Is It Reasonable to Switch Classes Because of a Teacher? A Parent’s Real Experience
The backpack hit the entryway floor with a louder thud than usual, and I looked up from folding the pile of soccer jerseys on the couch. Lila, my 13-year-old 8th grader, usually bee-lines for the granola bar jar and her phone the second she walks in, but that Tuesday she just leaned against the wall and stared at her shoes. “I need to switch math classes,” she said. “I can’t do it anymore.”
My first thought was immediate: Is this just middle school drama? Am I about to overreact and beg the administration for a switch over one bad day? Mr. Hale, her math teacher, had seemed fine at back-to-school night. He’d joked that he didn’t hand out A’s for participation, that kids needed to earn their grades, and I’d nodded along, thinking that sounded fine for a kid who’s been known to half-ass homework when she’s distracted by drawing.
But Lila wasn’t blowing off steam about one bad quiz. It wasn’t that the work was too hard, she explained. It was that he called on people when their hands weren’t up. If you fumbled or got it wrong, he huffed a little laugh and said, “C’mon, we covered this yesterday. Who can bail her out?” And the whole class looked at you. Lila’s always gotten anxious about math—we did a 10-week tutor program last year after she threw up before her final exam. She doesn’t like being the center of attention when she’s unsure.
Over the next couple weeks, I watched the pattern stick. She started complaining about stomach aches every Sunday night. She stopped doing math homework first, would put it off until right before bed, then cry that she was stupid and bad at it. She used to spend an hour after school drawing in her sketchbook, now she just laid on her bed staring at TikTok. I texted my older sister, who’s a 7th grade teacher in the next district, and asked her: am I overreacting? Is switching classes for this actually reasonable?
She texted back that most parents are too scared to ask, because everyone’s got that voice in their head saying you’re coddling your kid. But she also said there’s a big difference between a hard class and a class that breaks your kid’s willingness to learn. That got me thinking. I decided to try the small stuff first, before I bothered the principal. First, I asked Lila if she wanted to talk to Mr. Hale after class, tell him about her anxiety and ask if he could give her a quick heads up before calling on her. She worked up the courage to do it. When she came home that day, she said he told her, “If you studied enough, you wouldn’t be nervous. That’s why I call on people—makes you study harder.” Okay, that didn’t work. I emailed him next, copied the school counselor, explained her history with math anxiety, asked for that one small adjustment. He wrote back three days later saying that he doesn’t give special treatment to any student, it wouldn’t be fair to the other kids to change how he runs his class.
That’s when I started really sorting out the line between overreacting and reasonable. Everyone says the same thing: kids need to learn how to work with difficult people, right? They’re going to have bad bosses, annoying coworkers, hard professors in college. Why get them used to switching away from every problem? But I remembered my own 10th grade chemistry teacher, who made fun of girls for asking “dumb questions” and called on us twice as much when we wore makeup to class. I worked my butt off and got a C, and I never took another science class after that. I still avoid balancing my own budget because I associate numbers with that cold feeling of being embarrassed in front of the whole room. A bad fit when you’re young doesn’t just give you a bad semester—it can turn you off a whole thing forever.
I made a quick mental check, three simple questions that helped me sort it out, no fancy parenting jargon. First: has this been going on longer than the normal adjustment period? We waited six weeks from the start of school, which is how long most counselors say it takes for kids to settle into a new routine. This didn’t get better—it got worse. Second: is it affecting her life outside of class? Yes, the stomach aches, the skipping drawing, the constant put-downs about being stupid. Third: is there a realistic alternative? The school had another 8th grade math section that wasn’t full, and I’d heard from other parents that the other teacher worked well with anxious kids. That checked all three boxes.
We put in the formal request, brought the emails we’d sent to Mr. Hale, explained what we’d tried already, and the principal approved it within a week. Lila switched to Ms. Lopez’s class. The first week, she came home and told me Ms. Lopez lets everyone write their answer on a mini whiteboard first before anyone shares, and you don’t have to hold up your hand if you don’t want to talk. She got a B on her first quiz, and that night she asked to bake chocolate chip cookies for her dad’s work, something she hadn’t done in months.
I still get that little twinge of guilt sometimes. A fellow mom at soccer practice mentioned last month that her son has Mr. Hale and loves him, that he’s tough but he really prepares kids for high school. I nodded, because she’s right. Mr. Hale isn’t a bad teacher—he’s just a bad fit for Lila. She’s still going to have to deal with hard people who don’t accommodate her. That lesson will come, I think. But right now, at 13, when she’s just learning that she can speak up for what she needs to learn, I don’t think making her stay in a class that makes her hate math is a good lesson. She’s still getting used to the new class, and she’s nervous about the end-of-term exam next month. Some days she still gets anxious about raising her hand. But the stomach aches are gone, and her sketchbook is full again. That’s enough for me, right now.
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