Of course, I am going to start my day at about this time yesterday – Monday, November 3.

I went grocery shopping yesterday.  The schedule around my house has been extremely hectic and I had not been to the grocery store for any serious shopping in quite some time.  I was out of sugar, out of flour and out of whole wheat flour.  I had no meat in the house but quite a few leftovers from Halloween and my 18 year old’s birthday gathering on Saturday night.

What is up with canned kidney beans?  I am not a bean soaker.  I prefer to buy my beans in a can and rinse them very well.  I wanted to get a 40 ounce can of red kidney beans. There were no 40 ounce cans of either dark or light red kidney beans.  There were no 15 ounce cans of either dark or light kidney beans.  The only can of kidney beans in the Giant on Hooper Road were the #10 food service size.  Has there been some sort of recall on kidney beans that I am unaware of?

Then, I wake up this morning to an email from school.  Emails from school do not normally bother me.  I have working relationships with several teachers and just finished chairing a major music booster fundraiser.  To receive an email from school is not astounding.  The first problem is that the email was time stamped 1:15 pm yesterday afternoon.  The school district – with approximately 2700 students – has sent so much email to Roadrunner email addresses that it has exceeded its limit.  Now all email from the district is put into a “file” and gone through individually.  This means that someone is reading or some program is reading my emails before I am.  While I do understand Roadrunner’s point of view in trying to prevent or cut down on spam, I am particularly annoyed they think spam is coming from a school district.

Then, I actually read the email.  Evidently there are kids in one of my children’s classes that are having issues with the teacher.  My son, being the ever astute child, knows that tenure is at least three years into employment and told the kids that if they wanted their parents to complain about the teacher, it should be now before said teacher gets tenure.  My son has seen me go up against a tenured teacher, to no avail.  I have sat in the principal’s office when the teacher thought he would get me to back down when he requested union representation at the meeting.  I told them I was more than happy to wait and let another level headed adult hear my case also.

The teacher that had emailed me said the matter would be discussed with my son.  It was also indicated that the teacher felt his statement was something that should be dealt with at the principal level but since the teacher knew I was an involved parent, the teacher would bring it to me to help solve.  While I did solve that problem, I also let the teacher know, in no uncertain terms, my feelings on this issue.

1. Students have every right to complain about teachers and about tenure, particularly students of voting age.  It is a sign that they understand how the education system in NYS works.  It is also a good thing that a voting age student understands how hard it is to – for lack of a better term – “get rid of” a tenured teacher as all tenured teachers are not good teachers.
2. Classes need to be graded and held for a variety of student levels.  However, it is not fair, particularly in a this type of course, for those without subject background and ability to be graded on an easier scale than the those who do have subject background and ability.  The same goes for a subject matter class.  If a student does not have the ability to do the work in a math class, extra help is needed.  The student does just get by without knowing the material.  I would strongly suggest that the class have a pre-requisite prior to allowing students to take it.  Having someone in the class that needs his or her one credit of a particular class type to meet state graduation requirements is not conducive to a good class.
3. I told my son to not take the class.  He was so annoyed with the favoritism that was shown in a class with the same teacher last year that I did not think he would be in a good frame of mind to take another class with the same teacher.  He insisted it would be okay.  Normally, in these situations, I am proven correct in my thinking but hopefully will not be this time.

The teacher indicated in the original email that a talk with my son would happen today.  No such talk occurred.  Now, I am more annoyed than before because I could have ignored the initial emails since I didn’t think it was an issue.  I didn’t but the teacher, then, did not follow through.