Stories From My Teaching Days - "Please Help My Daughter."

When the gifted kids went to their gifted classes, I tried to have something enriching for my undocumented gifted students who remained. on one occasion we made sculptures of ourselves. They were very good likenesses.

"Please Help My Daughter"

In my second year of teaching in Illinois, two parents took me out to dinner in a very nice restaurant in Glenview, Illinois. They told me it was the first time that they had ever taken a teacher out to dinner. They related how they wanted to purchase a new house, but they were going to wait so their daughter could have the opportunity to be in my class this year, and next year when I took my fourth graders up to fifth grade. They loved my class. They loved me. Their daughter was excited about learning. They loved their daughter being challenged. They were both medical doctors. They talked to the school board letting them know what an exceptional teacher they believed I was. When parents and teachers work together, a child's education is significantly improved.

Then they shared a story about my principal. The mom told me how she went to my principal asking her to put her daughter Aimee in a kindergarten class with at least one student she knew. She related how Aimee was very afraid to go to school. She was an only child. The principal said firmly that it was against the school's policy to move students based on parent requests. The request was denied.

The parent told me how she had been working in her house that day and she was wearing her oldest clothes. An old sweatshirt. An old pair of worn jeans. Her hair not fixed. She wasn't wearing makeup. She looked impoverished She looked disheveled. She looked like she was cleaning her garage, but couldn't own a garage. Too poor. She looked like she lived in one of the subsidised apartments that had students attending our school. A nobody, an unimportant person.

While this mom walked out of the principal's office past the secretary, the secretary said hello to her. Then the secretary commented to the principal when she came out of her office, "Oh, I saw you were talking to Doctor so and so. Isn't she wonderful?' The principal didn't know she was a doctor. She thought she was from the apartments.

When the doctor got home the phone was ringing. It was the principal. She said she was going to make an exception and move Aimee to a kindergarten where she knew another girl. So much for school policy. So much for fairness. So much for equal treatment. So much for integrity. Now  both doctors knew the kind of person the principal was and how it depended on who you were and they never trusted her again.

Their daughter Aimee grew up and became an attorney who defends doctors in law suits.