In my first year of teaching, I encountered two situations that demonstrate ways to deal with an issue with a teacher or staff member at the school. First, at a board meeting in late fall, my name came up. A parent (who also happened to be a board member) said I’d told his kid he didn’t get a textbook because we didn’t have enough of them. The kid had said nothing until grade report time but then contended that was why he was failing world history. Luckily, the rest of the board didn’t rise to the “Oh, my God, what a horrible teacher!” bait. They asked Mr. Holmes to investigate, so the next morning as I came into the school, he asked if what the kid had told his father was true. I took out my grade book and showed him where I’d written down the number of the text the boy received the first day of class. End of story, thanks to a common-sense decision by the board and going straight to the source for information. (BTW, the book was later found in the library, where the kid had l