Communication -- Bad News Response

Communication -- Bad News Response Letter

Dear Ms. Roebuck:

I am writing in response to your recent letter about Hillary. First, I want to thank you for your kind words about our school and our teachers and for teaching Hillary to be respectful of her teachers because we genuinely appreciate her attitude and her respectful demeanor. Likewise, I do realize that Hillary has always been a good student who is conscientious about her schoolwork. I sincerely regret that Hillary was so frightened by her receipt of the detention warning, but I do understand why a good student who has never had any cause to receive such a warning before might react that way. Let me assure you that detention is simply a way for teachers to impose some sort of punishment to help motivate students to do their work and to behave themselves in school. It actually consists of nothing more than a mandatory extra class session after school. During that class, a teacher requests that students use the time to do their schoolwork and to work on their homework. From the students' point-of-view, the worst thing about detention is that it requires them to stay in school longer than usual. Many of the students who receive detention could benefit from an hour in which they are required to do their homework although I understand that is clearly not the case with Hillary. With your permission, I am going to talk to Hillary and explain to her that detention is not a serious matter at all and nothing to be afraid of.

I certainly sympathize with Hillary's situation last week, but I would like to suggest that it is never appropriate for parents to allow their children to stay home from school except in the case of illness or serious emergency. It is also possible that the standard forms that we use to notify students that may be assigned detention are too general and that they should be more personal, especially where they are sent to students who are not likely to receive them. We certainly never intend to frighten our students, much less so much that they are afraid to come to school.

I would like to suggest that the most important thing is for us always to keep open communication channels. In that regard, we are never too busy to talk to parents about their children. If you had called me to explain Hillary's concerns, I might have been able to get her an exemption from detention under the circumstances. Even if I could not have done that, I could at least have assured Hillary (and you) that detention would have, essentially, allowed her to do exactly what you allowed her to do at home: she would have been asked to sit in the classroom under the supervision of a teacher and to read her book during that period or to do any other schoolwork she wished to do. Had we been able to discuss the matter in advance, Hillary might have received an exemption from detention, or at least an explanation to allay her fears about what it was. However, it would have been much more beneficial to Hillary to attend all of her classes instead of reading her book at home.