Teaching your own child

[Anonymous]

Have an opportunity to teach my own child within a public school. DC either has some delays or the level of instruction hasn't been that good. I can't homeschool but this is a unique opportunity to deliver excellent instruction and figure out if its my child or the teachers. WWYD?

[Anonymous]

I've known two people who have done this - it was not a good experience all around. Yours may be different. I imagine it has a lot to do with the age of the kids and your personalities. Personally, I would not, but I see that my children respond better to teaching from others (no power struggle).

[Anonymous]

I'd strongly advise having a plan B in place in case this situation doesn't work out. As the PP says, it's probably specific to your relationship with your child, and since that relationship is always changing, it may be hard to predict now what will work a year from now.

[Anonymous]

also, isn't that awkward for the other children and families?

[Anonymous]

I think it would throw the dynamic of the classroom off. Would your child get jealous if you were giving attention to another student? Can you be objective involving conflicts that your child has with other students? I'm surprised the school would even consider it.

[Anonymous]

I did it with one of my kids-- twice-- and it was great.

With my other kid, I wouldn't even try. We'd butt heads, and he wouldn't do well remembering to treat me like "Ms. D" instead of Mom.

[Anonymous]

Why haven't you been helping your child at home if your child has some delays? If you can't tutor your kid at home don't teach your kid at school.

[Anonymous]

Is there another option? I would the it's a best practice to always put a teacher's child with a non-parent if that's an option.

[Anonymous]

I've had colleagues that did this on the middle school level so it was only one class per day, not all day long with your own kid. I could have done it as well and have a similar situation as the original poster; however, I found it helpful to see if I could get my kid into the class of a teacher that I respected and with whom I had a good working relationship. This was ideal because I was truly teaming with the classroom teacher and supporting their work while still maintaining my standing as "mom".

[Anonymous]

I'll be in your situation next year. DD is young enough where it would still be cool to her. The problem is that she's far too possessive to accept me splitting attention. I also think that our parent-child relationship will become a distraction for her and maybe even the other children. If anything, I'm more likely to be harsher on her than others, and she's the type to try and get away with murder. There's only one other teacher in the school that I think would be a good fit for her. Sadly, she's thinking of leaving at the end of the year. The others are bad enough that I may just transfer her out.