Monday, January 11, 2010

Oh Yes, We Read Minds. It's in the Job Description.

I usually check my school email account about once a day. There are times that The Principal will send out a blast to let us know about something that's coming up, a parent may drop a line about a sick kid, or even a student could be emailing about a homework question. (Although, truth be told, I get more spam than anything.) Anyhow, I notice an email from Mr. Math asking about what day this week we could do a parent meeting in the afternoon after school.

I think this is a bit odd as he mentions in the email that he just got off the phone with the parent. Which is weird. Because it's Sunday. And I know he's not in The Building (we can't get in there once the alarm is set without causing quite an uproar with the local authorities), and I can't imagine that he's home on a Sunday afternoon dialing up parents to set meetings. Even though this is a parent we've been trying to get a hold of for months without any success whatsoever - no return phone calls, no email responses, no response to notes in student's agenda

When we returned after four days out of school, due to our two snow days, I found out the rest of the story.

Apparently The Father sent Mr. Math a very irate email on Sunday demanding to know why - WHY? - he was so RUDE as to IGNORE the TWO voice mail messages his wife left on Mr. Math's phone on Thursday and Friday.

Okay, let's think about this a minute.

We had a snow day on Thursday. And another one on Friday. And hopefully this parent realized when she called around noon on both days that her child wasn't at school that day. That she should have been sitting there at home right in front of mom. Because the school was closed. Locked. Alarmed. And no big yellow bus came by and picked up her kid.

And because of the snow day, and the school being LOCKED, Mr. Math couldn't retrieve his voicemail. Which rings on a phone in his CLASSROOM, not his home.

Apparently when Mr. Math returned the call to the parent, after receiving the irate email, he mentioned that we weren't in school on the two days that the parent left a message. Her response?

"Oh."

Now I think I understand why this kid seems a little bit spacey.

4 comments:

bun2bon said...

Hahaha! I wonder where the kid went? That is, assuming the parent didn't realize it was a snow day and sent their kid off to "school" anyway.

Mimi said...

No need to apologize - teachers= punching bags! Ha! This is great! Can only imagine how the meeting went/is going to go....Good luck!

Sarah said...

Oh dear!! It sure explains a lot when you meet the parents, doesn't it?!

Peach Pod said...

I had a conference with a parent one time because that parent was mad at ME for not telling her that HER child had not done his homework for 3 days. (This child was in the 7th grade. Not sure why I needed to hold his hand!) I looked at this parent once she was finished fussing at me and asked, "How many child do you have?" She told me that she had 3. I replied that I had 94. She left me alone after that!