A teacher was left gobsmacked after an ‘entitled’ parent requested a one-on-one with her to discuss her son’s failing grades – only to demand her to change them because he ‘deserves to pass’
A teacher has been left outraged after an ‘entitled’ mum ordered her to change her son’s F grades because he ‘deserves to pass’. The high school English teacher explained how she has been teaching 10th-grade students for the first time – but never expected to be confronted by one of their parents over her marking.
She claims the parent requested a one-on-one meeting to discuss her son’s progress in class, knowing he’d failed a few assignments. Wanting to help the student out, the teacher agreed to attend the meeting and was pleased with the mum’s proactive response to his schoolwork.
She said on Reddit : “I have this one student who throughout the school year didn’t try on his work, examples would be that he’d only half finish worksheets or not participate in what we were doing in class. I gave him plenty of chances to make up work and even do some extra credit as I didn’t want to see any of my students fail, though I know I can’t prevent everyone from failing and they have to put effort in for themselves.
“Well even after all that he still slacked off and basically didn’t care about it, he cared about passing, he just didn’t want to do the work from what I can assume from the interaction. Anyway, I got an email from his mother the other day asking for a parent-teacher conference, something that I’ve done a lot lately since it’s only a week until the end of the school year. I agree and set a date.”
However, the teacher got more than she bargained for when the mum sat down to discuss her son’s work, as she started complaining about her grading. She added: “In the conference, the mother starts to tell me about how her son is passing, but barely passing, his other classes and she really wants him to pass all his classes. I told her that I wanted all my students to pass as well because I care about all of their futures but he hasn’t put forth the effort to pass the class.
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“She then tells me that he did the work and put in effort on what he did do in class and that I should just drop all the other grades that made him fail for him so he can pass. I told her no that it wasn’t going to work like that.” Trying to reach a compromise, the teacher suggested he complete some extra credit work to boost his overall grade but noted how he still wouldn’t pass if he didn’t carry it out to the required standard.
The teacher said: “She then proceeds to tell me that she’ll have him do them if I drop the rest of his failing grades. This went on for some time with not much progress being made until I finally told her that the best I could do was replace one of his lowest grades with what he makes on an extra credit assignment but I wouldn’t do anything else to which she huffed that ‘we’ll see about that.’
“After she ended up leaving and the next day I gave him the extra credit but as the deadline to turn them in to me looms closer I doubt that he’ll do it and he’ll fail either way.” Commenting on her post, one user said: “She’s gonna be sitting in with his future boss asking for a full day’s pay for a few minutes of work!
Another user added: “Unless he has accommodations, don’t do it. She will tell other parents you can be bullied. (I just finished my 30th year teaching high school English) You have graded his work the same way you have graded the other 120-180 students you teach. It’s not fair of her to try and bully you.
“And if an admin asks you to change it tell them you want it in writing and signed stating that this is a direct order (in my state falsifying grades is illegal). If you have a union and aren’t a member, join now and have a union rep present at any meetings regarding this matter.” A third user said: “That entitled mother is not doing her kid any favors. When I used to work in a high school, we had parents like that.”
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