Former teacher calls out parents for being ‘in denial’ about their children’s academic skills

‘You can’t tell me you can’t read to the kid. It takes 10 minutes to read to the kid,’ former teacher says

A teacher has asked parents to be more proactive about their children’s education, and urged them to recognise how behind some children are relative to where they should be for their grade level.

The debate began after one teacher used TikTok as an opportunity to pose a question to parents, saying: “Why don’t y’all know that your kids aren’t performing on their grade level?” Another former teacher, who goes by the username @bodacious_bobo on TikTok, decided to stitch the video to suggest that some parents do know, but choose to do nothing about it.

The former teacher explained that she was a pre-K and kindergarten teacher back in 2013, so parents “can’t blame the pandemic” as she emphasised how there has consistently been a divide between parents and the education system.

She used one example of a parent-teacher conference she had one night when she was teaching kindergarteners. “First of all, a lot of people wouldn’t come,” she said.

According to the TikToker, there was one father who did show up. The teacher explained to him that his daughter did not know her letters, when children in that grade had to know 80 per cent of the 52 letters (uppercase and lowercase.) In response, she said the father said: “Nah, she knows her letters.”

To test her theory, the teacher used flashcards on his daughter to see if she could identify any of the letters in front of him, but she couldn’t. According to the former teacher, the father then started talking to his daughter, urging: “You know this!”

After giving up, the father chimed in to give an explanation for why his daughter didn’t know her letters. “Oh, ‘cause you know, her brother was supposed to teach her,” he said.

The teacher continued, “Her brother!? Was in sixth grade. It is not up to a child in elementary school, or middle school, or really any of your older kids, as someone who’s an older child... It is not up to the kids to teach younger kids.”

She explained the best course of action when these situations come up is to hold the child back and have them repeat the grade, but this often results in the parents going above the teacher’s head to administration to avoid it.

“The parent is going to fight tooth and nail because they are more concerned about the optics of a child being held back than actually taking care of the child’s needs,” the former teacher said in her TikTok.

“I have sent notes home, I have sent emails, I’ve literally taken a note and pinned it to a kid’s shirt and said, ‘Don’t take this off until your mom takes it,’ and I don’t get nothing back,” she continued.

“Parents, y’all can’t be backseat drivers about your child’s learning,” the former teacher addressed parents. “You have to help reinforce it at home. You put a kid in front of that phone or iPad whenever they come home, it better be on YouTube, and it better be learning about letters and sight words. You can’t tell me you can’t read to the kid. It takes 10 minutes to read to the kid. No one is that busy.”

In response to the video, which was viewed more than two million times, many people turned to the comments to agree with the teacher’s point. “Some parents expect their kids to go to school and learn everything there without any help at home!” one comment read.

Another commenter agreed, writing, “When I inform parents about their child’s learning, I’m met with ‘what do you want me to do? You’re the teacher.’ Parents do not want to parent.”