end of the week.
The problem never happened again, and Melissa and my daughter eventually became friends.”
Discipline Gone Wrong
“When my middle child (daughter) was in first grade, the teacher made the whole class stay after school one day because they’d been talking too much or some such nonsense. Anyway, about 20 minutes later, she finally released the kids. My daughter typically rode the bus to her daycare provider’s house, but sometimes she would ride ‘our bus’ (a different one) home with our older daughter and my next-door neighbor would watch over her.
Well, all the buses had left the school already, but my daughter, being a brand new first grader, thought the bus would come back for a second round of kids or something. So she sat down and waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, about 45 minutes later, a 6th grader saw her sitting there and told her the bus wasn’t coming back, so they took her inside the school to find someone. Well, my daughter’s teacher was nowhere to be found, and the 6th grader’s teacher was nowhere to be found either, and no one was in the office.
Finally, they knocked on the door to the teachers’ lounge and found someone in there. Luckily I had written my phone number and the daycare provider’s phone number on my daughter’s agenda, so they called me, but I was in a meeting, so they called the daycare provider. She couldn’t go get my daughter though, because she didn’t have a vehicle available. So she texted ’emergency’ to me, and I called her as soon as I saw the text, maybe 5 or 10 minutes later.
She told me my daughter was still at school but didn’t know why. So I had to leave work to go get her.
The next day I met with the principal and teacher and told her about the danger she put my child in and the predicament she put us in. I asked her to figure out a better way to discipline the kids than keeping them after school and not bothering to notify anyone.
I’m grateful that the 6th grader was kind and responsible, and not mean. And that my daughter had the sense to stay at the school and not wander off trying to walk home (several miles away, and she’d have had to cross a few busy streets).”
Since When Was Being Left-Handed Wrong?
“I was learning to write and I was doing it with my left hand as I am to this day left-handed. Although I can now write with my right hand almost as well as my left but back then no. The teacher would yank the pencil out of my left hand and smack my hand with hers because I needed to write with the correct hand which to her was the right one.
As soon as she would walk off, I’d switch back to my left cause I just couldn’t do it with my right hand.
One day while I was at home, my mom stopped by to check on me and I was crying.
She asked, ‘What is wrong?’
I said, ‘I can’t make my right hand write the words.’
My mom probed and figured out I was a lefty after a few questions.
She then asked, ‘Why don’t you use my left hand?’
I told her what my teacher had been doing and my mom was absolutely livid.
The next day, she went down to the school herself. They pulled the teacher from class and she and my mom stood out in the hall. Our whole class could hear the shouting.
I don’t remember exactly what my mom said to that teacher but she walked back into our classroom and was white as a sheet like she’d had the fear of God put into her or something. My mom requested I come see her.
She told me, ‘If that teacher ever smacks you again or does anything bad, let me know.’
That teacher was never anything but extremely respectful and gentle with me after that. My mom is awesome nobody messes with her kids. I love her so much.”