I'm Becoming a Wereferret

When I was a teacher, I used to hate to find a special ed kid on my roster.  It wasn't the kid, though, that made me groan.  I could handle the preferential seating needs, the talking out in class, the tics, the meds, the struggles through vocabulary words.

What drove me nuts were the parents.

GAWD at the special ed parents of my tenth and twelfth graders.  They were pushy.  They were never satisfied.  They acted like I didn't know what I was doing.  They expected me to fail and were on top of every single mistake I made.  I wanted to eat my own face so many times dealing with these parents...they were like rabid little ferrets biting at my ankles every time I turned around.

And now?

Now I'm a rabid ferret. A wereferret, if you will.

Or at least, I understand how one becomes a wereferret.  It has finally started to dawn on me that by the time a special ed student makes it to high school, the parents have become old hat at what's going to happen:

There's going to be a meeting.  The parents will say, "My kid needs X, Y, and Z.  He needs X, Y, and Z because of 1, 2, and 3.  Our experience--you know, the experience that comes with living with a child for, say, fourteen years--has been that if the kid doesn't get X, then 1 will come into play, which will make it impossible for Y to happen because of 2.  Don't get us started on what heinous, awful 3-type behavior will occur if you don't do Z.  DO Z!!  For the love of all that is holy, DOOOOOO ZZZZZZ."

The parents will produce the documentation, the recommendations, the helpful website links, the therapists' phone numbers.  They will smile and shake hands and talk about how they just know this school year is going to be a success.

And so, the teachers do Z.  At least, MOST of them do Z.  The PE teacher won't, because she can't figure out how to make it work in her class, but that's okay, because it's the last period of the day and if 3-type behavior happens, the kid can just go home early, right?

Most of the time Y gets done.  I mean, if it doesn't get done, of course the kid falls into the habits that are caused by 2, but the teachers can work around those.  And the other kids aren't really worried by them.  They just ignore the kid when he does weird stuff, but that's okay, because kids affected by 2 don't really always get along with other kids, anyway, so he's used to being ignored.

X is just so tedious, really.  Doing it every day is just so hard and if it gets forgotten every once in a while, it isn't really a big deal, because the kid is making good grades.  He passed his latest standardized test, didn't he?  Oh, and by the way, the school is going to use 1 as a way to get more funding.

Meanwhile, the parents are at home, listening to their kid talk about how he can't make friends or find his homework list or understand a concept in math or concentrate on what his teachers are saying.  He comes home with wrinkled papers (if he comes home with papers at all.)  He THINKS he has a test on Wednesday, but he isn't sure.  And so the parents email the teacher and they ask about the isolation and the list and math class and his organizational strategies and THE TEACHERS DON'T WRITE BACK.  They don't write back because they are exhausted by teaching the other kids who don't have 1, 2, or 3 and who don't need X, Y, and Z.  They are worn out from dealing with the kids who have 6, 8, and 32 and who need a strange combination of P and lower case J.  They have children at home or a party to go to or a class to take after work and, frankly, they don't really care that for the last ten years, the kid's parents have been writing unanswered emails because teachers have not done X, Y, and Z.  

I know that they don't care, because there were plenty of times that I didn't respond to the emails.  Or I responded to them a day or two later.  Or I responded to them with a lofty, icy tone.  After all, I had been teaching for FOUR years, so surely to every god in the pantheon I knew what I was doing better than a kid's parent.  I would go over those emails with a heavy dose of snark with my friends, outlining the several ways that the kid in question was an ass or an idiot or just so dang difficult.  And the mothers?   They were simply RUINING their children with their over-parenting.  Those kids would be so lucky to graduate and get away from them.  What, did they have nothing better to do with their days than write lengthy emails about how their little shmoopy just couldn't find his English paper?

This dang petard I just got hoisted up by chaffs, y'all.

To the parents of the special ed kids I taught:  I'm sorry I was an ass.  You were asses, too, but I understand  why now.  There was no reason for you to expect that I would do the job you paid me to do, and all too often, I didn't do it.  You were right to call me on it, and I hope your kid did well despite me being an ass. 

To the teachers of the special ed kids who work so hard to do it right:  bless you.  I know how hard it is and the fact that you do it right despite being emailed and called and hounded by frightened wereferrets is a testament to your awesomeness.

To all my fellow wereferrets:  keep up the good fight.  Write those emails, make those phone calls, bite every damn ankle you have to for your kids.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go write an email and find some ointment for my petard rash.

Here's who I'll be writing emails for:

Lest you think he's too angelic: