One of the Strangest Encounters in my Career

So on Friday I taught Laura's fourth period class while she was away on a field trip with all of the sixth graders.  Her fourth period is a rowdy and distractable group, with a couple of big and goody personalities (and some serious ADHD energy).  I actually kind of love them.  I remember them from the fall, and many of them remember be (and most of them remember me fondly).

So I start class (I'm having do some research on what the law in Oregon requires in terms of schooling), and a few minutes into class in walks a white woman wearing a bright yellow visitor's pass.  She was tall and wiry; it was hard to tell how old she was.  Her hair was brown-grey, long and stringy, hanging down past her shoulders.  She was wearing a tattered gray sweat-shirt advertising a foot ball team from a local high school, and a pair of faded blue jeans.  When she opened her mouth to speak, I noticed that she was missing several teeth; I try not to draw quick conclusions about kids or their parents, but I got an immediate former- or currrent meth user vibe from her.  And it wasn't just her appearance.  There was something vaguely sinister about the way she spoke.

"I'm Carly's mother," she said, surly as a grizzly bear, "I'm here to see what's going on with her.  Is this seat taken?"  She pointed to an empty chair towards the back of the room, two desks away from her daughter who, at this point, was doing her absolute best to crawl down through her own faded gray sweatshirt and disappear beneath the linoleum under her feet.

"Sure," I said, trying not to show my surprise and discomfort.

I was rattled.  I was already rattled because I had 36 12- and 13-year old trying to write paragraphs about the legal requirements for school in Oregon, and they had a bajillion little questions (ranging from how do I open a text edit file to what is a parochial school).  And I was circulating around the room trying to help them with their questions--and try to cajole some of the kids into writing at all.  And then this woman comes in unannounced and uninvited and proceeds to start hassling her daughter on my watch.

For a significant portion of the class she stood directly behind her daughter and literally watched over her should as she tried to write.  I did my best to pretend everything was normal.  I even made sure that I checked in with Carly about what she was writing.  Carly had chosen not to use a laptop, which I said was fine: the goal today was to write a paragraph, and I didn't care if it was typed or not.  Carly's mom immediately lit into me: "Are you saying there aren't enough laptops for my daughter to use?"

"No," I said, and before I could even finish defending myself Carly blurted out: "It was my choice, mom.  It was my choice!"

There were so many things wrong with the situation that I found it paralyzing.  I was a student teacher in a classroom that was not mine.  Technically there was supposed to be another teacher in the room (the teacher of record for that day was the art teacher, and she had taken a few of Laura's students down the hall to help her prepare for the funeral of a recently deceased colleague).  I did not know what the protocol for visiting parents was (not something I ever had to deal with in my former teaching career).  And then there was just the overall strangeness of the woman herself.  We managed to get through the period, and Carly got a little writing done.  Her mother followed her to band.

I doubt that either of us will forget the day her mother came to class.