I taught a girl whose mother was dying from cancer and she didn’t have the credits to graduate. She told me she didn’t want to have to tell her mom she was being retained. I spent hours and hours seeing to it she passed. I tutored her as much as a could and negotiated with really difficult personality type teachers to bump her grades. You wouldn’t believe how ridiculous some teachers were
Me: yeah well her mom has been on chemo and she’s only 14 and taking care of her little sister- cooking cleaning
Teacher- that doesn’t mean she can skip her math homework
Me: I’ll see to it that she learns how to work with fractions. I just don’t want her to feel guilty about upsetting her mom.
Teacher- she needs to do this that and the other thing
Me: ok - I’ll come back and talk to you tomorrow
I even had to threaten one teacher that if she didn’t pass I was going to have to demand to see documentation that every single one of her accommodations were followed.
She thanked me on the last day.
This doesn’t mean I’m not a racist **** but she was black.
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