Kids, Parents and Demerits

Four and a half years of college...BS degree in Elementary Ed...with a minor in English...Elementary teaching certificate...English as a Second Language endorsement...21 years experience teaching mostly Reading/Language Arts/Writing, and a parent of one of my students has the gaul to tell me that I must have went to college to learn how to write demerits because I do it so well. A second time she writes...that all I must have done is study how to write demerits.

Now let's not address the issue that her son had been told many, many, many times to turn around and stop talking over several weeks. I finally had had enough of him disrupting the class by turning around and talking that I did give him a demerit. I usually try to give the students a few chances to change their behavior before I take action. This time he was turned around one too many times and talking one too many times.

Again, let's not address the issue that her son was wasting time by drawing instead of working on his writing benchmark test (which is a mini-TAKS test). Again, he was told many, many, many times to get busy...not to mention that he had to take three days to complete the stupid thing when it should've only been a two day test. (Now, to interject here, the actual TAKS test is only a one day test. I was only giving the mini-test to both my classes in one day, so that meant that they had a half a day each day to complete it. I only have each class for a half a day.)

So, I write her a letter back stating that I need to address both of her gratuitous comments (you like the word? I bet she had to get a dictionary to learn what it meant), and tell her that even though she doesn't like him getting demerits for disrupting the class he will continue to get them as they are warranted (like that word?), and according the student handbook blah blah blah.

I never heard a word from her. He came up to me to tell me that his dad was getting out of jail and they had to go to Huntsville (jail? how bout prison) to get him. He said his mom has to talk to immigration to see if he can stay here when he gets out. WHOLLY SHIT are you thinking what I'm thinking? Two days ago he came in all teary eyed, and I asked him if he was ok. He told me that his dad did get out of jail, but he was deported back to Mexico. He doesn't know how to speak spanish nor does he understand it...mom doesn't speak spanish either.

Does anyone else besides me see a problem?