White Teacher Fails Part 4: Parents

It’s my sixth period honors environmental studies class, and I’m tired. Who knew that teaching students remotely would be so much more exhausting than in-person lessons?

I have students analyze two global maps: one showing the countries that contribute the most carbon dioxide emissions, the other showing the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. My students, mostly juniors and seniors, quickly grasp that the relationship is inverse. The unfairness of it.

I’m using two screens: one for presenting, one to look at my students, to see if they have questions. In the lower left-hand corner I see a student smiling slyly as he drinks from a can. I take a screen shot and zoom in. I see that it is a hard seltzer.

After the lesson, I send an email to the student’s parents in the few minutes I have before tutoring. I want to let the parents know as quickly as possible in case, for example, their child was going to get into a car drunk.

His mother emailed me back that evening. She was furious that I had cc’d the principal on the email. She said that instead of telling the administration, I should just have talked to her son. That I should have considered how my email would affect her feelings.

Since reading her email, I’ve had trouble sleeping. What keeps me up at night is much bigger than this one incident. It’s the pattern.

A white friend of mine was telling me about how his son was acting up in school: not staying in his seat, talking during lessons, etc. The teacher observed his misbehavior and attributed it to boredom, to a lack of challenge. She helped the student transfer into an honors class.

A black student was transferred from honors physical science into my “gen ed” science class because his teacher was tired of his misbehavior: not staying in his seat, talking during lessons, etc. The student became bored. The student received multiple suspensions.

A white student at my school wrote an “Onion” style article titled, “Take Toilets out of Juul Rooms.” The satire lampooned the crowds of students gleefully getting their THC or nicotine fix in bathroom stalls between classes. Students got caught with the stuff all the time with consequences so minimal that it was all a joke.

A Hispanic student, one of the only POC in my honors class, was caught dealing marijuana at school. He said he was trying to help his single mother buy food. He was suspended for most of a semester. His little brother took to hoarding the free snacks at tutoring.

When I close my eyes at night, I see Kenosha: The black man murdered by police; the white teenager walking past the police after commiting murder.

I am ashamed that I have allowed white parents to bully me to the point where I think twice before giving consequences to their children. I am ashamed that I continue to teach honors classes when I know that our district’s “highly capable cohort” is not really about academics but rather white supremacy. I am ashamed to be part of a system that is so undeniably broken, racist and unjust.

I put the email from the seltzer drinker’s mom in the trash. And then I order another bottle of melatonin.