MY YEAR JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER

Remember at the end of this post about LAZY, I said, "I'm expecting that in the next few days I'll probably be called into the office. I'm not sure what she expects me to do about this issue and I'll be !@#$% if I'm going to put this kiddo on some type of modification plan, like giving him a sticker every 2 minutes for doing what he's suppose to do anyway." Well, I was called in and told I would be meeting with mom and the principals. 

The meeting was scheduled for yesterday morning at 8:15 and at the last minute was canceled, but I wasn't told it was canceled until I called the office looking for the assistant that was to cover my room for said meeting. Anyway...then later in the day after a crazy, confusing unproductive day because of parents coming in to eat Thanksgiving lunch with their kids, I was finally told (about 10 minutes before the meeting) that it had been rescheduled and someone would be down to cover my class. So, I posted some questions on the board for the kids to work on while I was gone (No, this was not what I had planned to do.) and went to the office.  

Some things I won't go into...because I want to keep my job...but mom, both principals and I spoke for about 30 minutes. The mom said that her understanding was that discipline slips were for fighting and such and that LAZY didn't deserve one for lying since I didn't allow him to hand in his paper (false). She then told me the version of the story that LAZY had told her (which was TOTALLY not what had happened....so I guess he was lying again....). I said that lying is listed on our discipline slips as an unacceptable behavior and then I told her the whole, TRUE story. She also said that at the end of the day, her husband had to "hunt me down" to talk with me and that I didn't come to him. In reality, LAZY's homeroom teacher told Dad what had happened, and when they were done speaking, he spoke to me right away because I was standing withing 10 feet of them.

Mom also brought up LAZY's grades from the first semester and commented that she was never informed of how poorly he was doing. I explained that, during the first semester, EVERY week we sent home a half sheet that showed all the assignments the students were missing. She looked a little shocked by this and then commented that she thought there had to be a better way then relying on the child to hand these papers to the parents. I explained that now we have agendas (We wanted these in August, but it took us until now to get the office to order and pay for these.) for each child, where they write their homework down and we can sign assignments that are done and use it as a communication book with the parents. She seemed at least, a little pleased about this.

The last part of the conversation was her saying that she thought it was unprofessional of me to have told LAZY that since he was "gifted" he was totally capable of doing the work, that LAZY had said he was "scared" of me and she wanting to be sure I wasn't going to "retaliate" against LAZY since she had come to talk to the principal.

I told her that yes, I did tell LAZY that he was very capable and could do the work and I did remind him that he was in the "gifted" class and that should tell him how smart he is and that I expected more out of him. I didn't feel this was unprofessional, in the least and NO, I would not "retaliate" against her son.