Where is that school where teachers actually appreciate parents suggestions?

[Anonymous]

OP, I think you need some distance and your son may need a new school. You may find that his first grade teacher is similar to this teacher, etc. This may be a school philosophy. Some children have a very difficult time making the adjustment from preschool to PreK/K. And some children really need to be in a setting where teachers are equipped to handle attention and behavioural issues. While you write about how it would be nice if teachers would listen to a suggestion each three months, you seem as if you've offered enough for your child's first five years at his new school. It may not be possible for you to right the ship with this teacher for this year.

My kids attended a preschool which was a cocoon - warm and nurturing, everyone was nice, everyone was happy. They both now attend a K-12 school, and even if they are in K and first, it is the big leagues. The teachers and staff are incredibly great, but it is not the cocoon. They nurture, but they do not coddle. And the margins for behaviour are much more narrow than when they were in preschool. For instance, the preschool teacher would've had the time to handle the backpack incident because all students are picked up in the classroom, etc. At their current school, they need to move 100s of kids out through a carpool line. Children are expected to be responsible for their belongings. If they showed up with a backpack, then they would be expected to carry it home. If the backpack is too heavy, then the onus to change it rests with the parents, not the school. The school staff can't carry each child's belongings to the car - parents and nannies would be sitting in line for hours!

You clearly love your son. You may need to consider, however, a school setting where teachers have the training to work with his attention challenges.

[Anonymous]

I definitely would change classrooms or change teachers. This is obviously not a good fit. And it seems as if the teacher is so resentful of you and your suggestions that she is taking it out on your child. NOT a good situation.

[Anonymous]

OP, why didn't you get out of your car and help your son carry his back-pack if he grimacing while walking up the hill? And did the teacher deny your son a snack as a punishment or was there just no time to give him a snack because it was time to get ready to go home? I think you need to remember that the teacher has other students in her class that also need her attention. Also, perhaps you can consider the possibility that the teacher has more experience dealing with children thamn you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, why didn't you get out of your car and help your son carry his back-pack if he grimacing while walking up the hill? And did the teacher deny your son a snack as a punishment or was there just no time to give him a snack because it was time to get ready to go home? I think you need to remember that the teacher has other students in her class that also need her attention. Also, perhaps you can consider the possibility that the teacher has more experience dealing with children thamn you do.

They would shoot me if I got out of my car to help him. That car pool line runs like a well oiled machine and is dependent on each parent staying put in and moving their car along quickly. They do not want parents getting out of cars. School policy.

I do not believe teacher denied him snack as punishment. She doesn't seem cruel like that. I believe they really ran out of time.

To other posters, DC has improved a lot since school began. Teacher said several kids in class have issues too. So they do not see him as a bigger problem they said.

Of course I see that teacher has more experience with teaching kids than I do. Nevertheless, not seeing the reason why it's so terrible to listen to parents suggestions. What if that suggestion were actually helpful to both teacher and child? Wouldn't it make it worth it to listen?

I can't change schools really. Just moved DC out of a montessori school and into this new school. From DC's perspective, he likes this school... a lot. And honestly so do we. We just have this ONE problem - a general one- we want the teacher to listen to parents suggestions once in a while. Not necessarily take every suggestion, just listen to them.

PP's, thank you for taking so much time to read about my problem. I have gotten some wonderful advice. I have shared your posts with DH too. I will take some of your advice and try it out and just see what happens. I remind myself that no matter what, DC is relatively happy there....damn board around his neck or not, religious questioning or not. Yes, this teacher could use some training in my opinion. But still, he's pretty happy there and that does count for a lot.

I'm going to close this for now. I never wanted it to take up 5 pages!!!! Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

The teacher did listen -- she just did so in a way that indicated what you were saying wasn't new information or helpful to her.

If/when you give her something she recognizes as a useful insight, she'll no doubt use it. That will probably happen in the context of a recurrent problem that she hasn't understood and/or been able to solve.

Kid dawdles, misses snacks, cries is, no doubt a BTDT scenario as is "overemotional kid was sleepy/out of sorts." IME, teachers are most receptive to parental input when (a) they ask, (b) your kid has some quirk or a relatively unique issue or (c) there's been some misunderstanding between kid and teacher and the parent can supply the missing piece(s) (which can mean cluing the kid into what the teacher is doing and why -- or vice versa -- or both).

Receptivity also goes up when it's clear it's a two-way street -- i.e. that the parent listens and gives serious consideration to the teacher's advice.

[Anonymous]

I think the religion questions are creepy.

[Anonymous]

You mentioned your son used to go to a Montessori School and now goes to a more traditional school. For all of the cold posters -- Montessori is much more nurturing than traditional schools. Hey, my daughter switched in the 7th grade from Montessori to a prestigious private school always mentioned on these posts. It was like going from a nice warm trip in Bermuda to the North Pole. I just don't think traditional schools care that much about the kids. They care more about the institutions and their reputations -- not the feelings of the poor kid. My daughter is at the top-ranked Ivy now and they are actually much nicer at an Ivy than the private schools here in DC.

[Anonymous]

Alrighty--- at first I thought you were a bit over-reactive and hyper protective...but....

1. The Inquisition re: religion is chilling.
2. The card around the neck, well, imagine what that teacher would have to say if she had to wear one..

This is what you ARE finding out about your child though:
1. He's pretty resilient & that's a good thing; he can manage - which he must be since you say he's enjoying school- even when things aren't always going his way.
2. He's doing pretty well with structure and limits

[Anonymous]

OOOPs that submitted by accident.
Sounds like the teacher is a creep. I don't know what the rest of the school is like..... and what the long term benefits of remaining there will be. Support your little guy, but don't coddle him. It looks like he's doing OK in many ways!

[Anonymous]

Ugh -- what is this card around the neck thing? It sounds like the 1950s or worse -- it sounds like Jewish people having to wear yellow stars during the Holocaust and WWII. You mentioned the teacher asked about your religion. Are you by chance Jewish? If so, I would be really disturbed by this card around the neck thing.

[Anonymous]

Have you spoken with the head of school about the card around the neck? Is he/she on board with that? Unless it's something done for EVERY child in the classroom, it seems very demeaning (even then I don't like the idea of it, but at least it's not singling kids out).

[Anonymous]

When I first read the original post, I thought you were just a PITA parent. However, as I read more, it seems clear that this particular teacher is not very nurturing and may in fact be picking on your child. The questioning of religion, making your child wear a card around the neck, forcing him to wear a wheeling kind of backpack seems wrong to me. If you can not get him changed out of the classroom, consider changing schools. My son was a little bit of a dawdler and slower on the developmental curve and was picked on by a teacher. I just realized one day that the teachers were not a good fit and would likely not change and pulled him out and switched schools (coincidentally, we were offered a spot mid year at a school we had been on a waitlist for) - it was a great move for my son and he really excelled at his new school despite the mid-year change. I realized then not all teachers are good for every student. Also, there are some plain bad teachers out there.

[Anonymous]

I think the sign around the neck is over the top. Your child is not an animal! Plus the inquiry about religion has no place in the classroom. I'd move my kid out of there pronto!

[Anonymous]

Oh all the things to get worked up over you don't even get worked up over the one that is most important!

The card around his neck - this would never, ever happen. It is not in any way postitive reinforcement - where did you get such an idea? It's a shaming technique. Personally, I would go to the school tomorrow, remove it from his neck, hand it to the teacher and tell her it is wrong and inappropriate and to never, ever do such thing to my child again. Then I would meet with the Head of the School to find out if they endorse such an idea.

What does a student in K have in his backpack that is making it so heavy anyway? And 3 to 4 emails on a backpack?

The question about religion - unless you are a part of secret cult - I think others knowing which religion you practice is just fine.

[Anonymous]

Disclaimer: I'm a teacher.

I think that a lot of people here are looking at the issue with the necklace from an adult point of view, and not from a 5 year old's point of view. 5 year olds aren't adults, they don't think like adults, and they don't react emotionally like adults.

The early childhood classroom is a pretty intimate setting. Everyone knows everyone else's business. They know who still wets their pants, and who can read really big words, and who takes a long time getting their stuff put away. What they don't know, unless we tell them, is the value that society assigns to these things. They know what they're good at and what their friends are good at, but it doesn't occur to them that being really really good at reading is in any way different from being able to go across the monkey bars or being able to turn your eyelids inside out (one of my son's greatest accomplishments at that age).

Some early childhood teachers (I'm going to go ahead and call them bad teachers) shame kids based on what they can or can't do. They teach little kids that being able to do certain things like sit still for long periods of time, or read fluently, or remember to go to the bathroom before it's an emergency makes you a good person, and that if you can't do those things there's something wrong with you. They are usually very public and derogatory in the ways they correct children, and while they may temporarily raise the self-esteem and confidence of a small number of "star" pupils, that self-esteem is brittle because behind it is the fear that maybe one they'll mess up and be shamed too.

Some early childhood teachers, and these are better, buy into the societal notion that certain skills are "better", but seek to protect children from embarrassment by encouraging them to "hide" their abilities. My son had one of these teachers in Kindergarten. She told the class that you should never ask your friends what they're reading because if they're reading easier things than you they'll be embarrassed. My son may not have been a reading superstar in Kindergarten, but he was smart enough to know that this meant that not being a fluent reader was shameful, so he stopped reading at all in class so that noone would notice his easy books. In addition, to giving the message that not having certain skills is shameful, encouraging kids to hide their ability levels is ridiculous. In a classroom setting, it's impossible not to notice who has what skills. Either the teacher calls up little groups based on ability levels and you can't help noticing that those kids are reading a book you read 6 months ago, or she calls up heterogenous groups and it's obvious who can't read the book.

So what do great teachers do? They develop a culture in the classroom where everyone knows who is good at what, and noone cares. When my son went into first grade he whispered to his teacher that he couldn't read the directions on a worksheet and she smiled and said "Go ask Malik, he already learned that." Later she sent Malik to my son with the message "Josue's a great shoe tier, please ask him to help you with yours". He came home with a big smile on his face, because in one day she taught him that every member of the community had things they already knew and things they were still learning and that that's OK. In a classroom where everyone knows what everyone's good at, and what they're still working on, or what they're going to be good at next, kids are free from feeling like they have to hide things. In addition, kids can feel proud of their accomplishments, even if they're accomplishing things that other people have already accomplished. They can celebrate moving from the yellow book basket to the green, even if Raven's already on Indigo, and without making Sophia feel bad that she's still on Red. They can proudly show off the fact that their math fact graph goes up, without worrying that it started at zero or that Manuel's goes up faster.

In that context, in that climate built by the fantastic teacher and fantastic school, wearing your stickers proudly around your neck like a necklace makes sense. After all, the whole class knows you're working on putting your things away efficiently (how could they not, they're in the room with you every day at clean up time, and little kids pay attention to things like that). So, it makes sense that they would celebrate with you as you make progress towards that goal, and commiserate with you when you encounter a setback. Behavior charts and positive reinforcement programs are generally made public at this age (not usually on a necklace, but kids often have things in the corner of their desk, or stick the stickers to their foreheads, or they're on the back of someone's cubby). Making them public serves 4 purposes. It serves as a reminder to the child -- I'm working on this. It serves as a reminder to the adults -- notice when I do this. It gives others the opportunity to praise and reinforce the child (Wow, Leroy, you sure have a lot of stickers there, tell me how you got them!), and it avoids communicating a message of shame to the child.

Now, of course the question is which type of teacher you have. To answer that question, I'd ask you a question. You said your child initially said they didn't mind, but later "admitted". Did you keep pressuring because your child's body language and tone of voice told you something was really wrong? So you gently kept going until they told you what was the matter (in which case I'd tell you to go to the teacher immediately and say "I know you meant well, but this does not work for my child, please find something else") or did you feel embarrassed by it and project that onto your child, and keep asking until you got the answer you wanted, by planting the idea in your child's head that they should feel ashamed? Were your questions that got him to admit along the lines of "Honey, I hear your words, but your face looks sad . . . please tell me why?" or were they along the lines of "Do you feel embarrassed to wear that?"

I also want to add that comparing a teacher's attempt to help a child to labeling Jews during the Holocaust is, well I can't even think of a word to describe it. 16:24 Did you really mean to diminish the Holocaust in that manner, or to compare this teacher (who the parent admits is mostly doing a good job) with the Nazis? Really?