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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A couple things. First, I’m a counselor. We have no teeth. We can advocate for our student and beg the teacher to return week, but we often get nowhere. I then contact the department chair or the AP who supervises the teacher’s department, but I can tell you I don’t get nearly as good results as parents do when THEY complain. And even then, the chronic non-graders barely seem to suffer any repercussions. That said, I can’t stand the teacher bashing. In my experience, the vast majority are smart, hard-working and can do a job that most of us couldn’t—all for a moderate salary in an expensive region where we don’t seem to respect teachers and don’t give them much in the way of meaningful continuing education. Instead, we keep giving them new requirements for how they should log phone calls or change up grade reporting systems overnight or make  them learn new curricula every 5 minutes. So yes, in short, contact your principal. Then take five minutes to send that same principal a nice note about the other teachers who DID do their job. Copy the teacher on that one. And please don’t contact anyone until you’ve gotten the teacher to respond. Drives me crazy on behalf of teachers when parents go straight  to an administrator.[/quote]

Great perspective. Teacher bashing is useless. I agree that in most cases, it is not that the teachers who are failing Instead, the system is unworkable given all of the administrative demands, training that takes away from class time, etc. We are so focused on trying to get teachers to do better and to monitoring whether that is happening, we don't give them the time they need to actually teach the kids they have. And part of teaching is giving timely feedback to students. Teachers seem to spend more time training than they do teaching. Training for what? Next year, when there's going to be a new educational philosophy that renders today's training obsolete? What about the kids setting in class now with an unqualified sub and months of ungraded work? Administrators don't seem to care about that.

I am also a big believer in trying to solve a problem directly with the person involved before going over that person's head. That is a best practice in all areas of life. Why is everyone so obsessed with going straight to the top with every complaint?  I'm not perfect in my professional life, and I would rather hear a complaint or concern directly before someone goes over my head. That's the cowardly approach.

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