Reply to Question to Teachers: What is it like dealing with parents?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]May I offer my perspective as a parent?
I have a quirky, not always pleasant child who is bright but doesn’t like school, and his ability to tolerate boring but necessary is lower than average. He is also a child, and it is hard for him to stay on good behavior when he is bored/doesn’t want to be there.
This is not a great set of personal qualities for traditional school and my only response to a teacher is “thank you for letting me know, we will work on it”. 
However, I do feel that most teachers only look at two things: is this kid performing on grade level or higher? And- is this kid making my life more difficult or not?
Honestly, this year in 4th it is the first time I met a teacher who admitted that traditional school is just not a good fit for some kids, and he is trying to meet such kids in the middle (they have to work on their attitude too). He is the one who doesn’t make me or my child feel less than, and at the same time we are truly willing to work with him. 
Most teachers just think that school is something that everyone should adore and always give best effort to, and if not, there is something wrong with the child and parents who cannot “make” the child.

[/quote]

No, look, teachers recognize that the traditional school system doesn’t work for all kids. We do the best we can for the ones it doesn’t. But the reality is, if your kid is in that school/system and not a private or untraditional school, they do have to be held to standards like grades and progress. That’s just the way it is. If a kid is failing, we are required to let parents know so they can’t turn around and claim we never told them. If a kid is failing, they’re failing, and that comes with certain procedures on our end because otherwise it looks like WE aren’t teaching them.

I get a lot of kids don’t like school. I try to make it as pleasant and not awful for them as possible. But the reality is if your kid has a hard time in that kind of environment, you may need to seek another environment because the public school education is a massive behemoth that is so much bigger than us the teachers. [/quote]

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