12 Teachers Share the Weirdest Things They’ve Heard From Their Students’ Parents

1. So, all chefs are gay?

"I was working in a kindergarten classroom, and a father had approached me and asked me if I let his son play in the kitchen center.

I replied with something along the lines of, “yes, we allow each of the children to freely explore what interests them” and explained why, but the dad was unhappy about it.

He immediately asked me to stop this, as allowing his boy to pretend like he’s cooking will make him gay."

2. Game, set, match….

"When I was student teaching, my mentor teacher was accused of failing a girl because she was Black. The girl herself never said anything about it, but her parents sure did.

When it came time for a conference, everyone was there: the girl, her parents, the principal, a counselor, my mentor, and me.

My mentor let the parents have their say, explain their reasoning (there wasn’t much), and continue to accuse her of being racist.

Once it was her turn to reply, my mentor reached into her bag and pulled out a family portrait. It was of herself, her Black husband, and their biracial daughter. She just set it on the table and the girl’s parents immediately stood up and left.

I haven’t seen anything like it, or as hilarious, since."

3. It would make the process faster.

"One mother demanded that I scan and email every homework assignment to her.

She said it was because her son would lose his homework on the bus every day but I knew she was doing it for him."

4. Just hanging around…

"A parent complained to me that no one knew where her child was. L

ike she hadn’t seen the kid in over a month. A MONTH. You are his guardian!

The kid was hanging out with a gang close to the school."

5. Endgame

"I’m a high school history teacher. One of my courses was Comparative Religions and Philosophies. I essentially taught every major world religion and political ideology.

I’m an open atheist but I teach the course with objectivity and I teach with respect because I have students across all religious backgrounds. I never insult, condemn, or offend, and I encourage my students to keep an open mind as well.

I had a parent contact me for a conference about three weeks into the first term. Her son was a freshman. His freshmen U.S. I class immediately followed my senior level religions course. One day when he was coming into class, he overheard me discussing the three Abrahamic prophets (Moses, Jesus, Abraham) with a senior.

Apparently he went home and told his mother I called Abraham a prophet. They’re evangelical Christians. This apparently infuriated her enough that she had to call me to arrange a meeting asap.

She came into the meeting and immediately started insulting me, questioning my intelligence/training/qualifications (I have multiple degrees, so naw girl), and (hilariously) calling me a heretic for suggesting Abraham and Moses were in the same category as Jesus. I called the principal into the conference as a witness to both the lesson itself (I was being observed) and as a witness to the meeting.

She railed into him, too, asking how he could possibly think it was alright to allow me to teach such anti-Jesus heresy in his school.

His response?

“Well, I’m Jewish, so there’s that.”

It took everything in me not to piss myself from laughing.

I never had a problem with her again."

6. Disgusting...

"This student (14 male) had long, filthy fingernails. Just gagged me to sit next to him to work on subject matter, but I toughed it out.

An aid helped him clean and trim his nails. Mama comes screaming to school because his long nails made it so much better when he “scratched mama’s back”.

Ewwwwwww."

7. Yes, he can…

"A student was reading way behind grade level, but mom thought he was gifted.

Myself and a reading specialist brought an on-grade level reading passage to the conference and had the student read it.

He made 77 errors in a 130 word passage. Mom looked at us and said “see I told you he could read.”

8. The teacher must’ve felt like trash at that moment.

"I’m the student, but this had to be awkward.

In kindergarten, my teacher asked the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. I said a garbage man. Concerned, my teacher met with my parents only to find out that my dad was a garbage man.

Whoops."

9. Why?

"One of my high school English/American history teachers mentioned this once.

He was in a conference with a girl and her father, and the girl had grades good enough that she was going to be the first person in her family to go to college. She was eligible for a ton of scholarships. But, as it stood, she wasn’t going to get any of them because her dad didn’t want to tell anyone what his annual income was."

10. Un poco de español....

"A parent told me I spoke too much Spanish in class. I teach Spanish."

11. In training...

"My sister is a teacher. She was telling me about this mom she had to deal with. The mom would make her daughter drink juice out of a 32oz container, and instructed my sister to give her 3 of these a day. This is a 6 year old.

The mother, at the same time, kept talking about how she’s working with her daughter on her “delayed toilet training.”

My sister tried to explain to this mom, to no avail, that the only reason she’s having such difficulty making it to the bathroom On time is because you’re making her drink nearly 100oz of fluids before the school day is even over."

12. On some weird level, it makes sense…

"I have a few stories, but my favorite happened to a co-worker.

This girl didn’t study and skipped most of the questions on a test. Mom came in to argue about her daughter’s failing grade and said she should only be graded on the questions she did answer, so therefore should have scored a 100 since the few she chose to answer were correct."