This got sent to me as a forward in an e-mail recently...
For those of you who are not teachers or do not work in schools, this is a little glimpse into what I have to deal with often in my career. The thing about this message is that it's sad but true. Being a teacher is not an easy job, but I know that I am doing what God has called me to do. Hopefully you find this as amusing as I did.
SCHOOL ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGE TO PARENTS
No wonder so many people were offended!
This is the message that the Pacific Palisades High School staff, a mostly well to do and mostly white area in California, supposedly voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine.
This is supposedly the actual answering machine message for the school. This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework.
The school and teachers are supposedly being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their classes.
The actual outgoing message:
Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting to the right staff member, please listen to all the options before making a selection:
To lie about why your child is absent -Press 1
To make excuses for why your child did not do his work -Press 2
To complain about what we do - Press 3
To swear at staff members - Press 4
To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several fliers mailed to you - Press 5
If you want us to raise your child - Press 6
If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7
To request another teacher, for the third time this year - Press 8
To complain about bus transportation - Press 9
To complain about school lunches - Press 0
If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort: Hang up and have a nice day!
4 comments:
Wow, pretty outrageous... so much so that I had to check it out on snopes, and it's not true:
http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/palisades.asp
Thank goodness!
The point isn't whether it's true or not. The point is that it's funny.
Yeah, I see that now. I took it literally when you said it was sad but true. I guess I forgot to turn on my humor detector yesterday. :-P
That's right...this isn't true, but the fact that many of the things that are in here are true feelings many of us teachers feel sometimes. Honestly, dealing with parents is most definitely one of the hardest parts of my job. Hopefully this helps put things in perspective for those of you who do not work in the education system in one way or another.
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