Parent-teacher
Mental Multivitamin reposted what is probably my favorite of her posts. I’m glad she reposts it annually:
Feed a cold; starve a (spring) fever?
One thing traditional classroom teachers have all over non-traditional teachers (i.e., parent-teachers) is that generally their profession (in particular their general desire to remain employed) denies them the opportunity to “blow up” or “lose it,” at least on any remarkable scale. [...] Parent-teachers, though, as the hyphenation implies, straddle two difficult roles, and the 24/7 nature of the gig provides many more opportunities for, shall we say, breaches in the student-teacher transaction because (“Oh, oh, I know!”) the student-teacher transaction is, for all practical purposes, bound to the child-parent transaction. [...] Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of one thousand, a bad day, a spring-feverish morning, a calamitous afternoon begins with you. That’s not an accusation. It’s an attitude. If you know it all begins with you, you know you have the power to, if not control the situation, then certainly control your response to it (which is control of the most excellent kind).
