Vacation: Teachers are not teaching because of the vacation or because it is an easy pay check. I was a classroom teacher first... I absolutely know this for a fact. Teaching is physically, emotionally and mentally exhausting.. five days a week. You wake up and go to sleep thinking about the child you can't reach or the one that you did. You cry because you don't understand how anyone could do ___ to a child and justify it. You see the kids in the grocery store and at the gym and in church. Teaching is a way of life, not a job. You do it because you love it.
Cooler Heads: Keeping this in mind, when your child struggles to learn in the way that the one teacher you seem to have every year, who will not work with your child, will help you not tear her head off when you have to point out; for the 12 time, that your child is supposed to have notes provided to him. It also helps to type out that email... the one you wrote when you were on the 3rd hour of homework and headed for the 5th meltdown and send it to a friend not to the teacher. Then retype that email the next morning when level heads prevail.
Claws: If your child is the one and only you have to struggle with to get through school and your child attends a large school, you are in luck. You can show those momma bear claws a little more often and get accomplished what you need. If you have 4 children, 3 of whom need understanding, you have to constantly figure out what the line is between supporting your first child and making sure you can show your face to that same teacher when the 4th child enters that same classroom, 10 years later.
Flexibility: There are no right answers. What is right for this child, this year, may not be what works for the same child the next. It definitely will not be what works for another child.. no matter how much sense it made. Each teacher understands things at a different level. Learning to explain exactly what things are like for your child in many many ways will help each teacher better understand what they can do to help.
Self-Confidence/Self Advocacy: Quite honestly, the best and most important thing you can do to make sure your child succeeds is to make sure they understand a couple very important things. First, they are absolutely perfect just the way they are. Because they are not wired the same as most of the rest of their class makes them unique and amazing and you wouldn't want them any other way. Just because they can perform well on one certain test does not mean they are not smart, it means they can't perform well on that test. Second, they have the right to ask questions until they understand. They can ask all the questions they need to get the page or the assignment or what ever they need to succeed. If the teacher is not cooperative, then you will step in and make sure they do. No matter what, you have their back.
No comments:
Post a Comment