Everyone makes mistakes… even teachers. These parents realize just how true that is when they help their children with their homework and realize something isn’t right. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Your Daughter Had An Accident”
“I was at work. The phone at my desk rang. It was the school office calling me.
‘Mr. Phillips, this is Mrs. Smith (not her real name), I am calling you to tell you that your daughter had an accident, today.’
My heart immediately sank. The tension rose in my heart as I had just jumped into Lake Superior while there were still ice blocks washing up on shore.
‘What’s happened? Is she okay?’ Waiting anxiously for each word.
‘Yes, I guess, Mr. Phillips. Your (11-year-old, mind you) daughter urinated on herself in class and we need you to bring her a new set of clothing.’
—-Long pause—-
Internally, I was overjoyed that it wasn’t a physical injury of some kind; but then my mind started to insert a few questions into my consciousness.
Me: ‘Wait, what did you say’
(Mrs. Smith repeated her statement.)
Me: ‘Where was she?’
Smith: ‘She was in class.’
Me: ‘Where is she now?’
Smith: ‘Well, she’s in the lobby of the school office.’
Me: ‘When did this happen?’ (Her reply was muddled a bit. I found out later that it was more like an hour.)
Me: ‘Is she still in her wet clothing?’
Smith: ‘Yes.’
At this point, I was an hour away from the school and my wife was unavailable. I reminded them of those facts…
Apparently, my daughter was taught by the teacher that girls (a lie just because the teacher didn’t like kids getting up and disrupting her class), could hold their bladder longer than class, so no girl should have to get up and go to the bathroom, during class.
As she explained that my daughter deliberately peed herself to get out of class, I stopped Mrs. Smith and demanded to speak to the vice principal.
Mr. Jones (not his real name) picked up the phone. ‘Mr. Jones. Hi, Mr. Phillips, your daughter is sitting on a towel here in the main office. How soon can you get here? It’s starting to smell.’
My eyes are starting to bleed, at this point. With all my military bearing now completely gone, my words came fast and full of ‘pappa bear.’
ME: ‘Mr. Jones, I am about an hour away from school. I can’t leave work. However, I will be picking my daughter up from school today. When I do pick her up, here’s what I expect. I expect my daughter will be clean, dressed in fresh clothing, and full of stories about how she was apologized to by you, your teacher, and the principal of the school for not allowing her to go to the restroom when she politely asked. If I find she’s anything other than what I just described, then I will drive my daughter in her urine-soaked smelly clothing to the emergency room at the local hospital, to make sure her bladder isn’t ruptured, then to my attorney’s office, so that he can participate in teaching you all accurate information about the illegality of physically keeping a child from going to the restroom! On top of that, I will be speaking at great length to the school board about how irresponsible and cruel it was for you to do this to someone’s child! Do I make myself clear?’
That situation still grieves me terribly, every time I think of it. It’s not just information that comes to our kids, all mixed up and twisted. They are being manipulated by school staff, as a commodity. When you see stuff like this, it makes you so angry!
I then picked up my daughter, and her clothes were nicer than the ones I sent her to school with. She was clean and gave me a big hug. She was sitting some distance away from the vice principal while he was on the phone with me, but she heard me quite clearly explain their error to them.
I told her, ‘If you hear anything in school that you doubt for one second, come to me. Call your mom. Don’t ever be disrespectful; but if you ever have to go to the restroom, you excuse yourself politely, and you get up and go. I will back you!’
Another hug.”
Who Remembers BEDMAS In Math Class?
“Apparently, my daughter’s fifth-grade teacher (who taught her all the subjects) had never heard of ‘priority of operators’ (what some people call BEDMAS: you first solve Brackets, then Exponentiations, then Divisions and Multiplications, and finally Additions and Substractions).
One day, my daughter asked for my help with her math homework (at the time, I was getting my M.Sc. in math); it seems the teacher taught them wrong, and not even consistently wrong (there was no method to the madness in the examples he presented).
So we started looking at the first one of these examples: compute 3 + 2 x 4, or something like that.
I explained to her that ‘you first do the multiplication, and then the addition.’
She said, ‘That is not how the teacher did it.’
I was flabbergasted. I felt I had two options: either I let it slide (well, no, that was NOT an option), or I told her that ‘her teacher had no idea what he was talking about.’
But this would mean to completely disqualify the teacher for her, and that is not something I felt comfortable doing (unless it is clear that the guy is a complete idiot, which as multiple examples in this thread show, happens way too often).
Fortunately, I was able to come up with a third path: I got a scientific calculator and punched the numbers and operators in the same order as in the problem statement, and voilà, the calculator agreed with me! Of course, this made it clear to her that this was the right way to solve these problems, yes?
NO! She still could not believe that her teacher was wrong. After checking a couple more examples with the calculator, she was finally convinced, that she could do her homework perfectly.”
Are Sharks Mammals?
“My son was in the 4th grade when his science teacher called furious that he had been disrespectful in class. I asked her what had happened.
She said, ‘I was teaching the students the difference between mammals and fish. I told them that sharks are mammals and whales are fish. He interrupted me and told me I had made a mistake. I, of course, told him I was right and he said ‘Who gave you a diploma?’’
I told her I would talk to my son about his rudeness. I then called the principal and made an appointment to see him and the teacher together. In the meeting, I asked her to repeat her story and she did, still insisting that whales were fish and sharks were mammals. The principal just shook his head and said, ‘and I hired her…’
I did talk to my son about being polite to everyone, even if they are wrong.”
How Many Great Lakes Are There?
“My mom grew up in Minnesota and her parents were from Wisconsin. Being military, we as a family, had lived in both Minnesota and Chicago – prior to this. This is important.
We moved to Texas and my brother was in elementary school, I want to say third grade. He comes home one day and tells us that they were learning about the 4 Great Lakes. Yeah, you read that right. He said 4.
My mother, being the insanely intelligent woman she is (she’s got 2 master’s degrees!) gently corrected him, because we all knew there were 5 Great Lakes. She wrote a note to the teacher, with the mnemonic that we learned up North. H-O-M-E-S which translates to Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.
His teacher wrote back and said my mother was wrong. Mom wrote one more note, same thing. Mom took my brother to school one morning, she actually took off teaching her own students in another school for this and met with the teacher and Principal.
The teacher legitimately believed there were 4 Great Lakes. Both mom and principal used Google to prove her wrong. THEN, Mom made the teacher walk my brother to his class and apologize to him and the entire class for the misinformation. Letting them know that it’s okay to ask questions and be wrong – even adults are wrong sometimes.
Mom made sure the lesson wasn’t only for my brother. I love her.”
How Do You Spell This Hairstyle?
“I will forever remember this teacher. He claimed that he teaches English. And he does it extremely well. He has 7 years of experience in teaching. He taught primary 3–6 students in an all-girl school.
My niece came back from school one afternoon complaining that she had been scolded and chastised by the teacher because she was the only one in class who spelled a word wrongly during a class test.
“It is a hairstyle in which some, or most of the hair on the head is pulled away from the face, gathered and secured at the back of the head with a hair tie, hair clip, or other similar devices, and allowed to hang freely from that point”.
Of course for my little niece, the above explanation came with a picture illustrating precisely what is explained. Her class, which consisted of 34 students including her, was asked to write the answer on a piece of paper.
33 of them wrote/spelled one similar word. My niece wrote/spelled differently.
33 students spelled the word, ‘PONYTALE.’
My niece spelled it ‘PONYTAIL.’
The teacher insisted she was wrong and penalized her. She had to write ONE PAGE of the word PONYTALE as punishment.
I told her immediately to tell the teacher that I was going to see him about the word if he did not check his facts vocabulary and spelling by the time she finished school tomorrow. I told my niece to tell him that I was going to the Headmistress first, then bring the lady to his class.
She came back from school the next day with a BIG SMILE on her face. She said that the teacher re-marked the paper and she was the only one who got it right for that word. I asked if she told the teacher what I said I would do.
She hugged me and said ‘Thank you (god)mom…I love you….'”
