How to Protect Your Child from False Accusations at School

Author : Daniela

My daughter and I were sitting with her grade five teacher at a parent teacher night. I was loving that my daughter finally had a male teacher after four female teachers on the trot. Now, not that there is anything wrong with female teachers at all, I just wanted my daughter to have a bit of balance in her early childhood schooling and this was the only male teacher in the school at the time; Mr Kauffman. So for me, this would be an interesting year because I was a single parent of our only child at the time.

So it’s parent teacher night we’re going through the usuals; you know, “she’s good at this, could be better at this,” and so on. My daughter is sitting to my left, and the teacher is sitting across from me with with a ‘not quite big enough’ desk between us. We’re all sitting on three quarter sized chairs, where the only person that looked comfortable was my daughter.

Our 15 minutes is getting close to an end, we have to move on to let other students have their time with Mr Kauffman, when Mr Kauffman leans back in his chair, and looks me straight in the eye. “Look Mr….. , your daughter is loved by everyone, I mean, all the students love her, all the teachers think she’s adorable, but we have a real problem here,” (pause for effect) My Kauffman looks down at his file, and without looking at me says, “Her maths is really bad, we really need to get her maths up, like…. it’s bad”

Now, I don’t usually pride myself on my one liners, however, I immediately came back with this: “So what your saying is that, as a parent I’m doing a wonderful job of teaching my daughter to be loving and caring, and what you want me to do now is help you with your job of teaching my daughter maths?” Mr Kauffman by now was already looking up at me, a smile began to creep across his face, he leaned back in his chair, and I mean, did that lean where the chair was only balancing on two legs at the back, that thing that teachers tell students off for, he was looking above my head towards the ceiling or the back of the room as it seemed like he was replaying what I just said, when after about three seconds Mr Kauffman said … “Yeah, I guess I am” as he put the front two feet of his chair back on the floor, and a smile that was at the time looking reassuringly at me. I replied that Okay, I’ll see what Iv can fit in wth regards to her homework, however as far as I knew she didn’t get any maths homework. The “Aha” light bulb went off as we both looked at my daughter, and I said “Right” I looked back at Mr Kauffman and he nodded with that parent / teacher silent agreement that we do.

It wasn’t until I got to the car when my daughter says to me. “Best line every Dad” as we’re leaving the car park, she goes over the line again verbatim and says “I cant wait to tell Paige (her best friend at the time) what you said. After I was looking the other way to check for traffic and trying to knock the smile off my face and take the laughter out of my voice I said “Yeah, and you better bring that maths homework home young lady, or you wont be able to stay at this school so you ‘can’ speak to Paige.”

Nothing more was said until we got to the driveway about seven or eight minutes later when she repeats the line as I turn the ignition off. She laughs out loud… I had nothing…. started laughing as well.

The threat of not being able to go to that school if the maths grades didn’t pick up, didn’t hold water. I think she knew that. Maths grades came up a bit, just enough to pass, for the rest of her life, at high school as well.

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