Barry Garlic, via a kind email:
When I was hired for the long-term sub assignment, the principal told me it would likely last the whole semester. In order not to unduly alarm the parents, he had announced I would be there for just the third quarter. But the day came when I told my classes that Mrs. Halloran would not be coming back and I would be their teacher for the remainder of the semester.
All my classes cheered wildly. But as much as I wanted to believe I was entirely worthy of such adulation, I suspected they were reacting to the news that the super-strict Mrs. Halloran would not be returning.
My doubt was tied in large part to the email I had received from Brian’s mother , which suggested that Brian’s poor performance in algebra this semester was due to me. In even larger part, my doubt was tied to other news I received from one of the school counselors, a young woman named Robin. She had met with me the day before I made my announcement. She started on a complimentary note: “I can’t imagine walking in mid-year like you’ve done and trying to figure this all out,” and then got down to business. Two students had complained to her about my algebra 1 class. Who they were she could not disclose. The essence of the complaint was that I didn’t teach like Mrs. Halloran.
“They said she taught things one topic at a time, but you do several,” she said. This made no sense to me at first, until I remembered that in my lesson on word problems, I presented both mixture, and rate and speed problems. Ironically, Mrs. Halloran’s lesson plans called for one more, but I felt that would be too much.
“I asked them if they had talked to you about this,” Robin said. “They said they didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” As touching as this may have been to Robin, I was not impressed. I strongly suspected that 1) Brian was one of the students and 2) they feared retribution rather than hurting my feelings.