Words Cannot Express.......

The day that I had today. Let me start by saying that I always hate the Mondays after I'm out of town all weekend. I also stopped checking my school email on Sunday nights because there never fails to be a parent email that will just piss me off and ruin what is left of my weekend. So the first email I get this morning is from a mother of a kid in Dean's band. She is emailing me, I assume, because she was in my class last year and I teach her sectionals. She is emailing to let me know that her drama queen daughter (drama queen is the understatement of the century) has informed her that they were told to schedule their lives around their band sectional and she wasn't going to be able to make it to her sectional this week and she was very concerned that she was going to be punished severely for her absence. (We asked them to schedule tutorials for days other than their sectional and the coaches have okayed them to miss practice on the day of their sectional. Basically we told them that they need to be at sectionals no matter what. However, some students have had conflicts and these students have come in to make up their missed time on another day - no big deal). So this lady is going off because she is supposed to be induced on Thursday, the day of said sectional, and she feels that her daughter should be there for the birth of her baby brother. She feels that we are being unreasonable by asking her to schedule the birth of her son around our sectional. YEAH - that's EXACTLY what we are asking her to do. And she better let grandpa know that if he's going to keel, it should be on a Friday so that she can get to that dang sectional! Now I see where her daughter gets it. What teacher on earth is that unreasonable? I don't expect people to schedule births around my sectionals. You would think parents would understand that we say these things so that the kids don't take advantage and skip every week for whatever stupid reason they can come up with. I forwarded the email directly to Dean and he sent her an email that made me laugh. I have no patience for this kind ignorance. Especially when her daughter has a tendency (again, tendency is an understatement) to exaggerate EVERYTHING in her life and turn what should be a minor issue into a life altering scenario.
I have so many other great stories about teaching and I will share all of them in a new series of blogs called "The Joys of Teaching". Amusing stories that will hopefully make you laugh.