AIW for telling a parent her kid basically broke me this year?
I need to get this out because my sister and I had a fight about it and now I genuinely can't tell if I handled it badly. We had parent meetings last Thursday. Seven years of teaching, I've done hundreds of these, usually fine. This one was not fine.
Polina is in my 10th grade physics class. She's sharp, like actually one of the smarter kids I've had, but she has this thing where she just. won't. let anything go. Debates me mid-lesson on stuff that isn't even debatable, sighs loud enough for the whole room to hear when I explain a concept she already knows, and back in October she straight up told the class I was teaching the topic wrong while I was standing at the board. I pulled her aside after that, tried a few different approaches over the next couple months, even had a colleague sit in on one of my lessons in case I was missing something. Nothing changed.
By like February I was having serious thoughts about whether I even wanted to keep doing this. Seven years and I never felt that before. That part matters for what comes next.
So her mom Marina sits down and asks the usual stuff, I give the usual answers. Then she goes "Polina says you don't really challenge her, is that accurate?" and I just. I don't know. Something shifted and I told her the truth, that Polina is genuinely talented but that this year has been really hard, and that there was a point where I was considering leaving teaching and the situation in that class was part of it.
Marina got very quiet. Didn't get defensive, actually said sorry and that she had no idea. I walked out of that meeting feeling okay about it and then by evening I started second guessing everything. My coworker says I was right to be honest. My sister thinks I put way too much on a 16 year old who didn't ask to be the villain in her teacher's career crisis. I genuinely don't know who's right here. AIW?