Families' curious requests to teachers: "Can you curl my daughter's eyelashes so they don't touch her glasses?"

Barcelona"Hello teacher, my son is always hungry at 10:30 and recess is at 11:00. Could you please bring forward the time for recess?" "I would appreciate it if you did not use red pens to mark my son's exams. Red is a very aggressive colour and makes him anxious. Could you use a pastel pink or aqua green?" With these examples, primary school teacher Gerard Alarcón, who has more than a million followers on social media, gave a parody on his Instagram account, with cases that were not real, of the requests that families currently make to the teaching staff.

It is clear that in recent years The relationship between families and teachers has changed a lot. "The current social discredit that the figure of the teacher suffers is taking its toll on us," says the president of the Rosa Sensat Teachers' Association, Mar Hurtado. "The view of part of society is that teachers complain all day about their working conditions, but then they have two months of vacation, they go home at 4:30 p.m., and they also stop for a few weeks for Christmas." According to Hurtado, there are so many complaints from teachers, "some of them with weak arguments," that families no longer know what the mission of teachers is. "Our work is not focused on the aspect of child care, since this corresponds to parents, but on education," she explains. A teacher, she adds, must provide spaces for socialization, prepare children for the future with learning contexts where critical thinking is encouraged, and, for example, must not change children's socks every three hours if they wear rain boots because their feet sweat. "Obviously," says the president of Rosa Sensat, "we must create comfortable moments for the child, but our mission is to educate."

In addition, families, just like in today's society, have a very individualistic view: "Your child may have a need that the class doesn't have, and it's the teacher who has that global vision." And to this we must add that there is a "misunderstood protection of children." "We must explain that it's good for a child to come out with dirty knees because they've been playing on the floor; children must do these things."

How to change it?

But how can this be reversed? relationship between families and teachers so that everyone understands what their role is? "It will be balanced because common sense will return, but we will only achieve this if we are aware of the current situation and if we want to change it," says Hurtado convinced. This happens, she adds, so that teachers can better communicate what their functions are in the classroom and not get angry with families. "We must create more spaces of trust and re-motivate families to collaborate with the school."

He Creatures has asked teachers and professors, through his Instagram, to explain what the most curious requests they have received in recent years from families are, and we have compiled a list. The president of the Teachers Association Rosa Sensat herself tells one: "In kindergarten there was a child with a glass eye. When the mother explained it to us, she told us that, when he did a somersault, the eye could fall to the ground. What we had to do was clean it and pass it over again when it was time for him to move. He solved it very naturally."

CRISTINA C.

A couple of years ago we were on a night out with a group of children. A very worried mother came to me and told me that her five-year-old daughter slept with her and touched her breast during the night. She didn't breastfeed, but instead of having a stuffed animal, she had calmed herself like this since she was little. She asked me if she could sleep with her so she could take her place and the girl could rest. My face was a poem and I was so indignant that I told her that only my partner touched my breast.

SOEASY545

We were on a field trip and the mother of a child told us that he had left his lunch sandwich at home and that, if we didn't mind, the teachers should take her son to make a meal in the town where we were going on the field trip and that she would pay for the ticket on our return.

DEEPSEA390

A family told us that when we went on an excursion I should buy their daughter some blond potatoes and some juice at the bar and that they would make me a bizum.

PICH.SERGI

We organised a trip to the end of their school years. The children prepared everything: the place (Valencia), booking a campsite, train transport, making the menus, deciding on the budget, organising activities and also the cooking and cleaning shifts. A mother brought me a catalogue from a company that organises trips and with which she had contacted and who had already "prepared everything for us". "This way we don't go as poor people and they do everything for us," she said. Obviously, we made the trip that the students had prepared. The mother's son was not allowed to come.

ELIS2720

They asked us if we could heat up his lunch box on a mountain excursion and if we could put the water in the classroom fridge... Obviously, we don't have one.

SHEILABQ

They asked me to approve their son because they had been told that if he failed any subject they would not go to Disney and the family had already booked and paid for the trip... Spoiler: I did not approve him.

ROSACANALP

A few years ago, a student copied an entire assignment from the internet, but not from a single website, but he took paragraphs from different pages. In total he used three or four. I gave him a zero. My parents asked me for a meeting and asked me to give him a 5 because he had taken the trouble to consult several websites and had not copied it directly from Wikipedia. This was a few years ago, now I don't do it, they use AI.

CAROCAMALI

They asked me if I could write down the homework in the diary because, if not, mom or dad didn't know what homework they (the parents) had to do.

MARILOGAL

They asked me if I could take her homework home every day while the student was sick.

GRESQUITA

I was asked to give a student an excellent grade in a subject in which he had a B. He was in primary school.

URGELLMR_13

Not surprising, but demanding: "I want my child to have two or three homework assignments a week."

MARIADIAV

At the nursery, a mother told me that she would leave me ten euros in her son's backpack in case one day she forgot his pacifier and I would go and buy a new one.

ROSAMARIARECHI

It was the beginning of the year in I3, and at school most of the students stay to eat. One girl, at home, ate everything mashed for convenience and, therefore, did not chew. Mum told us about it while offering us a mashing arm.

MOUSEEMMA

A family asked me to speak Spanish to their daughter, who would be more empathetic.

QUIPERDELSORIGINES

The mother of a child who was to be expelled for a reason asked us to see if we could validate these days for some vacation days so that she would not have to keep him at home for so long.

CAPSULETEF

A parent told me at a meeting that we should teach masturbation at school.

LINA.BIBILONI

When schools closed due to covid, a family asked if we would make up the days that school would be closed during the month of July because they would have had their children home too many days.

MAMEMONS

A little girl's mother asked me to curl her eyelashes because she wouldn't let her do it at home. They were so long that they touched her glasses.

PINTTURELA

A family changed their child's school and asked me if I could request a transfer to their center to continue being the teacher.

MRULLO12

They asked me if we would do mud that afternoon because I had taken the girl to get her nails done.