Last night a facebook friend posted a link to a CNN article about what teachers would like to say to parents. What struck me is that the author used an analogy I've been using for years, but in a different way. When people complained about school taxes or teacher salaries, I would always ask, "If your child is sick, do you look for the cheapest doctor? If your child is in trouble, do you find the cheapest lawyer?" I never could understand why people thought it would be a good idea to hunt for the cheapest possible educators to to the one thing that might affect their children's lives the most.
I think the problem is that people don't think of the education part. Most people look at teachers as people who enforce silly rules that prevented them from doing exactly what they wanted to do when they were in school.What most people seem to object to when they think back on their education is that they were forced to do things and learn things that they weren't interested in, as if their interests are all that matter. They remember the assignments they thought were pointless without stopping to think about what they learned from doing them. Teachers, to them, are the butt of jokes in movies and the scapegoats for everything that goes wrong in society.
We were recently at a family reunion picnic that involved three large families. Someone related to my cousin has a son with severe autism. My mother expressed dismay at how difficult it was for his family to help him navigate that social situation and what patience it took. My comment was, "Can you imagine being a teacher who has that child and maybe four more like him in a room with 25 other students and trying to help everyone achieve a goal?"
My problem in the last few years of teaching was not mainly with parents. Sure, there was the occasional parent who refused to see the reality of their child's situation. I had one father, I'll call him "Jim," whose first email to me had a friendly tone. His son had marginal grades all year, but it didn't become an issue until his grades kept him from playing baseball. (Notice that we made it all the way to spring without an email or phone call.) When I said that the homework missed was a done deal, and that I didn't offer bonus, but I would be willing to help him from there on, he even suggested that I make the boy do the work he missed even if it didn't count. "Though I think it should," he added. In any case, before replying to him, I spoke with the student.
"What seems to be the problem in my class?" I asked. "Your father has questions, and I wanted to hear your side of it before I got back to him."
"I don't study and I don't really try," he said. Okay, that's what I had thought, but didn't realize he was quite so conscious of it.
I relayed that information to the father along with my offer to help his son if he came to me during a period of the day set aside for that purpose. My only requirement was that he would need to do that on his own, that I would not hunt him down or remind him. And that the work he neglected to do for the first weeks of the grading period would not count, but that there was plenty of time left to bring up a failing grade if he did the remainder of the work.
Suddenly "Jim" became "Mr. James F. Parent, L.L.R.C., or some other collection of initials. That reply had been cc'ed to my principal. Because I didn't give him the reply he wanted, he would show me that he had authority over me. In my next email, I reiterated my position, but this time, instead of signing "Maggie Holder," I signed it "Margaret C. Holder, M.S. Ed." I think he got the point. The issue went no further.
I wish I could say that the student dutifully came in and did the required work in a stellar fashion, but that was not the case. Once the father realized I wouldn't be bullied, he gave up and the boy squeaked by with a D. But he could play in the outfield and that was important, since he might get a scholarship for that. Never mind that he won't be able to handle college work and that universities don't routinely collapse under the demands of parents.
The beat goes on. Earlier this summer I read a review of the book "The Help" in which the author points out that in most societies, including those considered by us to be "primitive," the rearing of children is considered to be an important and sacred job. Nonetheless, many of the richest of our society relegate to those whose humanity they barely acknowledge. So it is with teachers. We're fine as long as we don't cause waves. That's why so many children find themselves adrift.
The link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/06/living/teachers-want-to-tell-parents/index.html
Dinner tonight is jambalaya from Paul Prudhomme's cookbook, lent to me by my good friend Karen.
No comments:
Post a Comment