The story of 12-year-old Brianna Moore being suspended last week for something her parents said she could do hit a little close to home for me. I have gotten my child in trouble more than once for my own behavior.
First, Brianna's story. When the sixth grader at the Shue-Medill middle school in Newark, Del., worked very hard and made the honor roll -- her first time on that list -- her parents Kevin and Wendy Moore, helped her dye her hair pink as a reward and celebration. The next morning she was "turned away at school" USA Today reports, because her vibrant hair violated school policies. The rule at her school is that brightly colored hair is not allowed -- though other schools in the same district do not have that restriction.
Her parents fought back, the ACLU took the case, and a few days later Brianna was allowed back in class, along with her head of pink hair. All this left me remembering the time I texted one son during math class needing a timely answer to an urgent question. He texted me back and was told to relinquish his phone. Or the time I let him bring Advil to class, knowing that minutes counted when he got the first symptoms of a migraine. But school rules said he had to go to the nurse for medications. His Advil were taken from him, too.
Every year at Back to School Night, as I travel from room to room hearing half a dozen or more teachers recite their different sets of rules for their particular realms, I remember anew how capricious and inconsistent the world can look from those chairs with attached arm-desks. The Spanish teacher permits assignments to be made up; the English teacher doesn't. The history teacher puts the homework online every night, the Latin teacher puts it on the blackboard. The chemistry teacher drops the lowest grade and gives partial credit and doesn't allow gum chewing, but will allow you to snack in class because it's important to regulate your blood sugar. The economics teacher does exactly the opposite, whatever that is. And the math teacher apparently takes away cell phones when you answer a text from your mom, no matter how important it might be.
And sometimes it can be pretty darn important. Kevin Francois learned that six years ago, back when he as a junior in a Columbus, Ga. high school. He told the local tv station that his cell phone rang at 12:30 one afternoon, and seeing it was his mother, he says he stepped outside the building to get better reception. She was calling from Iraq, where she was stationed as a Sgt.1st Class with the 203rd Forward Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division.
What happened next isn't clear. Kevin, whose father died when he was five, and who was living with a family friend during this, his first separation from his mother, says he told the teacher "This is my mom in Iraq. I'm not about to hang up on my mom." The teacher, who insists the conversation happend in a hallway, not outdoors, says that when she told Kevin to hang up he cursed and became belligerent but never explained the specifics of the call.
As with Brianna, public opinion rallied around Kevin. His suspension was reduced, to three days from the original ten, but not before he surrendered his phone to main office, where it was turned off. Which meant he missed a second call from his mother at 12:37, KMBC-TV reported, "scolding her son about hanging up and telling him to answer the phone when she calls."
Have you told your child they can do something only to have the school tell them they can't? Or perhaps it was the other way around?
So, instead of looking at the school policy:
"Hair color is to be a natural color, brown, blond, black, natural red/auburn"
http://www.shue-medill.com/for-parents/school-uniforms/
They chose to do it anyway, and sue. So, every kid at school says, "her parents don;t make her follow the rules, so why do I have to?"
And people wonder why discipline is a problem.
Like previous posters, I also wonder what was so pressing that you needed a text back right away.
How much more would kids learn if class was never interrupted during a term?
That's why parents can call the school and ask to speak to their children. Apparently this mom doesn't understand the school rules about cell phones either!
Do you honestly expect anything different? Cell phones haven't been allowed in the classroom for years. This isn't some new oppressive policy to keep you from having constant and immediate access to your child...it's an old rule.
Hair. Were the rules published before the girl showed up with pink hair? Did the school require (as many do) that the parents sign a copy of those rules at the beginning of the year? If yes, then the girl needs to wash her hair and get over it. If no, then the school needs to get its act together.
Phones. Having been deployed overseas, I understand the mom's taking any opportunity to talk with her son. But, a call to the school office would have solved this. A note on file with that office might have solved this.
Answering a "text from your mom, no matter how important". Have we forgotten that schools have offices that parents can call in emergencies? Or, was that "important question" something that mom suspected that the school would consider so trivial that it wasn't worth interrupting 30 kids trying to learn to spell.
As for differing classroom standards from different teachers. Welcome to real life. Over time, we'll all have different supervisors with differing standards. As long as the standards are known in advance and enforced fairly within the class, get over it.
Respect for teachers is long gone; everybody thinks they know better.
Yes, there are occasions when injustices are present that need to be stood against. Pink hair is not one of those, nor is your extremely important text. If it is that vital you contact your son, do so through the proper channels (i.e, call the office. It has worked for decades). I can't believe you are even trying to argue that allow students to answer texts in the middle of class is appropriate.
The only scenario mentioned that I would side with the parent/child on is the mother calling from Iraq, and in that case the school should have been made aware of the situation before the call was ever received so the teachers would know to allow the cell phone to be on and calls taken.
I'm all for supporting teachers and school administration in their quest for maintaining any orderly environment in which children learn/thrive, but my child (who is by all teacher accounts a great kid/serious student) is in elementary school and we are already seeing what happens when school staff become so fixated on rules (for the sake of fixating on rules), they completely lose their sense of reality and why they are there in the first place. If this school was an office it would be like the "Dilberts" Cartoon. Fortunately, we have very flexible and dedicated teachers who understand that we are there to support them in the mission to educate our child, but some of the ridiculously rigid rules set by the principal are simply to appease the Union (the skittish school administration seems to fear union grievances) and/or out of an obsesive need to micro-manage.
Sad, but I think some teachers/administrators get a sick thrill of reprimanding both kids and parents, simply to show us who is in charge (just like in a "Dilberts" world). They've already lost the point of why they are there....
Your child may be "great/serious", but many students are not. You think the school is like a Dilbert cartoon, and many teachers see students' families like "The Simpsons" or "The Middle". No one is perfect, yet the public expects school staff to be.
Exceptions should be made for rules (such as the boy and his mother in Iraq), but somehow messages did get delivered before cell phones existed. Yet now everything is urgent (even when it really isn't) and it disrupts teaching and learning which is, after all, why schools exist in the first place.
No one is expecting perfection, but policies should be reasonable. Some of the policies we see make no sense and are sometimes bad for children. Some are so embarrasingly vague, poorly thought through/communicated, you can drive a truck through them! I have made my voice heard by escalating issues via the designated process. It was through this process I first realized how weak and misdirected our administration's leadership is.
I know a great deal about union contracts. I've negotiated/enforced several for both management and unions (and investigated bad faith bargaining charges); however, I have the objectivity and experience to see clearly when a weak administrator/employer is scared about the threat of a potential (frivolous) grievance and is trying to shape policy to avoid this, even if this makes no sense whatsoever.
I'm sorry there are parents that probably shouldn't be parents, but just like in the "non-school" world, there are individuals who simply don't have the temperment, common sense, dedication, talent, intelligence, or leadership to be in the field of education.