A first-year elementary teacher has been adjusting her approach to meet the needs of her advanced student, providing him with more challenging material.

When his classmate, who is performing below grade level, asked to try his worksheet, things took an unexpected turn.

After struggling with the assignment, the student ended up in tears, leading to upset parents.

Check it out.

AITA for embarrassing a student?

I (23F) am a first year elementary teacher, I currently teach the 5th grade.

It’s been a huge adjustment from college to teaching, but I enjoy it.

One of my students (11M), (who we’ll call Warren, not using real names) is VERY advanced.

He’s in the 99th percentile for IQ and is way above grade level in all academic areas.

He’s autistic, but quite social, and is close friends with a group of boys he plays basketball with.

His friends are all on grade level or slightly above, no where near him.

Sounds like a bright student!

Warren is a sweet kid, but if he’s not being academically stimulated, he’ll be acting like a class clown and distracting the class.

There’s this concept in education called differentiated instruction, which is basically about meeting kids at various levels in the same classroom.

When learning about a topic, I give Warren late high school or early college level reading materials, as that is what challenges him.

Warren has a cousin (11F) in our class who we’ll call Mia.

Mia is slightly below grade level, she doesn’t show any signs of autism and has different interests than Warren.

How awesome to differentiate instruction for him.

They don’t talk much together in class, but they don’t argue.

The only argument they got into was when Mia made a racially insensitive comment to a classmate (who’s the only POC in my room).

Warren tried explaining why her comment was wrong to her but she didn’t understand before I had to talk to her.

Last Tuesday, I asked the class what they did over the break.

Mia mentioned how their family celebrated Easter, she said Warren was acting “strange.”

The first thing she brought up was him being atheist (his parents are religious) and how she didn’t get it, then she said he had “weird worksheets.”

Apparently, he brought some of his homework to Easter and Mia saw it.

She asked why his worksheets have “so many big words” compared to the ones her and her friends got.

That’s a tricky situation.

I tried explaining why, but I didn’t want any of the kids to feel dumb so I didn’t really give a great answer, just “it’s what he likes.”

Mia kept asking if she could try his worksheets, because “she can know big words too.”

I was unsure what to do as a first year, so I asked some colleagues and they said to just give her one of his worksheets.

We were doing an English assignment on a book we read in class.

She came crying to me when she couldn’t do it, and got virtually every answer wrong.

I told her I wouldn’t count it and she could have her old worksheet.

Precisely why she didn’t get that in the first place.

The next day, I got a call from Mia’s parents, they were screaming and asked why I made her cry.

After I explained what happened, they told me they wanted me to name the teachers that told me to give her a copy of Warren’s worksheet because they wanted to “make sure they learn a lesson.”

I told them their names in a panic and hung up and then went to admin to explain the situation, who were sympathetic.

Since then, both Mia and Warren’s parents have been posting on Facebook about my colleagues, calling them “bullies.” AITA?

What seemed like a well-intentioned effort to help quickly turned into a parental nightmare.

Reddit has mixed opinions on this one.

On the one hand, some people think there are no winners.

And mostly that she shouldn’t have ratted out her coworkers like that.

Although some are more understanding, since she is a first-year teacher after all.

When you try to level the playing field but end up in the teacher’s hot seat!

Some parents are just nightmares.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.