My [35F] and my daughter [11F] are having a problem with her teacher [50??F]

A Redditor (35F) shared a frustrating experience with her daughter’s (11F) school project on family ancestry. The teacher insisted the project focus on specific countries, like Poland or Russia, while the family wanted to highlight their Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. The conflict arose from differing interpretations of the assignment, leading to tension. Read the full story below for more details:

‘ My [35F] and my daughter [11F] are having a problem with her teacher [50??F]’

I’m having an annoying problem with my daughter’s teacher, Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones told the students to write a report and do a presentation on their family ancestry and culture. Our family is from various Eastern European countries. However, we are Ashkenazi Jews, so we aren’t the same as other people from Eastern Europe.

Our ancestors spoke Yiddish first, and Polish/Russian/etc second, and had different customs. My daughter knows this, so she decided to write about Ashkenazi culture. For her poster, instead of drawing pictures of the countries we came from, she drew Eastern Europe with a Jewish star over it.

After she turned it in, I got a message from her teacher that she would have to redo it! Apparently, the assignment was done incorrectly since it didn’t focus on the particular countries in general. The assignment didn’t say they needed to pick a country, it said they needed to write about their family’s culture.

I tried to explain to the teacher that doing a report on Poland or Russia didn’t make sense since we weren’t really Polish or Russian and didn’t follow any customs, but she kept insisting that the report had to focus on the countries. She said that my daughter could do her report on Israel instead, if she wanted to focus on her Jewish heritage.

That doesn’t make sense either, since we can’t trace our ancestry to Israel and don’t follow any Israeli customs. I know this sounds like it’s not that big of a deal, but I’m really annoyed at this teacher for being so stubborn.

Sure, she could absolutely insist that my daughter write about Russia, Poland, and Romania in general, but the assignment was supposed to be about your own culture, not someone else’s, so the assignment would be pointless.

I’m trying to write a message to the teacher to explain clearly why my daughter’s presentation fulfilled the assignment and should be accepted and graded fairly. I don’t want to come off too strong, but I need her to understand why insisting on writing about these countries so generally isn’t necessarily appropriate for ethnic minorities.

See what others had to share with OP:

lulzette −  Why is everyone downvoting the OP? This is a perfectly legit reason to be annoyed with the teacher. The teacher should let the student turn in the assignment as is, and sharpen up her instructions for next year. Things like this are a learning experience for the teacher – it’s not the student’s fault.

I would politely email the teacher (maybe CC the principal?) and say that the instructions weren’t clear, your daughter put a lot of work into the assignment, and if she could turn it in as she had already done it. You can reference your Jewish ancestry and point out that like many other ethnic minorities, your people come from various countries (and Israel is not one of them).

Meremadesings −  Honestly, it sounds like the teacher gave unclear instructions and this situation is complicated by the Jewish diaspora. If your daughter were to write about Israel, she’d have to write the country pre-diaspora, not as it exists now. If you want to keep fighting this, just go above the teacher’s head.

If you really want to be a pain in the ass about it, redo the assignment and haul out ever s**t thing Russia or Poland did to the Jewish people. Point out how they weren’t allowed to consider themselves real citizens the countries of and how they were othered and discriminated against for thousands of years.

phantomrhiannon −  Dear teacher, I would like to clarify what has already happened with my daughter’s project, and what still needs to happen in order to ensure she meets the learning objectives. I hope we can work together on this to make sure she does the necessary work.

My daughter and I both understood the goal of this assignment to be to research and learn about her family’s culture. [Reference the exact wording on the assignment.] Is this correct? Our family’s culture is not tied to our country of origin. Although this is somewhat unique among those of us of European descent, our family’s cultural identity is Jewish.

The Jewish identity is not only a religion, and culturally distinct from any individual country, even Israel. I know this can be confusing for people not already familiar with it. I’d be happy to discuss it further with you and answer any questions you may have. This is why my daughter turned in an assignment showing her research on this cultural group, and not a country.

As far as the assignment was communicated with me, I believe my daughter’s work fulfills the basic requirement. My daughter has told me that you have asked her to redo this assignment and research a specific country. Is that correct? Again, she and I understood that the assignment was about culture. [Reference the original wording?] Did you clarify this in person in class?

It looks to me like we have a misunderstanding related to the specific requirements of this assignment: culture or country. Of course, if the assignment handout said country, or you told the class in person that they had to research a country, my daughter and I misunderstood and she needs to redo the assignment.

But if the assignment was to research her family’s culture, than I respectfully assure you she has done exactly that and ask that you grade her work accordingly. It is both fair and necessary for her to redo the assignment if she misunderstood, but it is not fair for her to do more work because her family’s culture is not tied to her country of origin.

Or I wonder if it’s possible that the assignment said culture, but maybe you have a learning outcome or curriculum requirement regarding researching countries that the class has to fulfill? In this case, I understand the need for her to meet that requirement. But as she completed the project as assigned, I don’t believe it is fair to ask her to repeat her work.

Is there a smaller supplementary assignment she might complete to fulfill the same objective? I hope you understand that I am not seeking special accommodations for my daughter. I’m looking to see if there is a misunderstanding at play that we can resolve without adding extra work to your plate or hers. Ultimately, she needs to fulfill the same educational objective as her peers. Please let me know your thoughts on the subject.. Thanks,. Etc.

lvr2016 −  The assignment didn’t say they had to write about a country specifically, it said to write about their culture. That was the point of the assignment. So anyone who is Italian could write about Italy and Italian culture, and anyone who is Irish could write about Ireland and Irish culture, but my daughter isn’t allowed to write about her culture. I don’t think that is fair.

magick288 −  I think you’re making the right decision here. I remember when I was in 4th grade I was assigned something similar and, since I was black, I couldn’t point to any specific country as my nation of origin. Because of that my teacher tried to force me to identify one as if somehow I was just joking about not knowing which country my slave ancestors were stolen from.

It’s not only a little insulting to try to cookie-cut a person, even less a child, into specific mold just to meet a nonessential learning/assignment benchmark, but it’s also alienating. I remember other kids talking and getting excited about where their families came from while I had to confront the reality, at 11 years old, that I’d never know that kind of information or get excited about my ancestral language.

Later confrontations revealed that my 4th grade teacher was more than a little r**ist, but it took my mom standing up for me publicly, for me to take pride in the mystery and struggle of my lineage. I’ll always love her for that to be honest. I don’t let people give me s**t about the color of my skin TODAY because of the resolve my mother showed in that parent teacher meeting.. So I mean, I hope that helps?

Usrname52 −  I work in a school. Unfortunately, the school system is fucked up, and there are a lot of very specific things that the teachers need to teach. If the teachers were told that they needed to assign an assignment about “a country,” then she might have just been worried about the pressure from higher up. Did the assignment specifically say “country”?

You could have just picked Russia, and done the same thing. What is the principal like? Can you go to them? Some might be so worried about backlash for being culturally insensitive that they will support you to the teacher. Do you live in an area with almost no Jews?

Granted, a lot of people are just idiots. My principal told an 8th grader to ask me why Hitler killed the Jews, because it is “my history” and thus, I am a reliable source and the Internet is not. I was in my 20s. I live in NYC. All my grandparents were born in NYC. But I’m jewish, therefore a reliable source about Hitler.

lvr2016 −  I think you missed that my daughter has already finished the assignment. I don’t think she should have to do extra work just because the teacher made up new rules about the assignment after the fact.

The assignment doesn’t say to research a country, it says to research your family’s culture. That was the point of the assignment. If the teacher wanted them to research any country, she should have set that as the assignment.

StrangerSkies −  I would certainly appeal this. I’m an Ashkenazi Jew. My family lived in Ukraine and Russia back when they were the USSR. I speak Russian fluently. But I’ve never been there, I don’t identify as Russian. I identify as Jewish. Had I been born there, I would have held a *Jewish* passport, not a Russian one. I would not have had the same opportunities Russian citizens had.

Jewish segregation in Europe was so prevalent that Shakespeare addressed it in The Merchant of Venice. Both of these points might help with the teacher. Jewish does not automatically mean Israeli, and how could it in a 68 year old country? The teacher decided that a culture meant a country, which is completely inappropriate for a marginalized culture.

alonelyturd −  I feel like this thread is a great example of redditors being clueless about minority issues. The teacher wrote a rubric that was unclear in the case of minorities, and because of that, your daughter is being asked to do extra work.

That is most definitely unfair but unfortunately, it’s going to be up to you to decide how hard you’re willing to fight and what compromises will make life easier for your daughter. I’d perhaps start out by suggesting a compromise where your daughter writes a second report and your teacher has to apologize for not considering the case where somebody’s culture is not the dominant culture of their country.

winniebluestoo −  I agree with you, it is disrespectful of minorities. I would bring it up with the principal in a way that makes it clear that it’s not just your daughter that you are worried about, but other minority cultures who have complex histories. I’m absolutely positive that the school will not want to be seen as culturally insensitive

This situation highlights the challenges of representing diverse cultural identities in education. What advice would you give to this mother on addressing the teacher’s perspective while advocating for her daughter’s unique heritage? Share your thoughts below.