Contacting Parent Epiphany, Repost

I have this one student who is a constant disruption in class. I have contacted his mother several times via e-mail only. What surprises me is when she asked me what she should do about her child. I am a parent, but I think that to give her any advice about how to raise her child is beyond what I should be doing as teacher so I referred her to the school counselor. I was dumb founded by this question until I met her during a conference. She looked like she could have been the student’s sister. The clichés “kids having kids” and “early parenthood” that I have heard before meant nothing to me until I met this woman. One thing about being a teacher is you get to see first hand a lot of society’s ills. It gets to a point sometimes that when I am contacting a parent, I hesitate fearing what I might find out! But it must be done because our school policy is to contact the parents at least once a month and make a note of it in a contact log. I rarely have any success with these calls, generally the student causes enough problems until they have to leave.