Parents of difficult students asking for private school recommedation paperwork

[Anonymous]

Just keep it brief, generic and vague. They'll read between the lines if they can.

[Anonymous]

If the kid really is bad he’ll be back regardless of what you say. Disruptive kids don’t last long at privates.

[Anonymous]

I find it stunning OP sees this as an opportunity to punish the child instead of helping the child get the support they need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it stunning OP sees this as an opportunity to punish the child instead of helping the child get the support they need.

"Punish," my rear end. OP is not going to lie and blow smoke up the school's skirt about how great the kid is and how they should want him when it's untrue. It's called ethics. Try it sometime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it stunning OP sees this as an opportunity to punish the child instead of helping the child get the support they need.

Mainstream private schools don’t provide support for kids like OP describes. They exclude them to get the environment they’re aiming for. Nothing helpful about setting this kid up for failure.

[Anonymous]

Here is how I begin negative narratives at my private school (we aren’t allowed to write truly negative narratives for report cards or recommendations, but I’m sure the code is clear to other educators).

1.

“Larlo is a confident, outgoing student with many good ideas.”

If he’s truly a nice kid, you could swap “friendly” for “confident.”

2. “Larlo has made progress this semester in Skill A (name it in detail) and Skill B (name it).

“Has made progress” is code for “was in the classroom and had a vague idea of what was expected of him, and he occasionally submitted enough poorly written material to indicate that he’s absorbed a bit of the vocabulary he heard in class discussions happening around him.” It doesn’t mean good progress, and it doesn’t mean mastery of the material.

Feel free to wax descriptive when describing a few skills you taught: this can take up several lines of narrative.

3. “Larlo is a pleasure to have in class and I wish him the very best of luck for the future.”

Not a lie because I’m sure he’s a pleasure to SOMEONE in the classroom for…comic relief? A low bar that can allow hard-working other students the chance to feel good in comparison? Also, this takes up another line and closes the narrative “compliment sandwich” structure my administration insists upon using to obscure all relevant criticism or advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it stunning OP sees this as an opportunity to punish the child instead of helping the child get the support they need.

"Punish," my rear end. OP is not going to lie and blow smoke up the school's skirt about how great the kid is and how they should want him when it's untrue. It's called ethics. Try it sometime.

I’m not OP and have only worked in private schools, but I can say that on occasions when we have “counselled out” students for behavior or poor academic performance or special needs we can’t/don’t have the resources to support, I have been directed and required by admin to actually lie. Admin just wants the kid gone with as little fuss as possible, and that means fobbing him off on another private school by underplaying the issues. I’ll go so far as to say that in a few cases, the other schools had no idea that the kid was required to leave, and our admin openly supported the parents’ choice to misrepresent the departure as their “choice.”

Not sure how it works in public, but if admin is similar, I can see that OP might not be able to be 100% truthful. So your fears that the child will be “punished” are baseless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really don’t know what it means that the parents were not receptive to working as a team. Parents are not in the classroom (or even allowed in school buildings lately). Other than reinforcing expectations at home, it’s really hard for them to be involved in classroom management in real time. It sounds like this child has other challenges going on and the parents are trying to find a more suitable environment for him. He is a child, and while I’m sure he made your job more difficult, I can’t believe that he had no positive personal qualities or characteristics that you could highlight.

Wow. And this is part of the problem. Working as a team has nothing to do with “classroom management.”

+1 this is the real problem. How can you not understand what it means to work as a team with your kid and teacher? If the OP did not care about the kid they would not be asking for suggestions. Let's stop blaming teachers for kids that have problems.

Not blaming teacher. Sincerely asking, what do you mean when you want parents to “work as a team” particularly with covid restrictions?

[Anonymous]

Why not just say

I can confirm this student was in my class in the academic year 2021-2022. He had few absences and contributed to class discussions. He completed his assignments satisfactorily and passed the class. He appeared to get on with his classmates. We wish him all the best at his new school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really don’t know what it means that the parents were not receptive to working as a team. Parents are not in the classroom (or even allowed in school buildings lately). Other than reinforcing expectations at home, it’s really hard for them to be involved in classroom management in real time. It sounds like this child has other challenges going on and the parents are trying to find a more suitable environment for him. He is a child, and while I’m sure he made your job more difficult, I can’t believe that he had no positive personal qualities or characteristics that you could highlight.

Wow. And this is part of the problem. Working as a team has nothing to do with “classroom management.”

+1 this is the real problem. How can you not understand what it means to work as a team with your kid and teacher? If the OP did not care about the kid they would not be asking for suggestions. Let's stop blaming teachers for kids that have problems.

Not blaming teacher. Sincerely asking, what do you mean when you want parents to “work as a team” particularly with covid restrictions?

I would guess it means that the child was being disruptive and parents were not working with the kid at home to stop the disruptions. Since this was last year, I doubt it was virtual school. Ie Teacher calls home or emails home that the child is doing X in class and the parents refuse to believe it, Larlo is aweomse and would never, or didn’t talk to the kid or didn't discipline the kid.

Ot the Child wasn’t completing work or doing work properly because the kid was goofing off and the Teacher sent it home to be completed but the parents didn’t have the kid complete it at home.

Whatever the exact scenario, the Teacher reached out to the parents to try and address issues and the parents either didn’t respond or blew off what the Teacher was telling them. The kdis behavior was crappy, nothing changed, and now the parents want to move to Private. It could be that the Parents think the school sucks and Private will be better. It could be the Parents think a different environment would work better for their child. It could be the parents are in denial about their kids behavior and think a change of location is all that is needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the sake of your teachers who have larger class sizes to deal with, write about what an angle the kid is and how they are a great, hard working, trouble free student. Let the private deal with the kid of kid that public school teachers are required to deal with.

OP here. That's what my boss said.

Sure, go ahead and do that. It's the "smart" thing to do.

Your boss obviously isn't concerned about telling the truth and any ethical pangs you might feel about telling lies. Why should you?

But that's how the public schools operate, I guess.

I’m a private school teacher. We do accept students worth less-than-perfect applications. If you lie, you don’t provide us with information that can help us with sectioning and resource allocation. I know we work in different types of schools, but ultimately we have the same purpose: helping students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is how I begin negative narratives at my private school (we aren’t allowed to write truly negative narratives for report cards or recommendations, but I’m sure the code is clear to other educators).

1.

“Larlo is a confident, outgoing student with many good ideas.”

If he’s truly a nice kid, you could swap “friendly” for “confident.”

2. “Larlo has made progress this semester in Skill A (name it in detail) and Skill B (name it).

“Has made progress” is code for “was in the classroom and had a vague idea of what was expected of him, and he occasionally submitted enough poorly written material to indicate that he’s absorbed a bit of the vocabulary he heard in class discussions happening around him.” It doesn’t mean good progress, and it doesn’t mean mastery of the material.

Feel free to wax descriptive when describing a few skills you taught: this can take up several lines of narrative.

3. “Larlo is a pleasure to have in class and I wish him the very best of luck for the future.”

Not a lie because I’m sure he’s a pleasure to SOMEONE in the classroom for…comic relief? A low bar that can allow hard-working other students the chance to feel good in comparison? Also, this takes up another line and closes the narrative “compliment sandwich” structure my administration insists upon using to obscure all relevant criticism or advice.

Not to detract from OP's original question but this has me worried that teachers can't write negative report cards. I went back to re-read my DC's report card after this because it has comments like "made progress in xxxx". Is that really code for he is below average in those subjects? I really don't understand why schools can't be open with parents especially when paying the huge tuition.