Speaking in front of an audience every day sounds difficult enough, but what if it’s in front of a bunch of kids? If that wasn’t difficult enough, what if their parents were also overly protective or could see no fault in anything their kids do?. You’re certain to have a gasp or a chuckle at these helicopter parents.I guess this is more"helicopter aunting," but I think it still applies. I'm a college professor, so 99.
Last year, during the final week of one of the summer bridge programs for incoming freshmen I teach in, I got an email from one of my student's aunt. She wrote me a 5-page-long email detailing, line by line and comment by comment, why she disagreed with what I'd written on her niece's essay and the rationale I'd used to give it an F.
Every. Single. One of my comments had a short paragraph devoted to picking apart the comment and rebutting it. At the end, she lambasted my teaching and suggested I'd failed the student out of spite. When I told her I wasn't allowed to talk to her about her student's grades due to federal law, she called the program director and demanded I be fired.
The fun twist at the end of this story, though, is that we ultimately figured out why she was so angry with my comments: Turns out she'd been writing her niece's essays all summer and had taken my comments personally. Needless to say the niece was removed from the program.