Classroom Drama

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

About halfway through my teaching career, I got an email from a parent who threatened to sue me. She didn’t like the curriculum I was using to teach beginning journalism, and even worse, she didn’t like the grade I had given her daughter first quarter. Since this parent was an actual lawyer with an actual reputation for successful courtroom drama, I was a bit unnerved. OK . . maybe more than a “bit”.

Her daughter was a good student, a regular attender, and a solid writer. The problem? Current events. A year or so before I had her daughter in class, one of Salt Lake’s major newspapers reported on a study which had been done at several (I think, it was a long time ago) state universities. It asked journalism students attending Utah colleges 20 or so simple questions about local events. A vast majority of the respondents could identify Karl Malone and John Stockton. Fewer than 1 in 5 could identify the Governor of Utah or anything about major Utah issues, for that matter. I thought this was a little alarming for people who intended to make informing the public their careers, so I instituted a regular 10 minute discussion about the highlights of local and national news at the beginning of each journalism class.

This student argued that it was a class to produce the school newspaper, not learn about actual news; she didn’t bother to take the weekly quiz on those discussions. So, she earned a “B” instead of an “A” at the end of that quarter on her report card. Her mother was not pleased.

We met after school, the three of us. Her mother appeared wearing a sophisticated suit, expensive high heels, and a designer handbag on her shoulder—a brand I’d heard of but never personally seen. I gulped.

The mother pulled out a small notebook which she referred to regularly as she spent twenty minutes laying out the case against the grade I had given her daughter. Her evidence was carefully calculated to back me up against a wall. “Well,” she said as she concluded. “What do you say to that?”

By then, I was on the edge of hyperventilating. Why hadn’t I invited an administrator to this meeting? I forced the panic down and took a deep breath. I had opened my mouth to answer when her daughter interrupted.

Looking directly at her mother, she said, “Mom. Mrs. Voorhies is right. I refused to take the quizzes on current events because I think they are dumb. I got the grade I deserved. Leave my teacher alone.”

I can’t say which of us was more shocked. Her mother? Or me?

The lawyer stared at her client. The daughter stared right back. “Well,” her mother said. “I guess that’s it then.” And she put her notes back in her purse, rose gracefully from the student desk at which she had been sitting and walked out.

The daughter smiled at me, and I smiled back. We never spoke of that afternoon again.

Mothers. They spend a lifetime modeling the lessons that matter for their children. This daughter clearly had one of the great ones.

Happy Mother’s Day.