Calling mom (or grandma or auntie)

So...I'm posting twice in the same day, a way to make up for lost time and also to break it up. Maybe a blogger faux pas, but oh well...

I promised to write about my school before...I teach in a predominately African-American school on the west side. Most of the students come from low income households, many living in a single parent household or living with a relative (aunt, grandmother, grandfather) who is not their biological mom or dad. And culturally, my students and I come from very different backgrounds. When I was in grade school, if a teacher told me that my behavior made my parents look bad, I wouldn't have cared a bit. But for my students, the strongest statement I can make about their behavior, good or bad, is that it reflects on the way they were raised. And they don't want to make their parents look bad. For that reason, parent phone calls have been a pretty effective classroom management technique.

Yesterday, I found out just how effective parent phone calles could be. A student "Derek" was messing around in line on the way to computer. At first I was going to pull him out of his computer class, but let him fix his behavior and have a second chance. When he got back in line he started messing around right away, so he lost his computer time. He came back to the class and had to write a letter of apology to his mom. The letter kept getting longer and longer because he wanted to complain and talk back. Eventualy it was ridiculous, he had to write six pages and he was still messing around. So I called his mom.

Derek didn't like that. After I got off the phone he said, "Ms. D, you're always calling my mom. Why can't I call your mom?" "Well, do you want to call my mom." "Yeah," he said a bit defiantly. I immediately dialed my mom, at which point his eyes got big and I could see he didn't quite know what to do. As I said hello and told my mom what was going on, he actually closed his eyes and plugged his ears to avoid having to talk to my mom. But I made him talk. The conversation was short as the phone hit bad reception right after he started talking, but after that the damage was done. He was really sheepish and I think he was a bit freaked out realizing that I'm a real person with a real mom. For the rest of the day he did his work and he stopped messing around. And it definately gave me something to smile about.

Now, read on...