But teachers aren't all bad. Your original post which was basically a 'I've scored points against the teaching profession.' was very much along the lines of how bad we all are, how we force children through hoops unneccesarily, and who do we think we are, asking your son, YOUR SON of all people, to practice his tables on paper.Stonehead wrote:And there's part of the problem. Like many teachers and schools, you require parents to do as you direct.Sarahcook wrote:I do require parents to read with their children... I do require parents to practice spellings with their child...
Parents do not have to do as teachers require - even if they are completely wrong and the teacher is completely right. Parents are not students, support staff or helpers subordinate to the teacher.
By all means, ask parents to help or co-operate in the learning process; explain why things are done in a certain way and why you'd like parental involvement. But remember that parents do not have to do as you direct and especially not when they're at home with their children.
I offer an open meeting at the beginning of every year, with opportunities for private meetings at any other time if the parents can't make the open meeting for any reason. In it, I explain the years work (as much as I can in half an hour!) the differences that the year has to the year their child has just been through, the way that any changes will affect their child and how much work their child will be asked to do with them at home. I explain that I don't mind what their child reads, as long as they read. Books, magazines, teletext, subtitles, I'm not fussed. I know I can't tell parents what to do in their own homes, with their own kids, because believe me, if I could, there'd be some altered circumstances and some much happier children. But that's the joys of inner city teaching. THe parents who come to the meetings are people like you. People who care. The parents, in fact, who aren't the ones we need to reach. You care about Big Lads education. Ok, you care differently to me (you believe, though I doubt it!) but you care, and that's good enough for me.
Good for you, but who says we don't do that?Unlike many of my peers in the profession, I've worked a 12 hour factory day for naff all money (although admittedly only for months and not for years at a time) and the last thing I would want to do is hear a child read. But .... I get the Adorable Child ready for bed and we read together. We talk about his books and his favourites and his day and his toys and we sing and we play for a precious half an hour before he really ought to be asleep.
What we're objecting to is getting the same Biff and Kipper books home for the third time in 14 months, getting the same maths worksheets home two or three times, having him "required" to write the same words in isolation over and over on unlined paper and being criticised for getting something wrong instead of praised for trying and shown how to get it right next time.
Then you are unfortunate in the teacher your son has. We aren't all like that. I have sent the same book home to a child twice, child has mentioned it, we giggled a lot and changed it. (And whoever invented Biff and Kipper should be chained to a rock and have those books read to them thirty times a day. Slowly. With mistakes.) I didn't say you didn't do all those things with your children. I said I could understand why people didn't, but that it should still happen.
Ever thought about how that attitude goes down? We get that quite openly from some teachers and then they wonder why they're losing respect.The worst thing about teaching isn't the children, they're great, it's the parents and the famillies.
The attitude that your childrens education matters to me? That I'm passionate about it? I'd have thought that was a good thing. The attitude that parents make our lives as teachers harder? Check out your original 'I'm great I just annoyed the teacher' attitude post. How does that go down?
Perhaps you should. Who's going to do better? A white girl from an affluent middle-class background with two parents who are both university educated and who all speak English as their first language? Or a black boy from a broken home, whose mum doesn't have English as a first language, and who is struggling to keep a roof over their head by holding down two or three jobs on the minimum wage? The first parents may not be that involved while the mum on her own may be really determined to help her son, but at the end of the day it's extremely likely the middle-class girl will do best at school.I don't care what socio-economic band my famillies fall into, nor what job my kids parents have, or if they have a job...
And if common sense doesn't tell you that, then there's plenty of genuine research that will.
You missed my point and I may not have made it clear. What matters to me is the child. Each child is different. Their circumstances are different. I am not going to pander to a child because their dad is the chair of council and ignore a child because their dad is an unemployed drug addict. That was my point. Each child requires different things from me, each family requires different things from the school. Each child and family offers different things to the school. In both cases there are good and bad things on offer.What can you offer to Big Lads school, aside from criticism? How can YOU improve things?
Yes, the good old Protestant work ethic. If you care about what you're doing, then you will do more of it and do it better.I care if the child has cared enough about what they are doing in school to do extra work at hme. I care if the parents care enough about their child and it's future and it's education to show the child how important it is to get things done on time and to the best of your ability, and to help them achieve that.
Actually, it's not always important to get things done on time - that's something that arose out of the industrial revolution and has been further reinforced by modern capitalism. But I'd agree that doing something to the best of your abilility and trying to go beyond your current level is a good thing - and I certainly encourage my boys to try without being too pushy either.
Animals require feeding on time. Hay requires cutting on time. Food needs to be on the table on time. It's not just about the academic things, it's about the whole child, the whole life. I'm in Norfolk, where everything is later, slower, than the bigger cities I lived in, and I love it, but some things still need to happen at the right time. I can't leave feeding the Adorable Child until later because I can't be bothered. or not get to school to teach on time because I was busy doing other things.
But nor should smug, arrogant and sanctimonous teachers feel they can direct and control what happens in people's homes. Nor should they be critical of families that can't afford new clothes, new shoes, packaged food from the supermarket, school trips, and so on. We've had all that and more.Teachers aren't all slaves to the government, but neither are we there to be bullied by smug and sanctimonious parents who have such a strong belief in what they see is right that they feel they can impose their will on the rest of our classes without even knowing who they are.
And before you get too worried, our boys are properly dressed for the weather, their footwear fits, they get home-made packed lunches, and they get to go on outings with us.
I was never worried. The implication that I was is daft. But I still object to bullying of this nature. Because that is what it is. It's not a reasoned discussion, it's a 'My boy isnn't doing it so don't even try.' It's a blatent 'You're wrong. You're stupid. You don't know what you are doing.' ANd yep, that may well be the attitude you get back from the teachers, and both sides will claim the other side was like it first. When someone lives an alternative lifestyle, whatever form that takes, whether crofting or pagan or same-sex couples or unemployed drug dealers or anything that is different to the percieved norm (and those are some random examples!), they go in on the attack in order to defend their way of life. Even when alternative isn't wrong.
Therefore, if you're setting homework it should not be fundamental to what you're teaching at school or some of the children will be disadvantaged because their parents are not in a position to support or encourage - or do not want to do so. And if the homework is not fundamental to what you're teaching, then why set it at all?You have the time and the effort and the inclination and the resources and the interesting life and all those things that make your son one of the luckiest children on earth, IMHO. Not every parent has that. Not every parent can do that.
Because some children like it. Because some children need it. Because tables are a fundamental and they don't learn themselves and there are not that many interesting and effective ways of doing them (one or the other I've found!) Because some children need phonics and some children need sight words and I cannot physically teach both things at the same time. (I've tried!) Because it encourages some children when the feel the sense of achievement and ownership that they get from haveing done something off their own back. Because it proves to the child they can do it without me. I am there to facilitate their learning, ultimately they need to have ownership of what they know.
But not all teachers do - and believe me, I know a lot of teachers. There are some very good ones, some very bad ones, and a lot who just go with the flow, shaping their teaching to fit the school management, the latest educational fad, or even just drifting along focusing on crowd control rather than education.I think about the homework I set carefully. I have been known to give out worksheets when I wanted to see who had understood and who hadn't, or when the practice needed doing, or when the children asked for more of the same because they liked doing them because they were a challenge for them.
Yep. Seen it, done supply and done it in some cases. Not proud of it. I've said yes a lot recently, closed my door and got on with what my children need. It's not the same as I did last year, not because of fads, but because children are individuals.
Good for you, but remember we don't all get good teachers and schools - or even average teachers and schools who remember that education is about engagement, co-operation and mutual respect between them and parents.I'm proud of what I do and I think long and hard abut 95% of it. (The other 5% I'm allowing myself for a bad day, which happens every now and again to all of us.)
If Big Lad is having a raw deal at school, then I am angry about that, because every child deserves the best. If you aren't putting your best into teaching, then why on earth are you doing it? But like you said to me earlier in this ever increasing post, it's about co-operation, not bullying on either side.
And I know I've messed upthe quoting thing by requoting quotes, but my html isn't up to sorting it out! (I've tried with the italics and I think I've got it right! Home/Self ed working! Who'd have thought it!)
Sarah
Until little Johny was waking up tired and was unhappy!