The Real Secret of Parent-Teacher Day: Sometimes One Sentence Can Revive a Very Tired Mom

There’s nothing like parent-teacher days to reflect what’s really going on in the minds of your students’ parents and what their educational priorities are.

For me, parent-teacher days, beyond the sacred task of empowering students in front of their parents, are also an opportunity to give parents a breath of fresh air to grant them the strength and ability to continue in the mundane day-to-day of their lives.

This week was parent-teacher day at my school and I remembered how, three years ago, I sat across from a struggling single mother of one of my weaker students. She signed up for the end of the line, and I saw in her red eyes, how drained she was and that she had no strength left. I was somewhat aware of the daily struggles this woman was going through. She sat in front of me, sighed, and I thought to myself: seriously, what am I supposed to say to her now? How her child disrupts in class? Honestly, take any child exposed to the cases and issues that this child went through, and they’d also fall apart into a thousand pieces.

I looked at the grades and the failures and the red markers and this mom looked at me with a pleading look that seemed to say to me: I had a really hard day today, please try to comfort me with something small and good, something that will be like a breath of air for me.

At that moment, I realized how sometimes the whole story of this parent-teacher meeting is so much bigger than reviewing grades and providing a dry report on the child's academic situation. Sometimes the story is really about an exhausted and drained mother sitting in front of you, and in this whole world, at this time, only you, the educator, can now revive her with a few words of encouragement and praise about her child.

"Look," I started and she perked up: "We know the difficulties and complexities, but I have no other child in the class who loves his mother as much as your son loves you. When I sent him out of class today, he didn’t care about anything: the principal, not having a playground, nothing. Only when I told him that I would report to you tonight about his behavior, he suddenly looked at me seriously with tears in his eyes and said: 'Please, teacher, don’t involve my mother. I don’t want to upset her. Give me another chance.' I have students with grades of hundreds and nineties who don’t consider their parents at all. You have been blessed with a son who adores you. This is a huge gift!".

As soon as I finished, I looked at her. A renewed spark lit up in her eyes, her body straightened, and her head lifted. She called her son to come in, gave him a big kiss and hug, and then returned briefly to the class and quietly said to me:"Know that I didn’t know why I should get up tomorrow morning... Thank you so much!".

At the end of the meeting with this mom, I thought about the strength and power educators and teachers have, that with one sentence they can breathe new life into tired mothers, and remind them why the world needs them so they will want to wake up to a new morning.

*

Since then, every time I have a parent-teacher day, I first think about the huge gap that the education system has gone through from thirty years ago to today.

Granted, there are many things in which the education system has remained lagging behind. Rigid. Fossilized. Non-inclusive. Lost and powerless. A lot. Yet, to come and dismiss everything and say that nothing has changed is simply not true.

I remember parent-teacher days where I sat ashamed and embarrassed next to my parents, waiting for a good word and hitting a wall. Nothing. On the other hand, even back then, I had amazing and wonderful teachers whose kindness will stay with me for a lifetime (the teacher Osnat Even Tzur and Rabbi Ilan Danino, of blessed memory).

But still, go today to any self-respecting school, to any educator, and see how the candy and sweets package stands ready and prepared. How the awareness of student empowerment developed and changed. How grades take their proportional place compared to the preference for values and ethics.

You say you know other examples where you heard about students who also today come back ashamed from parent-teacher days? Possibly. Yet, overall, there is progress. There is improvement.

I remember how I saw the principal of my school grabbing two students by the ears and walking with them to the teachers' room. You know what? In too many daily cases as an educator, I tell myself: how lucky these students are that they are in the Israeli education system of 2024.

And what about the teachers? Well, that is a different question.