Making me better, right?

Today was rough. A friend of mine Google buzzed about today being like a balloon that someone pokes a small hole into until it slowly deflates and becomes limp. I identified with that at first, but the more I thought about it, I realized that my balloon was not just poked. I'm pretty sure it was stabbed, made a loud popping noise, and exploded into small tattered pieces.

Who stabbed my balloon? A parent in what was obviously the most wonderful parent-teacher conference of all time.

A parent of one of my most difficult students.

A parent who basically yelled at me for 20 minutes and barely let me speak.

A parent who let me hear all of her concerns and left without hearing mine.

A parent who definitely provoked a less-than-professional and less-than-mature response from me.

A parent who left me wanting to cry and scream when all I was able to actually do was run back to my crazy class to try to continue through the next four hours as if I had not just been both attacked and offended.

I'm just wondering - why do parents get to say whatever they want to let us know what they think of us and yet we just have to smile and be agreeable without the ability to reciprocate with our thoughts about their children???

If you have children or grandchildren, or if you ever hope to, please be nice to their teachers. They aren't perfect; your child/grandchild isn't their only student; and they're people with feelings too.

And don't talk down to them about the stresses of their profession in comparison to the stresses of being a mom. Both are stressful. Period.

Okay, so there's the venting session... Of course, as I continued to process all day while working on the progress reports that will go home tomorrow, I realized that good teachers probably just stay "good" if they have easy classes. I'm having to use a ridiculous amount of new strategies and systems just to make it until June. It has made a hard job even harder, but I would like to think that this kind of thing is what challenges a teacher to grow and become excellent...

And even if that's not true, I'm going to believe that it is until June 20th. :)