This year has been a very difficult one as far as teaching and working with children and their parents has been concerned. It seems that each year, there are more and more children who never do anything wrong according to their parents. These children are never made to take any type of responsibility for their choices or their actions. They are rude, disrespectful, lazy, and dare a teacher to try to teach the lesson. When a parent is called about their child, the excuses for the behavior are non-ending: "I'm a single parent", (so was I and mine knew they had better be respectful, listen and do their work), "He/She is ADD/ADHD". (so was one of mine, still had to behave), "It was so-and-so's fault, my child knows better." There was an incident where a young man, 5'9", 230 lbs.charged a teacher and the principal with a board that had nails in it but it wasn't his fault according to the mother, so she filed a greivence on the principal and a police officer because he was provoked and the officer embarressed him by putting handcuffs on him in order to restrain him from hurting someone. This young man had been a problem since he was in primary but Mama always had a reason it wasn't his fault and she is still doing it. He wasn't the only one this year, but just an example of what is happening in a majority of schools. Parents don't know how to parent anymore, they are afraid to correct their children and they just want to be "their friend". Kids have enough friends, what they need are parents that will teach them how to behave, right from wrong, how to be respectful and that the children do not run the home, the parent or parents do. If they will do this, maybe teachers could actually teach the children instead of doing a lot of crowd control and trying to teach! I have 24 students and only 9 of them know how to behave and want to learn. The rest want to visit, play,and are disrespectful without really knowing they are, it is just how they behave. At first, I thought it might be just my class, but in talking with other teachers across the district, from kinder to 6th, it is becoming more and more of a problem at all levels. As you can tell, it has been a very frustrating year and if I could find another job that started out at what I make, I would quit in a heartbeat but then I think of the little girl that came up and thanked me for reading her poetry and helping her with it or the young man that thanked me for turning in a bully that was making his life miserable or the gang-banger that thanked me for respecting him and helping him to pass the BIG TEST. That's what keeps teachers going but sometimes it is really hard and right now, I am very tired. School will be out in 20 days and all I can say is, "Thank God!".