Reply to What do you think about Upper Schools telling parents to butt out?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a parent i hate it. I don't think its age appropriate for most 9th and first semester 10th graders. I'm fine with it for juniors and seniors since they need to get used to it before college. It's a rare 14-15 year old that can do everything independently. If you have kids that don't share information it's easy for them to fail and leave a hard hole to get out of for the rest of Upper School. [/quote]

It's also inappropriate when illness is involved. The worst cases we observed were students with extended absence (of which the school health office was very strict about NOT coming in) where the health staff insist that being out will be okay and that counselors will assist students with teacher communications to provide leeway to catch up...but that support just wasn't happening.  Teachers often still acting as if a student who was out for 5 days should step in at full speed and be able take a test the day after they return - and keeping the general mantra (that these kids sometime blindly follow) of "it's rough here you have to keep marching forward". Meanwhile admin believed something else is happening (leeway and support) while kids are afraid to speak up, are afraid to be out sick, and afraid to let parent help out....

The structure and walls and assumptions that parents are PITA let this persist.

Also - the self advocate model works much better with a strong advisory system and where advisor truly knows the student and genuinely wants to help them advocate and reaches out to parents as needed and also listens to parents who reach out with helpful information for situations where it is warranted. It also help if teacher view themselves as mentors vs. competing amongst themselves to earn the "hardest" badge of honor.  Unfortunately, our DC's school also had a very weak advisory system (they are fine with the fact that they set almost no set parameters of expectations for the role outside of  "review report card with student" and "be the person the student reaches out to"). The school also had a large number of teachers who did not embrace a mentorship role.[/quote]

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