Teacher to Parent

By Jody Stallings

 

Teacher to Parent is a weekly newspaper column with a simple formula: parents write in with questions, and Jody Stallings answers them from the perspective of an experienced, award-winning teacher. The result is a fresh, often humorous, and always candid approach to education that emphasizes common sense, tough love, and parental responsibility.

Here's a sample of what you'll find in this collection of Teacher to Parent's best columns:

On parents being more important than teachers:
"If a student's first 18 years of life were condensed into a 24-hour day, his entire school experience would last fewer than 4 hours."

On giving into a child's demand:
"Rewarding a tantrum is never a good strategy for raising children to be adults who don't throw tantrums."

On giving young children a cellphone:
"The day you hand over that phone, your children will lay down their innocence."

On positive reinforcement:
"Kids should learn to do what's right because it's right, not because it will personally enrich them."

On Common Core Math:
"It's like teaching a child how to make a sandwich by saying, 'First plant a field of wheat.'"

To a parent seeking to change her child's teacher because of a "personality conflict":
"Instead of preparing the world for your child, try preparing your child for the world."

"There is nothing phony or artificial about Teacher to Parent. Stallings displays a capacity for applying simple good sense to conflicts between parents and their children's schools. I am confident that all parents who take the time to read and consider the wisdom in Teacher to Parent will come away better prepared to deal with their own classroom conflicts."
Dr. David O. Whitten, professor emeritus, Auburn University

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jody Stallings
• Release date: Aug 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201474331

Book preview

Foreward

by David O. Whitten

JODY STALLINGS TEACHES at Moultrie Middle School in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, where his numerous awards illuminate his expertise in classroom affairs. And, his excellent writing reflects his role as a teacher of English; he teaches by example. His writing is not designed to impress the reader with the author’s skill with language but to communicate in clearly expressed terms. There is nothing phony or artificial about Teacher to Parent. Stallings displays a capacity for applying simple good sense to conflicts between parents and their children’s schools. Moreover, he speaks with reason in the face of opposing views without denigrating those on the other side of the issues he addresses.

Teacher to Parent is a variation on the columns Stallings writes for publication in the Moultrie News, a weekly supplement to Charleston’s daily Post and Courier. Stallings’ is a simple approach: he opens most of his columns with a question posed by a parent, a question that is surely on the minds of scores of those with children attending school. Why does my child receive so little attention from his teacher? might be an opener. What kind of attention are you seeking? might begin a response that leads into observations about the size of classes and the heavy load teachers bear: regular reports that must be submitted to administrators who have no classroom responsibilities; frequent meetings in which administrators who do not deal with students lecture those who work with children every day, children who want to learn, children who want to be anywhere on the planet other than a classroom, and children who for no fault of their own find learning extremely taxing.

Stallings might conclude with a number of possibilities: Your child may be one of those the teacher feels blessed to have in her classroom because he does his work and offers no disruptions; the teacher may have given up on your child, and if so, you need to find out why and see to changing the situation; does your child feel neglected or do you, the parent, simply want more attention for your child? If the last, why do you want more attention for your child? Have you considered volunteering to help out in your child’s classroom with an eye to evaluating the situation from the vantage point of the teacher and the other students, including your own?

The responses I have offered are my own; Stallings would put forth far better ones. Because he writes from the front lines and not from the office, readers get as close to what is going on at school as possible without actually being in attendance. The central theme that runs through Stallings’ columns is the need for parents to take a long-run view of their children with the goal of making them independent adults, not helpless creatures unable to function without their parents running interference for them. That does not mean that parents should never interfere. After all, there are times when interference is called for, and Stallings recognizes that. It remains essential for parents to ask themselves if they are interfering for the benefit of their child’s long-run profit or their own ego.

There may be times when you disagree with Stallings (so far, that has not happened for me), but I don’t think that will be often. Overall, I am confident that parents – all parents – who take the time to read and consider the wisdom in Teacher to Parent will come away better prepared to deal with their own classroom conflicts.

Who am I to recommend Teacher to Parent? I have two adult daughters who managed public schools to become self-supporting and responsible adults, professionals. They did so with a minimum of support or interference from me. Stallings’ columns show me how I should have parented.

I have forty-four years of classroom experience, but not in the ranks at a middle school; in four universities where I encountered many of the same issues that Stallings addresses, but dealing with parents was not paramount for me.

When I graduated from Moultrie High School in 1958, the words printed under my photograph in The General were: a perpetual fountain of good sense. I am awarding that evaluation to Jody Stallings.

Dr. David O. Whitten, professor emeritus, Auburn University, holds a B.S. from the College of Charleston, M.A. from the University of South Carolina, and Ph.D. from Tulane University. He is the author, co-author, or editor of ten books.

Introduction

BLAME MY FATHER.

He had a concise way of putting the most important things. I didn’t appreciate it until I was older. When I started teaching and everyone (including me) was falling into groupthink, I found myself asking, What would my father say?

He was a brilliant man. Uncomplicated. Faithful. Humble. Family-driven. Passionate. Now that I have the maturity to realize it, I can see that he possessed the perfect blend of qualities to convey the kind of wisdom that all of us need to keep us stable, sane, and useful.

Eventually, during school meetings to discuss the latest educational initiative (which was all the time), I would strive to articulate my concerns as succinctly and with as much common sense as he did.

Teachers would encourage me. Thank you for speaking up! You say everything I want to say. Only I’m too scared to say it. I would accept the praise but secretly pass it along to my father. His was the spirit I always seemed to be channeling.

I would sit in parent conferences, hundreds of them, and silently listen to all the excuses and mistakes — all the while thinking, If you would just do it like my father, you wouldn’t be having these problems. Of course you can’t say things like that in a parent conference. You have to be sensitive, not helpful.

After the conference ended and teachers got together to debrief, I’d hear it again: You are so right! I wish you could tell parents that. They really need to hear it.

Once again, it wasn’t me. It was my father talking through me.

But it did get me to thinking. They weren’t wrong. If I could tell parents those things, it would help them. If I could say those things to educational leaders, it could make a difference. Most importantly, it might help the kids I taught and loved. 

I realized that something more was behind what those teachers were saying: Fear. But why? If everyone agreed, why were they scared to say it out loud? Somewhere along the way, various forces had conspired to force the common sense my father wielded out of fashion. Ideas about teaching and parenting pulled out of thin air yesterday seemed to be fending off wisdom that had previously stood the test of time.

This was madness. It hadn’t really fallen out of favor. It’s just that the people who wrote books and blogs, who podcasted and consulted and went on talk shows and garnered millions of followers on social media gave the illusion that common sense was no longer in vogue. There was a silent majority out there who secretly agreed with what a regular guy like me was saying.

That’s what gave me the idea for the Teacher to Parent column. If there were people in the teacher’s lounge who wanted to hear old-fashioned parental instinct, maybe there were others. 

My goal was to be a counter-voice to the modernist who had so glibly figured it all out. In my view, they were harming a lot of kids. I hoped to empower parents by showing them that their instincts and common sense were right. The modernists depend on regular people like me keeping quiet and letting them have their way. Like Zorii Bliss said in The Rise of Skywalker, That's how they win: by making you think you're alone.

You are not.

Read and see.

Teachers

TEACHERS ARE LIKE A box of puppies (because chocolates are cliché and more compliant). They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are growlers. Some are tremblers. Some are smart. Some not so much. Some just want to sleep and eat.

I try to stress in Teacher to Parent that parents need to help their children adapt to the kind of puppy they have. Yes, if you had enough time (and teachers were dogs), you could train the puppy to be whatever your child wants. But even if you did, it would be a mistake because it’s the child — not the puppy — that should be a parent’s number 1 concern.

In this section, I hope the message comes through that parents must coach their children to deal with the idiosyncrasies of their teachers, not the other way around. Also, by pulling back the curtain and sharing the view from the teacher’s lounge, parents will hopefully better understand why we teachers do some of the strange things we do.

Student: The teacher is mean, doesn’t like me, and wants me to fail!

My daughter is doing very poorly in one of her classes. She keeps telling me that the teacher is mean, doesn’t like her, and wants her to fail. How should I deal with it?

The best way to deal with it is by believing everything your child is telling you.

Yes, you read that correctly. And no sarcasm was intended. A good way to handle it is to roll with her assessment of the teacher’s motivations.

The trick, however, is to be a good parent in the process. A parent who is more interested in her daughter’s short-term happiness than her character and education would either swoop into the classroom and demand the teacher account for herself, or, more lazily, simply email the principal and demand a schedule change.

Another sloppy response is to acknowledge that the child may be stretching the truth but enable her stretchiness by reasoning, Even if the teacher hasn’t done anything wrong, she’s lost my daughter’s respect, so I’d better bail the kid out. Rewarding a tantrum, even a serene and well-reasoned one, is never a good strategy for raising children to be adults who don’t throw tantrums. 

But I’m assuming that you are interested in both your daughter’s education and character. In that case, you should coach her to handle the teacher’s meanness the same way she would manage any of the other mean adults she’ll run up against in her lifetime: by being the opposite.

If there’s anything we learn from literature, it’s that Good is the cosmic counter-force to Evil. We are to fight evil with good, not with cooler evil. If you want to give someone license to be nasty to you, be nasty to them in response. It’s a self-nourishing cloud of gnats that quickly grows into a scary swarm of gun-toting wasps.

But if you want to hopefully end the other person’s cruelty and change his or her behavior, be nice. As the old saying goes, Kill them with kindness. If they’re rude, be all the more polite in return. If they slap you in the cheek, don’t slap back harder; turn the other cheek.

Assuming everything your daughter says is true and the teacher has some strange, unveiled bloodlust to fail students, you should encourage your child to fight back by behaving like a model student, paying total attention in class, doing all her homework, and always saying ma’am or sir. 

Think about it. If your daughter is bad, you probably discipline her by taking something away. That’s because nothing punishes people more than refusing to give them what they want. If the teacher wants your daughter to fail, have your daughter deprive her of that joy by sealing up every possible loophole to achieving it. 

When students accuse me of wanting them to fail, I usually respond with, Fine. Then punish me by passing. Sometimes they actually do (which secretly makes me happy because, contrary to their highly developed psychological insight, that’s actually what I want. Shhh. Don’t tell them). 

As students set out to punish me by actually doing their best, a strange thing begins to happen without them even noticing it: their attitude becomes more positive. They begin to focus more on learning and less on grousing. They become so engaged in school that they forget they hate it. And when all is said and done, they are able to experience the rare kind of triumph that occurs when we overcome great odds with the deck stacked against us.

I bet with a little love and encouragement, your daughter is capable of the same kind of victory.

TEACHER DOES STUDENT big favor by not accepting late work

My child’s teacher refused to accept his late homework assignment and gave him a zero for it. I can understand taking a few points off, maybe even half, but it seems extreme to refuse it at all.

If you’re late for an airplane, what are the consequences? Do they take you halfway to your destination on the next flight? 

If you’re late making your car payments, do they just add on to your bill? Or do they repossess your car? 

In the first case, you don’t go anywhere. Being late dooms your plans. In the second, you’ve got a decent shot at just paying a late fee and keeping your car. But there’s also a chance they come and take it. Or that your credit score is ruined which can prevent you from getting a car, apartment, or loan in the future.

Whatever the case, the penalties in the real world for not being on time can be severe, so it makes sense that schools should prepare their students for this eventuality.

In fact, schools generally reflect the same degree of vicissitude concerning late work that the real world does. Some teachers will take late work whenever the student feels like handing it in, no penalty assigned — like a struggling hair stylist who will keep booking you even when you don’t show up for your appointments. Some will deduct points or offer half credit, sort of like the government with your taxes. Others, like your child’s teacher, adopt the American Airlines approach to tardiness.

For this stunning turn of events — that schools are actually preparing your child for real life — you should be grateful, not grumpy. 

My view as a teacher is that every assignment and class policy should have two objectives: a primary one based in the curriculum and an invisible one based in character. 

When I first started teaching, I sought to do the opposite of every teacher that had annoyed me in school. Thus my late submission policy was quite liberal: a modest deduction of 5 points a day. My rationale was, I just want them to do the work, and better late than never.

I had not yet realized that part of the work was doing it within the time I had allotted and submitting it when due. That’s the character portion of the assignment. Time management, reliability, responsibility, and punctuality are important traits; they are the shadow standards (the workforce calls them soft skills) involved in doing the work and turning it in punctually.

What I soon discovered was that lots of students weren’t like me. I would have complied to avoid the 5 points off. They didn’t care at all. These were students whose parents threw parties when they brought home all C’s. So they’d wait a week or more to turn it in, or not at all if it involved too much effort.

There was another problem. If I assigned a theme due in five days, it meant the student should take five days to work on the theme — writing, rewriting, editing, etc. But when students turned in their work late, it wasn’t because they weren’t quite finished. It was because they hadn’t even started. They would do all of the work — sloppily — the night before they felt like turning it in, which was usually right before my second deadline. 

Worse still, I discovered as the year went on that the number of kids turning in things late was increasing. I had a friend who didn’t make any deductions for late work, and she said that kids often wouldn’t submit assignments until after report cards were given and they’d seen their failing grade.

This was all madness to me, so the next year I went the other way: no work accepted late for credit. Yes, some kids had to adapt, and they did. And some didn’t, and they didn’t care. I ended up with a few kinds of students: those who turned in their work on time, and those who never did it at all. I was proud of the first group who rose to the expectations, and I found ways of dealing with the second group that made them better in the long run.

But there was a third kind of student: those who turned work in late, but only once. After receiving the tough penalty for their tardiness, they learned the lesson that things were due when they were due, and they learned that it was totally within their power to accomplish that mission. I was very proud of this group, too. Even though a zero is a tough mathematical pill to swallow, it had the effect of helping to cure the common student disease called irresponsibility. 

It’s much better to be proud of your children for strengthening their character at the expense of a better grade than for getting a better grade at the cost of their character. I think if you give your son a chance to fix his own behavior and support the teacher who believes he can do it, you’ll find a lot to be proud of, too.

SHOULD TEACHERS PUNISH the whole class for the bad behavior of a few?

My 8-year-old daughter is extremely conscientious. The other day she came home from school distraught about losing recess. A number of kids in her class had been talking during science, so the whole class lost out. Knowing her, she likely tried to hush other students to no avail. What is the merit of punishing a whole class, including those children who were not causing the problem?

I generally agree with you. I’m not a fan of punishing everyone for the crimes of a few. If someone misuses a magic marker by drawing offensive pictures of body parts on the bathroom walls, should we ban magic markers for everyone? I don’t think so.

That said, probably every teacher who ever lived has been guilty of it, including me. The biggest reason is that there are too many children and not enough adults, and sometimes expedience is the best survival skill. 

If your daughter is raising a ruckus at home, I’m sure you don’t punish all of your children. But you probably only have like two kids, so it’s easy to finger the culprit. If you had thirty children, you might find it more difficult. (Laundry would be a bear, too.)

What do you think you’d do if you had thirty children with no one around to help you supervise them and fifteen of the kids started to obnoxiously misbehave? I give it about five minutes before you start sending them all to their rooms. 

But what about me? your quietest daughter says. I was just sitting in the corner reading. You relent. Okay, you say. You can stay. Guess what happens next? A widespread revolt from the other fourteen who were also playing quietly, but less noticeably so. And now you’ve really got a mess. Whatever teaching is, it ain’t easy.

If what you want me to say is, This teacher has no idea about classroom management, I will agree that it’s possible. Bad classroom management tends to follow a pattern: make a threat, do nothing, make a threat, do nothing, make a threat, do nothing ... and then finally blow your stack and start spraying napalm at everybody (figuratively speaking, of course). It sounds like the teacher here could have been following that pattern. 

It’s also possible that the teacher was just in a tough spot and latched on to the quickest way to wrest control from her unruly pupils. To answer your direct question, What is the merit of punishing a whole class? I would say it’s simple: to ensure that order is maintained in the classroom.

If it happens a lot, I would have a conference with the teacher. If it happens rarely, I would let it go and have a conversation with your daughter. But you should never denigrate your child’s teacher to your child. Instead, use whatever the teacher is doing (even if it’s annoying) as a life lesson. 

In this case the lesson is easy: fair or not, sometimes in life everyone gets punished for the crimes of a few. Often it’s why laws get passed. Nobody passed a law forbidding us from driving barefoot or doing u-turns with our steering knobs until some clown messed it up for all of us. 

You might point out to your child that back in the day playgrounds were a paradise of see-saws, merry-go-rounds, and monkey bars until too many doofuses slammed the see-saws on their peers’ heads, made each other throw up on the merry-go-rounds, and pushed each other off the monkey bars. (No comment on whether or not I was one of those doofuses.) The powers-that-be didn’t respond by banning doofuses from the playgrounds, but rather by banning the equipment for everyone. When I pass by a playground now, I can’t even tell what you’re supposed to do on some of that equipment. Expedience, you see. Nobody likes it, but it’s a fact of life.

Your child seems like a really smart cookie. I think she’ll understand. And then maybe she’ll grow up to become a senator or a congress woman or even president, and maybe she’ll even campaign on a platform to make our playgrounds great again.

Even better, maybe she’ll grow up to become the teacher who finally figures out a surefire way to let the good kids learn in peace and only punish the perpetrators.

DERANGED TEACHER INSISTS on writing in cursive

My son’s middle school teacher insists on writing all of his notes in cursive, which my son cannot read. In his elementary school, they did not teach cursive, so it’s not his fault. I’ve asked the teacher to please write his notes in print, not just for my son but to make it easier for the other students who are struggling, too, but he refuses. What should I do?

You should thank this teacher for helping you to see a glaring hole in your son’s education, and then you should make your son learn how to read cursive. Of course, if you want your son to be only partially literate for the rest of his life, you have other options, but I recommend taking the path that offers him the best opportunity for success.

Perhaps it is true that elementary teachers don’t teach cursive anymore, though all of the ones I know still do. What is more likely is that students don’t practice it much. In today’s world, students are more accustomed to doing schoolwork with the hunt and peck method on a Chromebook (or, more ridiculously, the two thumbs technique on a smartphone).

This is to their detriment because when students go to middle and high school where note-taking is a much more important study skill, they are ill-prepared to do it. Most teachers there — clued in to the research that shows how much worse it is for students to take notes digitally (see the 2016 study published in Psychological Science, for example) — make kids take notes the old fashioned way. 

Thus a problem has arisen. When students have to use pen and paper, they now almost universally write everything in print because they’ve lost the ability to use cursive. What you don’t use, you lose, my physics teacher used to say. This takes a lot longer because, while they use print more than cursive, they still don’t practice it very much. 

Ask any teacher who has been around for 20 years and they’ll tell you that it takes today’s child twice as long to write the same amount of notes that was required in the past. It takes some kids so long that their parents pursue medical waivers to block teachers from requiring them to do it at all. 

This slowdown in the acquisition of content might be one small reason why students aren’t learning as much as they did 20 years ago. I have no science behind that, but it makes sense.

I do not make my students write in cursive because there isn’t enough money in this profession for me to fight that particular battle. But I do — like the teacher described above — require students to be able to read it. My feeling is that when the day comes that a former student has to go to his boss and ask her to please read her hand-written memo out loud because I never learned how to read cursive in school, I don’t want the abject humiliation to be on my shoulders.

So, to a point, I do sympathize with you that your child should have been taught this useful skill and made to practice it. Where you lose me, however, is your insistence that the teacher stop using cursive in class because your child can’t read it. 

Teachers do not exist to make things easy for your child. Nor are they trying to make things difficult. Their job is to teach. They are trying to prepare your child for a pied world requiring an array of skills, including the ability to read in cursive, a writing method used by millions of people every day. Teachers are not obligated to make a skill disappear from the classroom because your child is too lazy to learn it.

And by using the word laziness, I am being charitable, for the alternatives — selfishness, arrogance, and obstinacy — are traits that are much more difficult to overcome. It would take the average 8th grader all of ten seconds to Google the words how to read cursive. From there, the entire alphabet could be learned in a weekend, including time to practice.

When a parent would rather change the world than change his child, it bodes poorly for both the child’s future and the parent’s, as the consequences will remain in the parent’s lap (or basement) for years to come. When faced with a hill or a slight upward incline (mountain as a metaphor in this case would strain belief), the best parents teach their child to confront it with an attitude of How can I get over it?, not Who will carry me across? or How can I make it disappear?

Hills, you see, are not the enemy. Apathy, ignorance, excuse-making, and helplessness are. To reinforce a small piece of the armor your child will need for fiercer battles ahead, I recommend that you have him rest his phone this weekend and invite him to learn cursive instead.

PERSONALITY CONFLICT leads parent to request a schedule change

My son and his teacher seem to have a personality conflict. I’m afraid it’s going to have a negative impact on his performance. I am thinking about asking the principal for a schedule change. Do you think this is a good idea?

Your complaint is a kinder variant of one that principals and teachers hear a lot: My child isn’t learning from that teacher. Nobody likes her. He’s boring. She’s too hard. He’s too old for them to relate. She’s too young to know what she’s doing. The common theme is that there is a flaw in the teacher that hinders a perfectly good student from learning. Therefore, the child would perform better with a different teacher.

As long as you are doing your part as a parent, there is little danger of an educational catastrophe. Even if a teacher is a terrible fit for your child, as long as A) you demand that your son studies each night, B) you make him read books in lieu of screen time, C) you ensure that he has positive peers and role models, and D) you hold him to high but reasonable standards, he will probably do just fine. Think back to when you were in school. Did you like all your teachers? Probably not, but you turned out okay (assuming you’re not writing this question from prison). 

Obviously I’m not talking about incompetence, negligence, or malfeasance. I’m taking it for granted that the teacher has passed his or her evaluations and isn’t violating laws or regulations. Assuming this is the case, then I recommend that you talk to the teacher face-to-face before taking the concern to the principal. 

However, before doing so, take a moment to consider your expectations: is it fair to ask a teacher (who sometimes has to reach as many 180 different students per day) to be a great fit for every child? Rather than expecting one teacher to meet the personal desires of hundreds of students (and parents), would it be better to encourage your child to adapt to that one teacher? 

In the long run, the answer is yes, which is why I do not believe it is a good idea for you to seek this schedule change. By doing so, you may be failing to teach your child one of the most critical skills every successful person must possess: the ability to overcome obstacles.  

If you give your child strategies to help manage this conflict, the conflict will likely resolve itself quickly, and you will have taught your child an important life lesson about dealing with difficult situations. A student who can overcome the challenge of a disliked teacher and learn in spite of his personal feelings is a student who is more likely to find true success in life. On the other hand, a student who gets switched into a new class because he doesn’t get along with his teacher is apt to become an adult who quits his job because he doesn’t get along with the boss (and thereafter becomes a permanent tenant in your basement). 

There’s a proverb that says, Bloom where you’re planted. Unfortunately, the ability to thrive in an uncomfortable situation doesn’t come naturally for most of us. We have to learn it through experience and encouragement. So when you conference with the teacher about the problem, instead of telling him or her how to be a better fit for your child, you might consider asking, What can I do to help my child be successful in your class? instead.

As much as it may hurt us to admit it because we genuinely love our children and hate to see them struggle, the truth is that greasing the skids, lowering the incline, and bailing them out of tough predicaments has never been a formula for success. It is a recipe for disaster. Avoid the disaster by teaching your child to overcome.    

INNOCENT STUDENT UNJUSTLY accused of illicit gum chewing

My daughter has been assigned a recess detention for chewing gum, but she claims she was actually chewing her cheek. It’s unfair for her to be punished for breaking a rule she didn’t break. How should I address it with the teacher?

Gum. The bane of my existence. I enjoy a good chew as well as the next chap, but students have not adopted the first useful skill in managing its use, transportation, or disposal. According to students, they almost never chew gum. Cheeks, dental wax, paper, tongues, cough drops, and, my favorite, nothing, however, are very frequently munched on in class. 

That’s why early in my career I changed my class rule from No gum to No chewing. If a student’s jaw is moving up and down in a manner that suggests mastication, I assign a consequence. I don’t have time to get out my magnifying glass, have the kids open wide, and search the contents of their mouths to see if they’re telling the truth. To your child’s teacher, I recommend a similar course of action.

Since we’re not talking a major violation of anyone’s civil rights, the remedy here is relatively simple, and for it, I owe my father a debt of gratitude.

When I was in third grade, we had a substitute in library class. We were told to read quietly, which, dutiful nerd that I was, I did with great zeal. The next day when the real teacher returned, she called me up to her desk, told me the sub had written down my name for playing around, and assigned me to write 50 sentences by the next day. 

This is an outrage! I barked. She fingered the wrong man! I was doing everything I was supposed to do! My ranting was to no avail. She believed the sub’s word over mine. I will never bow to your tyranny! I vowed. You’ll be hearing from my father!

I stormed home in a huff, told my father what had happened, demanded that he venture down to the school to assail the librarian, and insisted I wasn’t going to write any sentences. Oh, yes, you are, he decreed. 

His reasoning (beyond his usual demand for unflinching obedience to the teacher) seemed even more unfair than the initial offense. He said, There have probably been times when you were playing around and got away with it, so consider this justice for the times you never got caught. More fearful of my father’s consequences than the librarian’s, I wrote the stupid sentences, though I pouted and fumed over every vowel and consonant. 

But by the time I was a young adult, I was able to see the wisdom of my father’s edict. It’s no fair! most of us cried a thousand times in our childhood. And a thousand times Life’s not fair! was echoed back to us. This isn’t to say there aren’t times when we need to stand up for injustice, but if we get into the habit of fighting every minor act of incivility tooth and nail, it’s all we’ll ever be doing. That’s when the true joys of life will pass us right by. Life’s too short for that. 

So my recommendation is rather than change the teacher, think about changing your daughter in a way that nudges her closer to the adult you want her to be. Chances are she’s like most of us: she’s probably chewed gum at some point and not been nabbed. Have her consider it cosmic justice. Share with her ways she can manage unfairness, encourage her to rise above it, and coach her to endure minor setbacks with a positive attitude. 

If you don’t like that, then try this: you stay out of it. Have her go in before school and politely explain to the teacher what really happened. If the teacher takes away the detention, great; you’ve taught your daughter to stand up respectfully for herself. If not, then you’ve given her some much-needed experience at coping with life’s minor injustices.

TWO KINDS OF TEACHERS and parents: instillers and extractors

My son puts his all into the papers he writes, and when he gets them back, they’re marked up with errors, but very little of the good writing is praised and he’s demoralized. Another problem is the assignments. I think if his teacher would assign more creative writing topics,