I don’t do anything here, right?

[Anonymous]

I have a very gifted child with ADHD. DC loves to learn and even when ADHD was not well controlled had perfect grades. DC has done a ton of work in therapy and on social issues (and so have we) and is medicated.

This year one subject is going poorly. It’s been their favorite subject consistently in the past. The teacher is negative and is reported to play favorites by other parents (my child has not said this). DC has started coming home with poor grades only on subjective assignments. The comments always say something like “needed more” or “why?”. Sometimes the prompt has been given verbally so it’s impossible to tell whether DC understood the assignment or what was expected. DC now hates this subject and is starting to hate school again after a wonderful year last year. Other subjects with other teachers all seem ok.

DH and I are torn on what to do. Grades obviously don’t matter in elementary and DC is clearly comprehending the material and sometimes a teacher just kind of sucks (tbh this is this DC’s first time really really struggling with a teacher). But I am not happy with 1) the pretty harsh and subjective grading without any constructive comments and 2) the fact that assignments are given in such a way it’s unclear what DC has done wrong because it’s really affecting my child’s attitude towards school.

I am tempted to ask the school counselor to check in but if the teacher is really as vindictive as some other parents describe I feel like it will backfire. There’s no option to move DC, this is a leveled class and the only class that would be appropriate for DC.

We have so far tried to be calm and just say yeah sometimes you don’t get the grade you want but I am honestly increasingly concerned this is going to end up with DC acting up and get us back in the bad place we were a few years ago. All thoughts and welcome including if I’m insane for even considering stepping in here.

[Anonymous]

OP again: I have also considered asking for assignments to be given in writing. We have never needed that as an accommodation before but I do think a lot of the frustration is not understanding what DC did was not up to expectations.

[Anonymous]

Your examples of the feedback given are specific. The teacher wants your child to give a deeper analysis of what they’re writing about. I wouldn’t rush to the conclusion that the teacher is biased against your kid just because your kid is “very gifted” and getting less than perfect scores on writing assignments. I would focus on getting your kid to learn from the feedback and to ask for clarification if doing so would be helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your examples of the feedback given are specific. The teacher wants your child to give a deeper analysis of what they’re writing about. I wouldn’t rush to the conclusion that the teacher is biased against your kid just because your kid is “very gifted” and getting less than perfect scores on writing assignments. I would focus on getting your kid to learn from the feedback and to ask for clarification if doing so would be helpful.

So for example my child said the verbal prompt was write one sentence describing something and they did that. The sentence appears completely adequate to me as a reader. So DC is now unsure if they misheard or what but does not want to ask because of teacher attitude (they have had similar conversations with other teachers and accepted the feedback fine).

The only comment is on this one section of an assignment that also contains many parts with written instructions and the rest of which were objective correct. DC was given a very low grade.

[Anonymous]

I would start by requesting a short conference at a time convenient for the teacher. Your child should be at this conference so everyone is on the same page.
I would request the conference as "DC is not doing well in your class and would like to do better, and I would like to know how I can support DC at home.". You really need the teacher's perspective here.

However if these are OK grades and just lower than your child is used to, I would tread very carefully. If your child is going to revert to behavior issues because of less than perfect grades, that is its own issue, the class is not even the problem here.

[Anonymous]

Follow up with the teacher and try to understand their perspective. We had a "bad" teacher last year as well and tried as much as we could to still be aligned with her, understand what it is that she wanted and convey that to our child. And we tried to help our child learn that she will not always like all of her teachers and may not always understand or agree with the assignments or feedback. Sometimes you just need to learn to adjust to a teacher's quirks, hope for the best, and know that it will pass after that year is over. But I don't think it will help your kid if your kid senses you think this is unfair, so I would try to present a united front with the teacher as much as possible.

Also, I agree with another poster that "why?" is feedback. They wanted more explanation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would start by requesting a short conference at a time convenient for the teacher. Your child should be at this conference so everyone is on the same page.
I would request the conference as "DC is not doing well in your class and would like to do better, and I would like to know how I can support DC at home.". You really need the teacher's perspective here.

However if these are OK grades and just lower than your child is used to, I would tread very carefully. If your child is going to revert to behavior issues because of less than perfect grades, that is its own issue, the class is not even the problem here.

DC is coming home with low grades (Cs) on random assignments but I have no idea what their overall grade is because they get 100s on all the official assessments and it’s hard to know what the weighting is. This is not a scenario where they are getting 99 or something.

And yes obviously there is more going on, which is why I posted in SN. DC is reporting things like “she rolled her eyes at me so I rolled my eyes back” which would have been fine in a playful way with previous teachers but I think it may not go well this year based on what others have have told me about this teacher.

[Anonymous]

OP here and I understand that “why” or “more” can be specific feedback on an assignment, such as an essay or writing prompt. But the problem is what DC brings home are things like worksheets with one line for several questions and no indication that there should be a paragraph or more extensive answer for one out of those 6 questions that they are marked off for and then given a low grade overall. I am obviously not there but DC consistently says they did not receive other instruction or they didn’t understand that they were supposed to write more than they did. This has literally never happened with another teacher including any other teachers this year.

So the more I’m writing this all out I think the better way to frame this issue would be that DC appears not to be understanding assignments in this class for some reason and perhaps we can ask the teacher to be clearer about their expectations and not make it about grades at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would start by requesting a short conference at a time convenient for the teacher. Your child should be at this conference so everyone is on the same page.
I would request the conference as "DC is not doing well in your class and would like to do better, and I would like to know how I can support DC at home.". You really need the teacher's perspective here.

However if these are OK grades and just lower than your child is used to, I would tread very carefully. If your child is going to revert to behavior issues because of less than perfect grades, that is its own issue, the class is not even the problem here.

DC is coming home with low grades (Cs) on random assignments but I have no idea what their overall grade is because they get 100s on all the official assessments and it’s hard to know what the weighting is. This is not a scenario where they are getting 99 or something.

And yes obviously there is more going on, which is why I posted in SN. DC is reporting things like “she rolled her eyes at me so I rolled my eyes back” which would have been fine in a playful way with previous teachers but I think it may not go well this year based on what others have have told me about this teacher.

This is actually more important! Realizing different teachers have different expectations and standards. One teacher might think it is playful to roll her eyes back while another is now doubly annoyed. First for whatever your DD was consciously or unconsciously doing, then again for not taking it seriously and just responding by rolling her eyes back.

I have a high school aged son with ADHD and teachers either seem to love him or hate him, no middle ground. And when he senses the teacher doesn’t like him he or is being unfair with him he answers back. It’s gotten better as he has gotten older and has become more aware of what bothers different teachers and how to time the right time to talk to a teacher who is cranky.

When I got involved and called or emailed it never got better and my son would tell me not to do anything because it would make things worse.

[Anonymous]

Tell your kid everyone has a clunker for a teacher at some point in their school career. And if they get through with only one, that’s awesome. So she is lucky to be getting hers done and out of the way so young. Tell her not to give her teacher the power to take away her love of this subject- when we don’t like people we don’t give them things.

My DD is 22 and still hates her third grade teacher. I told her all these things and it helped get through the school year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So the more I’m writing this all out I think the better way to frame this issue would be that DC appears not to be understanding assignments in this class for some reason and perhaps we can ask the teacher to be clearer about their expectations and not make it about grades at all.

Bingo OP. Was coming in to say this but you figured it out. It's time to drop your focus on grades. I think your conversations with DC about this teacher have been inappropriate and unhelpful. Re-read 07:57's last sentence to you. Next, ask yourself what skills would help your DC navigate this teacher's assignments. Focus? Verbal expression? Self-advocacy? Metacognition? Perspective-taking? Flexibility? Emotional resilience? Make sure you are supporting your DC's development of these skills at home.

Classroom ADHD 504 accommodations can include student repeating instructions back to the teacher so the teacher can check for student understanding and also, student verbal rehearsal of ideas before writing, to help the student develop their thoughts more thoroughly. Warning though. If you expect teachers to do this for your DC for every one-sentence task, it's time to pull out and homeschool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the more I’m writing this all out I think the better way to frame this issue would be that DC appears not to be understanding assignments in this class for some reason and perhaps we can ask the teacher to be clearer about their expectations and not make it about grades at all.

Bingo OP. Was coming in to say this but you figured it out. It's time to drop your focus on grades. I think your conversations with DC about this teacher have been inappropriate and unhelpful. Re-read 07:57's last sentence to you. Next, ask yourself what skills would help your DC navigate this teacher's assignments. Focus? Verbal expression? Self-advocacy? Metacognition? Perspective-taking? Flexibility? Emotional resilience? Make sure you are supporting your DC's development of these skills at home.

Classroom ADHD 504 accommodations can include student repeating instructions back to the teacher so the teacher can check for student understanding and also, student verbal rehearsal of ideas before writing, to help the student develop their thoughts more thoroughly. Warning though. If you expect teachers to do this for your DC for every one-sentence task, it's time to pull out and homeschool.

So to be clear I have not expressed any of this to my child besides asking questions like “what was the prompt for this assignment” and suggesting that they follow up on the expectations with the teacher directly (which they have done in the past with other teachers) and I was most taken aback by their refusal to do it themselves this time because of their perception of the teacher. The conversation about eye rolling was initiated by my child who realized in retrospect that the teacher did not appreciate it so I expressed agreement they should not do that again. But they are very frustrated with this teacher and feel conversation with them will not be productive. I have never gotten involved in anything academic before so sort of trying to navigate this.

I try really hard to support teachers and told DC I have misunderstood assignments during school and now at work and it’s just something that happens.

Our school is a little weird in that only like 10 percent or even less of the work gets a real grade. At DC age most work gets a smiley face or something and no edits or comments. So I was thinking of asking the teacher to focus on clarifying expectations for graded work, and trying to put assignments in writing so if this happens again at least DC can look back and say ok I was supposed to write 3 paragraphs here or something like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC consistently says they did not receive other instruction or they didn’t understand that they were supposed to write more than they did.

So now they know that this teacher routinely wants more detail in writing assignments, big or small! That's information that your child can use going forward—for this class, always write a little more than you think necessary. (P.S. It's good practice for future written work, as well. Some kids write the bare minimum and it doesn't serve them well.)