by Jane Morris
I should have realized there was going to be a problem when Earl raised his hand and asked, “So we can write about anything we want?” I was naïve and answered, “Yes.” The journal prompt I gave was, “What is your heaviest burden right now?” since we were reading The Things They Carried, a novel about young soldiers in the Vietnam War. Earl stayed after class a few minutes to finish his four-page long journal entry. He brought it up to my desk and held it out in front of me. When I went to take it, he pulled it back and said, “So you won’t show this to anyone else, right?” I thought he wrote something emotional about his family life that he wouldn’t want me to bring up in front of the class. “Right,” I replied. “You’re the only one that is going to read this?” he asked again. “Yup, I won’t show it to anyone.” It didn’t occur to me that he was asking these questions precisely because he knew he wrote something entirely inappropriate and didn’t want to get into trouble. I thought he needed someone to open up to and was reaching out. Boy did he teach me a lesson. He handed me the paper and walked out. Of course, I immediately read it and knew I had a huge problem on my hands. Apparently Earl’s heaviest burden was the result of his overly active sex life. Here is merely an excerpt from his unbelievably disgusting journal entry:
“My heaviest burden is women, the ones I have sex with in particular. After you sleep with a girl, she becomes unbearably attached. It’s pathetic. I get phone calls and texts constantly from girls I no longer have a sexual interest in. Once I have experienced them in that way, I feel I have no use for them. But they become extremely clingy, as though what we did was the equivalent of some kind of emotional contract and not merely an activity to pass time. Take this girl Florence Burger for example. We talked in the hallway for a while, and I convinced her to let me come to her house one night. I climbed into her window and talked her into having sex with me. The sex was mediocre and I was rather bored. When it was over she started crying. She revealed that she was a virgin. After that, I felt obligated to stay there and talk with her. I made her feel better, but she became attached right away. Now she calls me every day and I find her attachment to me extremely unattractive. Why don’t girls understand that once I’ve had sex with them it is almost impossible to maintain interest? I refuse to believe that my own psychology is at the source of this problem.”
Since I told Earl specifically that I wasn’t going to share his journal with anyone, I only explained the gist of it to my department head. She told me to use it as a “teaching moment,” by lecturing Earl about morals and how to respect women. I told her I wasn’t comfortable with that. She said the alternative would be to call his parents. I said I felt weird about it because I reiterated to Earl that I would not share his journal with anyone. She said that I would not have to explicitly share the contents of the journal, but merely explain that it was inappropriate. That sounded like a viable option. So I took a deep breath and dialed Earl’s home number. His mother answered.
“Hello, this is Ms. Morris, Earl’s English teacher. I’m calling to inform you of an incident that occurred in class today.”
“Okay,” the mother said with a hint of attitude.
“I gave the students a creative writing assignment. They were supposed to write about their heaviest burden. Earl’s writing was very inappropriate.”
“Well, what did it say?” his mother asked.
“The thing is that I told the students what they wrote would remain private. But I can tell you that it was extremely inappropriate and of a sexual nature.”
“Well, if you aren’t going to tell me exactly what it said, then how do you expect me to speak to him about it?”
“Maybe you can just have a conversation with him about school appropriateness,” I said.
“Well, how can I do that if I don’t know what it said?” she replied, with a very nasty tone.
“I don’t even feel comfortable reading this thing aloud. That is how inappropriate it is.” “So fax it to me.”
“I just really don’t feel comfortable sharing his work since I told him it would remain private.”
“If you told him it would remain private, why are you telling me about it?”
“I did not realize how inappropriate the contents would be.”
“Perhaps the assignment was inappropriate. What was the assignment?”
“The assignment was to write an open-ended journal about the student’s heaviest burden. It relates to themes in the book we are reading.”
“Well, if you aren’t going to tell me exactly what he wrote then there is nothing I can do.”
“Okay. Well…”
“Ms. Morris, how many years have you been teaching?”
“This is my first year.”
“That’s obvious. Look, I have my doctorate in educational theory and I think I can help you. I’m going to email you several essays. May I have your email address?”
“Sure.”
“Great. I look forward to your response. Goodbye.”
I never received any emails from Earl’s mom and forgot all about it. A few weeks later I received the following phone call in the office:
“Hello, this is Ms. Morris…”
“Why didn’t you answer my emails?”
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
“This is Earl’s mom! I sent you several emails and asked you to reply that you got them and I never received anything from you. I even spoke to my son about his journal and I asked you to follow up!”
“I’m so sorry, but I never got any emails from you.”
“You are full of shit!”
As she continued to scream into the phone, I said, “You cannot speak to me that way. I am hanging up now.”
After I had hung up the phone, it rang again. Another teacher answered it and said that I wasn’t available. She hung up and called again until she got the office answering machine. She said that if I didn’t pick up the phone and talk to her she would come to the school to speak with me in person. I ignored it. Twenty minutes later she arrived at the main office, demanding to talk to me.
The Ass. Principal asked me to come to her office to meet with Earl’s mom. When I entered the room, it was full of other administrators who were trying to calm her down. When she saw me, she stood up, pointed at me, and screamed, “This is the most unprofessional teacher I have ever encountered! She never answered my emails and hung up on me!” The Ass. Principal asked her to sit down, but she refused. I said that I had never received any emails. She said I was a liar. I said that I only hung up on her because she was cursing at me. Again, she said I was a liar. The Ass. Principal asked how they could resolve the situation. She demanded that I be fired. Thankfully, they stood up for me and said that even if her claims were true, it would not be grounds for dismissal. She screamed, “This is bullshit!” and swung open the door to the office, then slammed it shut.
We all sat in silence for a few seconds. Then the Ass. Principal said, “Ms. Morris. You never hang up on a parent.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and replied, “But she was cursing at me!” She took a deep breath and replied, “I know. But you never hang up on a parent.” I just said, “Okay,” and before long the meeting was dismissed.
Earl came in the next day with copies of his mother’s emails to me. She had spelled my email address wrong. I asked him to tell her this. I never heard from her again.
NO SEX ON THE STAIRCASE
My school is huge. It has several floors with numerous corridors and winding hallways. In between classes, the halls are filled wall to wall with bodies. During class, many of the corridors are empty. It was during a walk down a hallway I had never been through that I decided to take a remote staircase I had never been on. Big mistake.
As I started down the staircase, I could barely believe what stood before me. There in the middle of the stairs were two students, completely butt naked except for their socks, having sex from behind. If I would have had a moment to think, I would probably have run back up the stairs an
d pretended that I hadn’t seen anything. But my natural reaction was to scream and throw all of my papers into the air, which scattered all around them. They quickly separated and started to pick up their clothes. Meanwhile, the female was saying over and over, “We weren’t doing anything! We weren’t doing anything! We weren’t doing anything!” Finally I said, “Really! You weren’t doing anything? Then why are you naked?” She looked me dead in the eye and said, “It was hot!” Thankfully another, much older and much more confident teacher came by at this point and took over. I was thoroughly traumatized. Later, I asked the Ass. Principal what happened to the students. She said they had a conference with the parents and the mother of the girl tried to argue that the students weren’t doing anything wrong and that it doesn’t say anywhere in the school rulebook that students can’t have sex. She is right about that. It does not state in the rulebook that students can’t have sex at school. Clearly the school needed to add that rule and specifically indicate the locations where sexual activity is forbidden.
ATTACK HELICOPTER PARENT
Ruprecht’s father watched the online gradebook carefully all semester as his son’s grade hovered around an A. When it dropped below an 89.9% I would immediately get an email asking for clarification as to why his son’s grade was now a B, followed by a lengthy explanation/reminder that Ruprecht was on the fast track to Ivy League, and if I gave him a B, it would ruin his perfect GPA and chances at a successful life. I would respectfully give the breakdown of the current grades and assignments, and remind the father that his son really needed to work on his writing skills because his poorly written essays were bringing down his grade. I usually wouldn’t get a response to that, although in one email, he took the time to explain to me that, “Frankly in a global economy, your subject matter is irrelevant.” (I find this interesting, because in any economy, and any profession, his son would need to speak and write coherently, or else be judged as an uneducated moron, but I digress.)
When the grades finally came out at the end of the semester, Ruprecht had an 88, which is undeniably and unarguably a B. His father flew into action. A barrage of emails started, not just to me, but to the chair of my department. The emails sought justice for Ruprecht, since I had sabotaged his chances at Yale or Harvard or wherever. A meeting was set up with the dad and an administrator. I had to go through every assignment that I had given Ruprecht, and explain the expectations and the resulting grade while my supervisor confirmed that everything was status quo. The father continued to try to find reasons why the B was unfair. He said that he did not agree with my grading policies and that I graded too harshly. The chair told him that he was wrong and asked him to please accept Ruprecht’s earned grade graciously. The meeting was promptly ended with a dramatic, “This isn’t over.”
Next, the father went to the principal. After explaining the entire story to him, he took my side, but the dad was relentless about the unfairness of my essay grading. Instead of telling him to fuck off, the principal set up a panel of other English teachers to look at the work I had graded (for no extra pay, I might add). They all agreed that it was fair and accurate. Some even thought I graded his work too highly. Take that Ruprecht’s dad.
His next move was to show up in the school parking lot near my car, waiting for me to discuss my grading policies. We argued a bit until I got into my car and drove away. I alerted the school that this man was actually stalking me. They said to let them know if he did anything like that again.
The school year ended and I had forgotten all about Ruprecht and his psycho dad. During Back to School Night the following school year I noticed Ruprecht’s dad sitting amongst the parents in my classroom, taking copious notes while I spoke. I definitely thought this was strange since I no longer had his son as a student. He took those notes to the superintendent, claiming that my stated expectations and grading policies did not match my actual grading style.
It is a year later, and the battle continues today. Ruprecht’s dad is actually suing the school district claiming that the grade caused his son “severe physical and emotional suffering, along with decreased college admission chances, lost scholarships, and loss of future employment opportunities.”
I have had to assemble extensive amounts of information about my grading, lesson plans, samples of other student work, etc. for various school officials but thankfully, they no longer include me in their dealings with Ruprecht’s dad.
MOMMY ISSUES
In 10th-grade, we read Homer’s The Odyssey. Although it is over 500 pages in length, the book itself weighs less than a pound. In 10th-grade, a student is 15 or 16 years old. Any rational person would think it a reasonable request to give a student one copy of the book to take home at night and bring back the next day for use in class. Certainly the school does not have the resources to keep in-class copies for students while giving second copies for at-home use. But this had to be the case for Fritz. His mother insisted that he have two copies, for it was too much of a strain on Fritz’s back and arms to carry that 13-ounce book to and fro all the time.
Now I know you’re thinking, “Fritz must have a physical ailment which impedes him from carrying books and so this is a reasonable request.” I hate to inform you that Fritz’s only ailment was his mommy. She insisted that he be given two copies of The Odyssey, because it was too heavy for his 15-year-old frame. This isn’t the only thing that Fritz’s mother insisted upon.
Another thing which Fritz’s mother required was a monthly conference with all of her son’s teachers to make sure that he had an A in all of his classes. The school has an electronic grade book which posts grades online, so the conferences were quite unnecessary. These conferences became more of a situation where she would badger and bully the teachers who were not “giving” her son an A. Many of these meetings took place in a conference room around a phone, because Fritz’s mom was too busy to actually come to the building to meet with us. There would be eight or nine teachers, a guidance counselor, the school psychologist and an assistant principal sitting around a speakerphone. It would go like this:
GUIDANCE COUNSELOR: Okay, Mrs. Nutjarb. We’re all here.
VOICE OF FRITZ’S MOM: I’d like to speak to math first. What happened on the quiz you gave two weeks ago?
MATH TEACHER: I’m sorry, you’ll have to be more specific.
FRITZ’S MOM: Well, on December 1st you gave a quiz entitled “Formulas Quiz” and my son got a B. I was wondering why.
MATH TEACHER: Well, I don’t have his quiz in front of me but I’m assuming that he got a few questions wrong.
FRITZ’S MOM: That is unacceptable. What does he need to do to get an A in your class?
MATH TEACHER: He needs to get higher grades on his tests and quizzes. But he is doing well. He currently has an 88%.
FRITZ’S MOM: You may consider 88% to be doing well but in our family anything below an A is a failure. I’ll be keeping in touch through email to determine how we can improve on his grade. I’d like to speak to biology next.
BIOLOGY TEACHER: Yes, hello.
FRITZ’S MOM: Why did Fritz get a zero on the first lab that you did? He told me that you gave him an extension.
This pattern would continue until Fritz’s mom thoroughly harassed all of her son’s teachers about every grade that wasn’t an A. And thank God Fritz got an A in my class, because she complained to the Board of Education five times over his former English teacher who “gave him a B because she doesn’t like him.”
She also insisted that her son be excused from reading Eli Wiesel’s Night, a memoir about a young man’s experiences in Nazi concentration camps. She said that at fifteen years old he wasn’t emotionally ready to handle the subject matter and should be given a text with lighter themes. The problem was that while reading a text, we discuss it in depth and even watch films that connect to the book’s themes. So Fritz spent two months sitting in the hallway alone, reading a different selection that his mom approved of. We didn’t see much of Fritz during that time
for, at his mother’s urging, he was not allowed to be present for any part of class which dealt with the Holocaust in any way.
Fritz’s mom is not the only parent who had objections to English texts. Many students are forbidden to read certain books due to their parents’ religious beliefs. Parents have insisted that their kid be excused from reading The Catcher in the Rye because there are curse words and a prostitute in the book (although nothing inappropriate happens). The Lord of the Flies is too violent. 1984 is pro-communist. Of Mice and Men “uses the lord’s name in vain.” One student could not read Brave New World because it promoted sex outside of marriage. Another could not be present during discussions of the afterlife while reading Hamlet because discussing any possibilities other than the Christian outcome of heaven and hell felt blasphemous to her parents. It started out as an innocent conversation about Hamlet pondering the unknown aspects of the afterlife. When other students expressed their feelings about different possible outcomes after death, she started screaming at the class that if we didn’t take Jesus into our hearts we would burn in hell. When other kids said they felt insulted by that, she left the room and came to class the next day with a note from her parents explaining that she would need to be excused during open-ended discussions like that from now on. One might think that parents like this would send their kid to a religious school, but instead they burden public servants with their unreasonable demands.