Parents who bully teachers...NOT OK

Bullying. As a teacher, I can’t tell you how many presentations I have listened to about bullying. What we should do if we hear/see something, what to do if a kid comes to you because someone is bullying him/her. Obviously it is a concern for parents, and truly it is a concern for kids. Bullying does happen in school. I wish it didn’t, but it is there.

The recent stories on the news about teachers bullying their students, especially the one about the boy with Autism who lived in New Jersey and his dad secretly tape recorded the teacher bullying his son—made me think.  What about when parents bully teachers?

I am not saying it was ok for this teacher to call the little boy names by any means, but couldn’t the father have taken a different approach? Couldn’t he have met with the administration, first? Couldn’t he have expressed his concerns to a higher up, which then would have monitored the situation more closely? Granted, maybe he was concerned that the bullying would get worse if he alerted the higher ups? Maybe he had, but nothing had been done? I don’t know for sure.

Let me make this very clear. It is not ok for teachers to bully their students. It is also not ok for parents to bully their child’s teachers.  

I have been very fortunate. In six years of teaching, I have not had many parents on my case. (Knock on wood.) I had one mother who emailed me (and her son’s other teachers) 2-3 times a day for a few weeks, but our administrator put a stop to that.

This thought popped into my mind because just this week, one of my friends resigned from an awesome school with a fantastic STEM program because she just was sick and tired of being harassed by the parents. It was a group of about five parents, but they were relentless. They would harass her when she went to the grocery store, they would put her down to every person they could give an earful to. I know this teacher loves her students, she does her job, and she does it well, but apparently these parents just decided that it wasn’t good enough.

My mom is retiring this June after teaching for 30 years. I know of many times when I have talked to her on the phone and she has told me about her day, and truly, she has been bullied in one form or another. Granted, the parents she deals with on a daily basis are very different than the parents that I have in my district. The parents she has fight her tooth and nail over grades, and dress code (which my mom is kind of "old school" and she follows the school handbook to a T.)  She had a meeting this year where she was afraid the parent was going to come across the table and choke her—the parent had made threats to her--and this was a parent that just got out of prison.  I think she had a right to be concerned. I also think that if you were to ask my mom about the hardest part of her job, it wasn't planning lessons for 180+ kids, but it was dealing with the parents.

So yes, parents do bully teachers. I believe it happens more than it is reported. But I also think that teachers see this as part of the job and don’t recognize these harassing parents as what they are, bullies.  

I don’t know what kinds of laws are out there to protect teachers from parents who are bullies. But, I just hate to hear about good teachers leaving the profession/moving to another school because the parents are so difficult.