What Happens When High School Co-Curricular Leadership Goes To Teacher’s Favorites (And How Parents Can Respond)
I was folding mismatched gym socks at the kitchen island last March when my 15-year-old dropped their drama bag by the door and didn’t move to grab their usual after-school granola bar. That’s how I knew something was wrong before they said a word.
They’d spent eight months gunning for head stage manager. When the previous grad left mid-fall, they’d stepped in to run tech week for the one-act festival, stayed until 8pm three nights a week, taped all the floor plans, remembered every light cue, never complained. The drama director had said multiple times she was impressed with how they held everything together. We’d talked for weeks about what they’d do differently as head: add a 10-minute break every hour during build week so no one burns out, make a shared Google doc for blocking notes so people stop losing their scripts.
They sat down on the couch, picked at a loose thread on their hoodie, and said Ms. Henderson gave the spot to her niece. The niece is nice enough, I’ve met her at parent night, but she’s never stayed past 6pm for a set build, scrolls TikTok during cast notes, and forgot her own script at the fall read-through. My kid said half the cast was shocked, but no one said anything out loud.
A week later, I went into their room to grab a pile of jeans to wash, and their sketchbook was open on the bed. They don’t usually hide their writing from me, but I saw a page half-scrawled with “nothing matters if you don’t count anyway” and “maybe it would be easier to stop trying.” My throat closed up, I sat on the edge of their bed and waited for them to get home from school instead of finishing the laundry.
I’ve heard other parents talk about this for years—leadership spots going to the kids who hang around teachers’ desks after class, the ones whose parents volunteer for every PTA event, the favorites— but I never thought it would hit us this hard. It’s not that Ms. Henderson is some evil villain. She’s got three kids of her own, teaches five classes, and directs two shows a year. She’s tired. The niece chats with her about her golden retriever every morning, brings her leftover Christmas cookies from home. My kid is quiet, they do the work, don’t make small talk. They’d just started coming out as non-binary to the whole staff that year, and they were still nervous about pushing for what they want with adults. It’s just easier to give the spot to someone you know, someone who makes you feel good, even if they haven’t put in the work.
What I didn’t do was call the principal that night, or march down to the school to demand a meeting. I also didn’t brush it off and say “life isn’t fair” like my mom would have when I was a teen. That line just makes kids shut down, because it tells them their anger doesn’t matter. First, when I brought up the note, I just said “I saw this in your sketchbook when I was getting laundry. I’m here, whatever you need. Do you want me to fix this, or do you just want me to be angry with you?”
They cried for 45 minutes on the couch, ate mint chocolate chip ice cream straight from the container, and said they just wanted me to be angry. So that’s what I did. I agreed it was total garbage, that every bit of their frustration was fair, that I’d be mad too. That’s the first concrete thing any parent can do in this situation: don’t jump to solutions before you know what your kid actually needs.
After three days, they said they wanted to do something. They didn’t want me to go to Ms. Henderson for them—they wanted to send an email themselves. I helped them draft it, no yelling, no accusations, just said how much time they’d put in, how much they cared about the program, and asked if there was room to talk about shifting responsibilities. Ms. Henderson wrote back the next day that the decision was final, but she’d make them assistant head stage manager. It was something, but it wasn’t what they’d worked eight months for.
I think a lot of parents get this wrong. We want to protect our kids from unfairness, so we rush in to fight their battles for them. But at 15, they need to practice deciding how they want to handle conflict, not have you take it all over. The second concrete step: let your kid lead the response. If they say they don’t want to do anything, that’s okay. If they say they want you to come to the meeting with them, you go, but let them talk first. Only step in if they ask you to. And if your kid mentions dark thoughts, or you see them written down, don’t wait to get them support. We called the school counselor the day I saw the note, got them an appointment that week, no big fuss, just “you’ve been carrying a lot, this person can help you carry it.”
A month after that, my kid stopped going to most drama club meetings. They started going to the tech club across the hall, run by a retired engineer who volunteers after school. He noticed they knew more about lighting boards than any other kid there, and gave them the lead on the district tech competition next fall.
They still have bad days. Last week, they said they still miss the musical, that it hurts when they see the niece posting about tech week on Instagram. The dark thoughts haven’t come back since they started checking in with the counselor every other week, but we still do a Sunday pizza check-in where I ask point blank if they’ve had any thoughts that scare them, and they answer honestly. It’s not a perfect fix. The unfair thing still happened, and it still leaves a mark. But I’d rather let them feel that unfairness, and help them figure out what they want to do next, than pretend it didn’t happen or fix it for them. Some days, that’s all you can do.
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