How to deal with a teacher who doesn't want to deal with parents

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I am just curious about the context. What was going on when you attempted to communicate with the teacher?

In my career as a teacher, there have been a handful of parents I have attempted to hold at arm's length, and it has always been because they have spoken abusively to me.

OP here, I have had no issue that has required attention, it is just the stay out mentality that is challenging. I fully support the leave the teacher alone to do their job but I also shouldn't feel like I am being a burden if I am inquiring about how the classroom operates. This is not necessarily something I would learn at Back to School Night (when do they eat, when are centers, etc.) nor is this give my child special attention over the others for something specific (he/she doesn't like X and therefore I'm going to need accommodate with Y). Rather an open communication environment where IF something needed a little extra attention (discipline management tools we can mirror at home or taking more time with math and what can we assist with at home), it was welcomed to bring it up. Its the overall feeling lack of recognition that there is a team effort between all parties and an interest to build a basic relationship at best to foster things in a positive way. It also sucks that parents who have had her in the past and even other teachers say good luck with her, she's not changing and shuts everyone out.

[Anonymous]

To be clear, you haven't had any reason why you needed her to be responsive, you just think she won't be?

Why not wait until there's an issue and reach out then?

[Anonymous]

14:40 again. Just to give you some perspective, most developed countries have that kind of stay-out mentality. Teaching is left to the professionals, and parents are not welcome in schools, to interfere, distract or even be asked to grade assignments, which is a huge breach of privacy.

As you know, the US is way behind a lot of countries, developed and otherwise, in international high school achievement tests. Looking at the big picture, keeping parents out of schools doesn't hurt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
14:40 again. Just to give you some perspective, most developed countries have that kind of stay-out mentality. Teaching is left to the professionals, and parents are not welcome in schools, to interfere, distract or even be asked to grade assignments, which is a huge breach of privacy.

As you know, the US is way behind a lot of countries, developed and otherwise, in international high school achievement tests. Looking at the big picture, keeping parents out of schools doesn't hurt.

Good point. OP, when your child is being examined by a doctor, do you feel the need/right to ask the doctor the methods and rationale for his/her approach/procedures and the order of events in the treatment? I'm guessing you probably have confidence in the doctor's expertise, and you understand that the doctor's time is valuable, so he/she is not expected to give you a detailed play-by-play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To be clear, you haven't had any reason why you needed her to be responsive, you just think she won't be?

Why not wait until there's an issue and reach out then?

+1. OP sounds like she is having separation anxiety.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Confirm directly with the teacher that your understanding of her position is in fact her position. Possible she had a bad day, possible you misunderstood her. If you are correct, go find principal...NOW. In a public and charter school environment where parent engagement is a key to success, where many schools (at least my HRCS) encourage it, that's not acceptable.

P.S. Even my HRCS that generally encourages it doesn't want it for the first few weeks since kids are acclimating.

Thank you as I feel it takes a partnership with both teacher and parent. She didn't have a bad day as pretty much everyone knows that is her reputation, to which she has even joked about. Tough as she seems to be an effective teacher and DC enjoys the classroom and learning.

Our K teacher was like this and made no bones about it. She would make you aware of issues and tell you basically to myob.
I was taken back by this method but she ended up being right and our DD had a fantastic fulfilling year without us meddling.
I should note that dd has no special needs or accommodations. If she did I would have wanted to be in the know more than we were.

[Anonymous]

OP here again, fair enough and all valid counterpoints I need to consider. Just having a hard time going from a very open environment where we were very active with the K teacher to the polar opposite this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The only important thing is that the teacher should be responsive to questions about a child's specific issues. I say this as a parent of a child with special needs. My child needs accommodations and sometimes I need feedback on how these are working, or sometimes there is a crisis and we need to meet urgently.

On the other hand, parents in the classroom are a distraction, more often than not, despite volunteer training. Our elementary school rarely has parents in the classroom, instead there are professional aides who ably second the teachers. Our school won and award last year for most parent volunteer hours, so there are plenty of other ways to get involved.

+1. I have a child with some issues and one with none (so far). with the first I request a meeting with the teacher the first week of school every year, keep a very open communication, invite teacher to write if there is any problem or anything we should help the child with at home and so on. so far (5th grade) all the teachers appreciated and told me that meeting and working together was useful, although child also has an IEP. for second child, I go to back to school night, and parent-teacher conference. never requested a meeting, never wrote the teacher an e-mail and so on. child is doing fine so far and I just let the teacher do her job, no need for me to get involved. I work full time so I would not have time to volunteer in Class during the day (other than the random chaperoning of a school trip), but a teacher and an aide should be able to handle the job, especially if the teacher is good and effective as you are saying. why so you care where the child eat or where the stations are in Class? If there are no issues and there is no need for extra help from parents, I am siding more with the teacher on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
14:40 again. Just to give you some perspective, most developed countries have that kind of stay-out mentality. Teaching is left to the professionals, and parents are not welcome in schools, to interfere, distract or even be asked to grade assignments, which is a huge breach of privacy.

As you know, the US is way behind a lot of countries, developed and otherwise, in international high school achievement tests. Looking at the big picture, keeping parents out of schools doesn't hurt.

Good point. OP, when your child is being examined by a doctor, do you feel the need/right to ask the doctor the methods and rationale for his/her approach/procedures and the order of events in the treatment? I'm guessing you probably have confidence in the doctor's expertise, and you understand that the doctor's time is valuable, so he/she is not expected to give you a detailed play-by-play.

At first blush I thought this was ironic. Then I realized you were serious. If I questioned or didn't understand the course of treatment you are damn right I insert myself and ask questions. And if you don't then, respectfully, you aren't doing your job as a parent. The amount of commentary on the importance of managing and owning your own healthcare is staggering.

P.S. You should be an active participant in your own healthcare as well.

[Anonymous]

As a teacher, I think this is pretty normal and nothing to be concerned about. These days there's a lot of pressure to be open to texts/phone calls (on your personal cell at all hours), emails, home visits, classroom visits, etc. It can be overwhelming. I think your teacher is simply setting boundaries. From what you've said, she's a good teacher, so if you have a specific concern about your child one day she'll probably reply to you.

[Anonymous]

Get a hobby!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
14:40 again. Just to give you some perspective, most developed countries have that kind of stay-out mentality. Teaching is left to the professionals, and parents are not welcome in schools, to interfere, distract or even be asked to grade assignments, which is a huge breach of privacy.

As you know, the US is way behind a lot of countries, developed and otherwise, in international high school achievement tests. Looking at the big picture, keeping parents out of schools doesn't hurt.

Good point. OP, when your child is being examined by a doctor, do you feel the need/right to ask the doctor the methods and rationale for his/her approach/procedures and the order of events in the treatment? I'm guessing you probably have confidence in the doctor's expertise, and you understand that the doctor's time is valuable, so he/she is not expected to give you a detailed play-by-play.

At first blush I thought this was ironic. Then I realized you were serious. If I questioned or didn't understand the course of treatment you are damn right I insert myself and ask questions. And if you don't then, respectfully, you aren't doing your job as a parent. The amount of commentary on the importance of managing and owning your own healthcare is staggering.

P.S. You should be an active participant in your own healthcare as well.

You don't understand the point I was attempting to make.

Yes, of course I ask questions if I don't understand the course of treatment. However, I don't expect the doctor to give me a play-by-play on a routine appointment, and I don't need to know what time the doctor is going to process or send off blood work after I leave, or what kind of instruments are in the cabinets, or what brand of cotton swab is being used, etc. My point is that people generally respect the time of other professionals, and they respect the professional's training and expertise, yet for some reason these same people expect teachers to devote much more time to chatter and communication about things that aren't essential and only detract from the time the teacher would otherwise spend planning/teaching. Classroom daily schedules (center times, carpet times, recess times, etc.) are NOT equivalent to a complicated medical treatment that would warrant intense and time consuming communication. They are more the equivalent of listening to a kid's heart during a routine check-up. It enrages me when people treat teachers as domestic staff rather than professionals.

Oh, and if someone else was taking up my doctor's time by asking inane questions about when exactly during a typical routine treatment he would listen to a kid's heart, and why the doctor had photographs of an owl on the wall, and when the doctor planned to update the window treatments in the office, I would hope that the doctor would "discourage communication" with that individual so that time could be spent on doing the things the doctor is trained to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The only important thing is that the teacher should be responsive to questions about a child's specific issues. I say this as a parent of a child with special needs. My child needs accommodations and sometimes I need feedback on how these are working, or sometimes there is a crisis and we need to meet urgently.

On the other hand, parents in the classroom are a distraction, more often than not, despite volunteer training. Our elementary school rarely has parents in the classroom, instead there are professional aides who ably second the teachers. Our school won and award last year for most parent volunteer hours, so there are plenty of other ways to get involved.

+1

I'm a teacher. OP, what, specifically, do you want to "engage" the teacher about? If you have specific concerns about your child that the teacher refuses to discuss, that's a problem. If you're trying to volunteer in the classroom and it's not welcomed, then you need to just back off and let the teacher do her job.

[Anonymous]

I am 15:47. My experience was this. We were brought in for the first parent teacher interview and DD's teacher said that DD was experiencing social problems that were normal and she was working through them with her. I am a mom of an only so I was probably more anxious back then. I asked how i can help and what I can do to work with DD. The teacher said there's nothing you can do, let her be and let her work it out herself. I thought that was weird at the time because I am with DD more than anyone, I thought I could make some type of a difference but she said nope. We weren't informed of anything the kids were working on throughout the year at all. There were no options to volunteer for anything in the classroom. The teacher just very much did her own thing. My dd was at the age that she had no desire to communicate about how she spent her day. So we were in the dark.

I was very moved and surprised at the end of the year. Each family was presented with a gorgeous personalized published book of how our kids spent their first year. We got to see everything in retrospect and it was awesome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
14:40 again. Just to give you some perspective, most developed countries have that kind of stay-out mentality. Teaching is left to the professionals, and parents are not welcome in schools, to interfere, distract or even be asked to grade assignments, which is a huge breach of privacy.

As you know, the US is way behind a lot of countries, developed and otherwise, in international high school achievement tests. Looking at the big picture, keeping parents out of schools doesn't hurt.

Good point. OP, when your child is being examined by a doctor, do you feel the need/right to ask the doctor the methods and rationale for his/her approach/procedures and the order of events in the treatment? I'm guessing you probably have confidence in the doctor's expertise, and you understand that the doctor's time is valuable, so he/she is not expected to give you a detailed play-by-play.

At first blush I thought this was ironic. Then I realized you were serious. If I questioned or didn't understand the course of treatment you are damn right I insert myself and ask questions. And if you don't then, respectfully, you aren't doing your job as a parent. The amount of commentary on the importance of managing and owning your own healthcare is staggering.

P.S. You should be an active participant in your own healthcare as well.

You don't understand the point I was attempting to make.

Yes, of course I ask questions if I don't understand the course of treatment. However, I don't expect the doctor to give me a play-by-play on a routine appointment, and I don't need to know what time the doctor is going to process or send off blood work after I leave, or what kind of instruments are in the cabinets, or what brand of cotton swab is being used, etc. My point is that people generally respect the time of other professionals, and they respect the professional's training and expertise, yet for some reason these same people expect teachers to devote much more time to chatter and communication about things that aren't essential and only detract from the time the teacher would otherwise spend planning/teaching. Classroom daily schedules (center times, carpet times, recess times, etc.) are NOT equivalent to a complicated medical treatment that would warrant intense and time consuming communication. They are more the equivalent of listening to a kid's heart during a routine check-up. It enrages me when people treat teachers as domestic staff rather than professionals.

Oh, and if someone else was taking up my doctor's time by asking inane questions about when exactly during a typical routine treatment he would listen to a kid's heart, and why the doctor had photographs of an owl on the wall, and when the doctor planned to update the window treatments in the office, I would hope that the doctor would "discourage communication" with that individual so that time could be spent on doing the things the doctor is trained to do.

I'm a professional. My time is very valuable. I am very, very senior and own a huge P&L (size matters sometimes). And I think my time is valuable. And the people who work for me's time is valuable. And people ask me and my team inane questions all day because we have an expertise they do not and we are relied on to treat them all professionally and respectfully and find ways to make them and their queries feel valuable and relevant. Sometimes I have to push them off for a while but I've never said or heard said about my profession what you assert is true about teachers. And anyone who operated in my org with the attitude espoused above would be counseled to change, and terminated if they couldn't adapt. It amazes me that teachers (and their little parrot supporters) seem to think that they are the only people who get treated like that.

P.S. You picked a bad analogy to make your point. While I respect that you doubled down, you set yourself up for failure with that choice.