Notes from parents

By Georgie Bright Kunkel

I recently looked through some things I had saved from my teaching years and found a large envelope containing the original notes sent by parents to me during 1951. They represented all the reasons parents wanted a teacher to take heed of their children. One parent wrote that her daughter had missed a week because she was constipated and had to have a laxative so she asked that her daughter be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever she asked to go. We all know how children use the trip to the bathroom as power over the teacher. If you let them go when they really don't need to go, you are being used. If you don't let them go right away, you know what may happen.

One note unloaded on me with, "I am trying something new and rather harsh with my boy. As you know I have five children and my income isn't too large. Last year he lost three coats and already this year he has lost his new wool jacket. So I am making him wear a girl's coat for a few days. Please let me know if you think it is too hard on him." Knowing my feminist leanings, you can guess what I thought about that one. Even in grade school, a boy wearing a girl's coat was considered demeaning.

One mother wrote, "Our daughter says she could do better work if she sat between girls instead of boys." It is true that in the 1950s there still was the belief that "boys will be boys" and girls had to put up with their rowdiness or stay out of their road.

Other notes reflected the lack of childcare and maternity support services. "Please excuse our daughter's absence over this past week as we have kept her at home to help with our new baby." Another one said, "Our boy was out of school Monday because I had business I had to attend to, which would keep me away from home until night. There wasn't anyone here to take care of him so I thought it best to take him along."

I really chortle over this one. "Please excuse our son for being absent for three days as we felt it necessary to keep him home on account of the nail he swallowed. We finally had results Saturday morning." Get it?

Today we wouldn't think twice about a lost pen but one parent wrote, "Would you please ask the children if one of them found my daughter's Waterman ballpoint pen with the gold top? Surely hope you can locate it as I don't have another."

And in the days of no central heating or automatic temperature control I got this note, "My girl was so sleepy I knew she would be cross if she went to school. She wakes when the fire is being made between four and five in the morning and can't always get back to sleep."

"Father didn't hear the alarm and the children were late for school. I guess we can't blame the children for papa's mistake." I really appreciated this parent's candor.

Then comes the careful mother note, "Please let my boy stay in school at noon cause he had to wear his good shoes and he can't get his boots on over them."

But one note written by a distraught parent was something that no teacher wants to receive. "Our daughter will not be to school for a while since she was hit by a car and is in the hospital. She has bruises on her face and head and her right leg is broken just below the knee. I'll let you know more about it this afternoon." This was one of the most jolting of messages and required a lot of empathy with my school class of second graders who wrote get well messages to their injured classmate while I awaited further word from her parent.

We were all learning life's hard lessons, teacher and students alike, and finding ways to support each other in crisis. My word to the parents was: If you won't believe everything that your students tell you about me, I won't believe everything they tell me about you. It worked.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer and speaker who can be contacted at gnkunkel@comcast.net .