At school, teachers no longer have to manage only the students… but now also the parents. And it happens that these parent-teacher relationships are precisely the most complicated.
Few of us really realize how difficult being a teacher is. In addition to the lessons to prepare and the papers to correct, it mainly involves managing a team of around thirty small individuals… who often don’t really want to be there. And above all, which evolve at different paces. All teachers say it: managing children all day, with their respective difficulties, is not an easy task. But to this already exhausting daily life, both psychologically and physically, there is also another variable that we think little about: the parents. An integral part of the teachers’ work, the relationship with the students’ parents can prove to be just as complicated to manage as the children themselves… or even more.
This is what Roxane, a teacher in an elementary school in Île-de-France, explains to us: “It’s distressing for many teachers, because we notice a profound lack of trust in us from parents.” Indeed, the young woman notes that parents have an increasing tendency to trust the words of their children rather than that of teachers. “When we report an incident or something stupid to parents, they tell us in black and white: ‘It’s false, my child didn’t tell me that.’ They don’t believe us, but we have to understand that we have no reason to lie. While children, who obviously don’t want to be punished, will sell themselves as ‘perfect’ at home and deny the stupid things they do at school.”deplores Roxane.
But the most problematic, and what weighs the most in the teacher’s daily life, are the parents who disrespect her. A phenomenon surprisingly more common than we think: “It often happens that parents approach us in a somewhat aggressive manner, because they do not agree with a decision or because they are getting carried away by a completely normal situation. To talk to us about a problem, you simply have to make an appointment.” And just a few days ago, Roxane had to deal with a mother who went beyond the limits. “She showed up in the middle of my class, in front of the students, convinced she had a date. I told her no, and she started to raise her voice and disrespect me, bordering on insulting.”the teacher tells us.
It was not the first time that the problem had arisen with this mother, so Roxane decided to activate a procedure that only teachers know: she wrote up a “establishment fact”. This is a document to report an incident that occurred in the school, which is then sent to the National Education Inspectorate. There are three levels, from “concerning event not requiring transmission” to “extremely serious event”, including “serious event”. Here, the teacher settled for the lowest level, simply to “protect yourself” in the event of a recurrence or escalation of the conflict. Just like its director, who also initiated an “establishment” after being verbally attacked by a father after leaving class.
Discrimination, harassment, intrusions, damage to property… Anything that undermines school security, the integrity of people (adults and children), State property or the values of the Republic (secularism, racism, etc.) can be reported. Not all “established facts” necessarily lead to consequences, but they can serve as a safeguard for teachers when an incident occurs, whether with a parent, a colleague, a student, or with any person present on school grounds.
