Children in Class Mirror Their Parents

I’m a sixth-grade teacher at a middle school in the Los Angeles school district. On the first day of each school year, I say to my students: “Everyone is smart, and everyone has potential. You all start off with an A. With your effort and hard work, you can keep the A. But you might lose it if you don’t take the work seriously. You are responsible for your actions.”

However, when the first semester grades are announced, only a few students keep their A’s. To the good students I am a “great” teacher, and their parents thank me. However, to the students with grades below B, I am often a mean and incapable teacher, and their parents often blame me.

I too often hear, “Why did you give me a D? It’s not fair.” I reply, “I didn’t give you the D. You earned it.” There are many other student complaints: “My parents promised me $200 for good grades. Now I won’t get the money because of you.” “I can’t have my birthday party because you gave me an F.” “Now I can’t watch TV.” I get the message: I am responsible for them losing privileges.

I don’t classify my students simply by the grades they earn. Rather, over my nine years of teaching, I have come to categorize students into two groups: the Responsibles, those students who take responsibility for their own actions and related consequences; and the Irresponsibles, those who do not. Invariably, my A students are the Responsibles.

I remember two parents who were not happy about their children’s grades. One student received a D in my math class. His mother asked for a parent conference. She arrived with no smile at my greeting, sat down and started talking. “My son told me that you don’t explain anything. He doesn’t understand your accent. He’s always turned in his assignments, but the report card showed that he has missed many.” I asked her, “Have you checked and actually seen his completed assignments?” Obviously, she hadn’t. “I know my son very well,” she said. “My son always got an A in math when he was in elementary school. And he got an award from the principal when he graduated.” The conference concluded with her asking, “Do you dislike my son?”

When this mother left, I went to the counseling office and pulled out her son’s elementary school record. His standardized test score in math was considerably below average, and there was not a single A or B in math in his record.

While I was there, a counselor came to me and said that another mother “had complained that your math was not challenging enough, so she asked to change her daughter’s class.” In truth, the girl had failed my class because of her second-grade math skills in a sixth-grade pre-algebra class, so many missing assignments and low quiz scores. The daughter, a genius only in her mother’s mind, was over her head -- not unchallenged -- in my regular math class.

“The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Parents need to take responsibility and not blame others for their kids’ failings. Only then will the kids learn to take more responsibility as students. It’s “not fair” to your child to let him or her grow up to be an Irresponsible.

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Pyung Kim Conant is a teacher at Palms Middle School.