GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The schools teach us to constantly lower our standards and blame ourselves for our kids failures to the point that sometimes we’re completely out of touch with a parent’s reality-based view of a situation. A couple of anecdotes from my junior-high days: Mom comes up to me after parent-in-the-class day and says “my daughter wasn’t paying attention at all when you were talking at the end of class – I was watching her”. Me “I’m sorry, I’ll try to keep an eye on her from now on”. Her: “Why are you apologizing? It’s her job to pay attention.” From there on in, the girl paid attention and her grades went up. Another time, I was feeling lost trying to reach a student, thinking she had serious academic problems, until one day she began sitting up straight, asking questions, etc. I wondered what was going on until I heard her say to another girl “My mother says it’s going to be a bad Christmas if I don’t get my grades up.” She was one of my better students for the rest of the year.