I am a special education teacher. A lot of the parents don?t give a sh*t about their kids, especially the parents of special education students. I can say this because only about seven out of twenty parents actually come to their scheduled parent/teacher conference.
It is often a relief that some parents do not come. Coming up with nice things to say about their kids is always tough. Basically, I have to lie to their f*cking faces. I feed them with a load of BS. I do this for two reasons. First, I have so many negative things to say about them, that throwing in a positive every now and then alleviates the tension during these conferences. Second, I force myself to say nice things so the parents don?t go home and beat their kid?s ass. Seriously, this happens a lot where I work.
Only one of the parents showed up today to meet with me out of the six I had scheduled. And I am convinced that the only reason this mother showed up was because we have called Child Protective Services on her so many times, that she now fears losing her daughter, who is severely f*cked up, and she will be the mothers meal ticket for the rest of her God-Awful existence.
A few things you should know about this mother before I get into the content of the conference.
1) She works at AM/PM
2) She has two kids from 2 different fathers, and has never once been married.
3) She lives with her two kids in a large, low income-housing complex.
4) Her son is overall a nice kid, who I feel bad for because he has to play ?mom? to his younger sister.
5) Her daughter, who is in my class, was born addicted to crack-cocaine and with fetal alcohol syndrome. She is a cute girl, but can barely function. She knows about 25 words, two of which are ?Fooker? and ?Bitch?. I work with her on menial things such as drawing lines, signing colors, color recognition, and counting 1-3. She has severe behavior problems. She kicks, hits, screams, bites, etc. Mostly, this is due to her inability to communicate any other way. Still, it?s ridiculous.