As I type this the US presidential election is underway and the 18th Chinese National Congress will soon be underway. If you don’t live in China, you may not be aware of the impact of the National Congress. I’ll just say it’s a big deal.

This post is about the vote that took place at Lydia’s and Aidan’s school yesterday. The parents voted 9-7 to replace Lydia’s teacher. As I understand it, the vote would be given as a simple thumbs up/thumbs down to the school and the school would comply with the parent’s wishes.

What caused this? The background is that Lydia’s teacher in addition to being the main teacher for Lydia’s class also teaches math to another class. The other class parents were unhappy with their students math performance compared with the previous math teacher. They met last Friday and voted to remove Lydia’s teacher which the school complied with. Some of the parents in Lydia’s class got wind of this and said, hey, we think she’s doing an awful job too and started discussing among themselves to get rid of her. The discussion was on this social networking app popular in China, called Weixin (ironically, the teacher herself set up the original Weixin parents group). The discussion was in Chinese and I had no idea what was going on at first. Then Yang clued me in that a coup was underway.

I spoke to one of the organizers on the phone and wanted to know what the specific complaints were. According to some parents, the student’s math understanding had fallen off, the teacher occasioning used her cell phone during class, she occasionally had students grade other students papers, she had her favorite students, and she occasionally raised her voice (I later learned that occasionally raising her voice meant she wasn’t strict enough). I then asked if the teacher was given this input and had a chance to make any corrections. Mostly not. One parent I spoke with did say they haven’t been happy with the teacher since last year and expressed that feedback to the school (the teacher was also Lydia’s 2nd grade teacher).

We had not noticed any problems with Lydia with the teacher nor with Lydia’s math as confusing as the homework was at times (the homework assignments are standardized). We asked Lydia about the other complaints and nothing sounded very severe. So me and Yang agreed that we could not support firing of the teacher. Could she improve, likely. Had she been given the opportunity, not really. And to out minds she has formed a close relationship with Lydia over two years and that meant a lot.

So Yang went to the parents meeting that resulted in the 9-7 vote. Two parents abstained and a few were hardcore one way or the other. Yang left when they insisted on delivering the thumbs down based on a one person swing. But, and credit to the organizer, they did not deliver the vote. Discussions continued on Weixin. Parents asked there kids how they liked the replacement teacher (Lydia’s teacher is “sick” during the controversy) who they brought out of retirement. Lydia doesn’t like the new teacher at all which is understandable given the attachment. Other kids felt the same way but it was not universal. One parent wrote (translated) “My son said that the teacher is very strict, and he felt the teacher lectures very seriously. Quite like the new teacher!”.

Ok then.

With continued discussion two parents who were overseas and could not make the meeting chimed in and the vote tally changed to 10-7 in favor of giving the teacher a second chance. A few of the hardliners insist the official vote has already been taken.

A picture of Lydia’s class from an outing at the end of October. The teacher is in the big person in the photo. Tomorrow the parents will meet again and see if the craziness of last Friday can be put to rest.