So this is what it feels like from the other side

[oloriel]

I've been asked to attend a parent-teacher talk.

I don't know about you, but I hated those as a student. I was not a bad student - lazy, but clever enough to make up for it; too shy to speak up in class, but good enough in written tests to get decent grades nonetheless - nor particularly troublesome (despite being a bit, hm, too physical). But you just never know, do you? You never know whether your teacher won't tell your mom that you didn't do that one stupid homework assignment, or that you never raise your finger in class, or that you claimed to have your period to escape having to play soccer, right? (They always complained that I didn't speak up in class. Because I knew all the stuff and never said it. Because everybody would roll their eyes if I had the right answer yet again, because there was a time I was actively mobbed for being "Miss Know-it-all". Later, because the right answer felt too trite to raise a finger for, and I thought I must have understood the question wrong because it couldn't be so obvious. And because I was afraid it might be wrong after all: The one thing worse than being Miss Know-it-all is to err when you're Miss Know-it-all. And -- They never ask why, do they? They just say "Christiane's oral participation needs to get a lot better." and don't understand that it was way easier for me to accept a somewhat less great grade than it was to bear the mockery and mobbing. -- To be fair, I never tried to explain it either to my teachers nor to my parents. I expected them not to understand, and I expected to know what they'd say ("But your report card matters more than some stupid remarks by your peers!"), but I never put it to the test. -- Shut up, Lyra, this is not about your school days.)

So when I knew one of the official parent-teacher days was approaching, or worse, when one of the teachers invited the parents for an individual meeting, I felt a great sense of fear and foreboding.

As I now know, I feel that sense of fear and foreboding even when I'm the parent. Oh God, does Felix refuse to do his homewo -- oh wait, this is Kindergarten. Does he torment the other kids? Does he refuse to participate in, or worse, disturb group games? What are they going to tell me? What is my precious child doing wrong?

Actually, this is supposed to be a routine meeting - 6 to 8 weeks after their kids started Kindergarten, all the parents are invited to parent-teacher-talks. So it's just as possible that it's completely harmless.

And yet.

I'll have to ask my mom whether she always dreaded those parent-teacher meetings when I was a kid, too. She attended them religiously, even the ones where you didn't have to go, where she had to take a day off work in order to cover all the talks with my brother's and my teachers, so as a student, I thought she enjoyed them. (And enjoyed tormenting us with what she learned there, afterwards. "Christiane, why don't you participate in class? T., I'll have to check your math homework every evening!") But she probably didn't. Probably she went because she felt it was her duty, because not attending made you look like a Parent Who Doesn't Care, a Parent Who Doesn't Cooperate, No Wonder The Kids Turned Out This Way.

I guess I should just find it enlightening. Parents hate parent-teacher talks too. And yet again, I find myself understanding my mother a lot better now...

Comments

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Neil Diamond has a song called "Brooklyn Roads" where he describes sitting in a parent-teacher conference, and his teacher saying about him "got a good head, if he'd apply it, but you know yourself, he's always someplace else." It was very reassuring to me as a kid, because it let me know that I wasn't the only one who wasn't "living up to his potential."

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Reassuring, and yet, there's always a sense of guilt...

[independence1776]

Huh. I just asked Mom, and she said-- at least in high school-- she liked going to them. (Mind, these weren't requested, just the school-wide ones.) Pretty much the only thing I remember about them is Mom telling me that one of my teachers went, "I'm so glad to have parents of good students come. It's wonderful to talk about good things."

I do remember dreading them a little because I never knew what the teachers would actually say.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I do remember dreading them a little because I never knew what the teachers would actually say.
Exactly.

I didn't ask my mom yet. Maybe she liked it after all. But for the first time in my life, the thought crossed my mind that maybe she didn't!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Almost everybody hates those conferences, hon. The kids hate them, the parents hate them, and the teachers hate them most of all, because they've got to do a parent-teacher conference for every child in the class.

One never knows how a conference is going to go - the standard format I was taught is to always start out talking about the good things the child does, tread very carefully around the not-so-good, and end with more good things. There's no point criticizing the child's behavior in class unless there's something the parents can do about it, and even then, asking them to do it is risky: there's parents who won't hear one word against their precious little angel, but even worse, there's others looking for any excuse to 'crack down' on a child who may already be cracking.

The useful thing about these conferences is learning a bit about the child's home environment. It does say something when parents attend every conference, presentation or performance, and teachers definitely notice that. But to me, the most important thing was finding out what the parents thought of their children. Sure, everybody 'loves' their kids, but not everybody LIKES them, or respects them, and how well a child is liked and respected at home determines his ability to like and respect others. That's the big predictor of success in school, and in life.

I don't think you have a thing to worry about, dearheart, because you do like and respect your children; it shows in every word you write about them. So, have a good conference; I hope it's a lot easier than you anticipate.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I think our teachers rather started out with the not-so-good, and when that was discussed, ended with good things. Whether there was a point to it or not, they probably felt honesty was a virtue.

I do worry that they'll address things that I really don't know how to help, and that I won't be able to answer, and that I'll just generally leave a bad impression. In my brain, I know that they're surely used to worse and that it can't be that bad. But in my stomach, I can't help feeling apprehensive and inadequate. Thank you for your kind words, though!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! *hugs* You're going to leave a lovely impression, dearheart; you're young, beautiful, respectable, educated, married parents who love each other and adore your truly-adorable children. Do you have any idea how many parents do not match that description? You'll be a relief and a delight.

See my comment (http://oloriel.livejournal.com/542101.html?thread=3193237#t3193237) down below: it's not you who's up for judgement in these conferences. It's your child's teacher; every one of these conferences is a job interview and/or performance review for her. She has to satisfy you that she's creating a safe, friendly, respectful environment for your son, is capable of understanding his unique learning styles, challenging his strengths and building up his weaknesses, and can keep order in a group of young children with patience, kindness, fairness and humor.

It'll help if you think of some interview-type questions along those lines to ask her. I hate to have to say it, because it's totally sexist, but the truth is, your best strategy for these conferences is for you and your husband to both dress like you were going to court, and for him to conduct the interview pretty-much like he would a performance-review for an important employee. A Dad who comes to every conference in a business suit and treats it like a business meeting where he is the Manager is an incalculable advantage - and the fact that this is so is a shame and a disgrace to a system that pretends to be Democratic in any sense of the word, but there it is.

Your husband's primary task is to make it clear that, a) he is the Alpha Male whom it would be unwise to displease, and b) that he will be displeased if the Mama is displeased. You want to establish yourselves from the start as parents with Power, so dress that way, act that way, and take that attitude; it will make a big difference. That doesn't mean to be unfriendly or difficult, of course - far from it, but make it clear that you are the ones judging competence, not the other way around. Because that is the truth: teachers work for you now. Enjoy!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Actually, we have way too many parents who display the exact attitude that you recommend (Jörg worked as a chemistry teacher for just half a year, and part of why he didn't continue doing it was the attitude of the parents). Unfortunately, it doesn't come with accepting that sometimes, a child may behave differently in school than it does at home; that sometimes, a nice child may nonetheless be a bad student; and that sometimes, bad behaviour is NOT the sign of genius or "giftedness". I don't want to be like that.

I do hope that I'll be able to behave as someone at least equal, not inferior, but I don't want to come across as the sort of boss I wouldn't like if I were the employee. As for learning, at this point they don't have to acquire intellectual skills as much as social skills. (I'm far more confident about Felix' intellectual capacities than I am about his social skills, I'm afraid!)

(This is also a little beside the point. Whatever the actual conference is like, what they say might hurt my fragile sense of "I'm doing a good job as a mother". I am insecure about my parenting, since I'm still relatively new at it, and while I'm convinced that I'm doing OK and could be a lot worse, I'm also aware that I may be making avoidable mistakes. These Kindergarten teachers are not necessarily more competent just because they're "professionals", but they might as well be...)

At any rate, Jörg's away on a business trip (and if he weren't, he'd have to work anyway to afford the Kindergarten fees...), so I'll have to go alone.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Awell, of course one always wants to be the good boss who's trying to make the important employee's challenging job as easy and pleasant as possible. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't know how to be in charge without being jerks.

Children always behave differently at home than they do at school. Some of them do a drastic Jekyll-and-Hyde switch when their parent walks into the room - often for the worse, and then how does one tactfully say "Your kid is just fine as long as you aren't around"...? So awkward! But that's perfectly normal behavior. Sometimes it's even more awkward when one has to try to explain that "Your kid goes into a frenzy of rule-breaking and fit-throwing when you walk in because he's testing the 'edges' of the difference between your rules and mine, so it would be helpful if you would enforce my rules while you're in my classroom, regardless of what you let him do at home."

Children learn what they live. If they're brought up with kindness, patience, and respect, but also with reasonable limits and expectations, they generally grow into pretty decent people. The main social skill a Kindergartner has to learn is confidence in his ability to relate positively to other people - that he can talk to them, share with them, resolve conflicts with them, have fun with them; that socializing is safe and rewarding. Children who learn this will basically learn everything else on their own.

Bad behavior is never a sign of genius or giftedness, regardless how bright the child displaying it may be. It's a sign of bad communication, which could have a hundred different reasons. The teacher, being the rational adult, is the one who has to adjust her communication strategies to accommodate the child's capabilities, and learning what the child's home-life is like can be very useful. However, one usually can't do much about it - one can't just come right out and say "This kid needs to eat something besides sugar for breakfast", "Doesn't he have any actual bedtime?" or "Whatever are you thinking, to let her watch stuff like that?" (three phrases I often wanted to say!)

Some teachers are amazing at their jobs; some are awful - just as in any line of work. To my mind, the MOST important quality in a teacher is genuine liking and empathy for children as real people - not as 'potential people' to be trained-up and molded into someone else's idea of how they "should" be, but as owners of their own persons and destinies, which they need loving guidance to learn to develop along their own unique lines. As teachers, we're raising orchids, not building robots.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't know how to be in charge without being jerks.

Hah! Too true. That's something they should be teaching in schools... ;)

Children always behave differently at home than they do at school. Some of them do a drastic Jekyll-and-Hyde switch when their parent walks into the room - often for the worse, and then how does one tactfully say "Your kid is just fine as long as you aren't around"...?

Heh! In my experience, this tended to come out by accident. As in, my aunt saying "I love having T. visit, he's such a helpful, attentive and responsible fellow!" At the same time, he would be an absolute pest towards our mom, so she thought Aunt K. was winding her up. But no: He really was responsible, attentive and helpful. Just not when mom was around. Poor her. (I fully expect the same to happen in my future. >_>)
T. is now training to be a teacher, btw...

Bad behavior is never a sign of genius or giftedness, regardless how bright the child displaying it may be.

Oh, thank you! I don't know about the States, but here it's a common misconception that bad behaviour is a typical sign of giftedness, and that there's no way to help it - on the contrary, one should let the child misbehave so as not to quench his or her genius. Auuuugh.

Some teachers are amazing at their jobs; some are awful - just as in any line of work.

Yep. The problem is, of course, that education tends to be an underappreciated field: Many people still think that being teacher is the easiest job in the world, "you're right before noon, and off work after noon". So there isn't enough investment in education. As a result, classes are too big (and whenever this is addressed as a problem, some oldtimers will pipe up how "they were taught in classes of 50, and turned out just fine!", and you can't well tell them that both the style in which they were taught and much of the knowledge they learned by heart after that style a) don't work today and b) weren't all that great back then, either!), teachers are frustrated, and half the class does whatever it feels like.
Of course, it isn't like that all the time. Some teachers really are awesome at their jobs, and they manage to make the best of the system and its often silly guidelines. And some students are great, too - they might even have great parents. But if it's raising orchids, it's raising orchids from various different places in a greenhouse that can only simulate one climate and one environment. (Does that make any sense?)

a lot of the time (maybe even most of the time) young children don't really understand why they're in trouble. Even if they know they weren't supposed to do X, they have no idea what they were supposed to do to prevent X, or how their good intentions went so wrong.

That is the impression I have with Felix a lot of the time. He knows the rules, and generally wants to follow them, but something goes wrong and he does something else, and is desperate when he's being reprimanded. So I'll look into those books. (There seems to be no German translation, but I figure I could translate the relevant bits for Felix.) Actually, just looking at that page has been helpful, because it addresses to many issues that aren't (yet?) issues here. So it could be worse! ;)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Help Me Be Good books are written in such simple language, it's likely that Felix would start picking up English from them. I got the full set of 29 books when my daughter was about three, and we read them all the time - kids want to know what the rules are, and what behavior will be rewarded. I intend to buy all of Joy Berry's book-sets for my grandchildren when I have some.

Childrens' 'bad' behavior comes from a lot of different causes, but parents letting their children act up comes from an assumption of privilege. This article (http://www.salon.com/2014/09/16/the_racial_parenting_divide_what_adrian_peterson_reveals_about_black_and_white_child_rearing/) is about racial differences in parenting, but illustrates the point: when parents expect their little darling to be allowed to run amuck, what they're really expecting is for him or her to be treated as superior to the other children.

That did not fly in my classroom. 'How We Do' applied equally to every child, and my assumption is that letting one's children run amuck is like being rude to waiters: people who do it are rather pathetically trying to pretend to higher social status than they really have, because the genuine upper class does not act that way.

It's true that uneven development is a real thing, though, and a child with notable 'super-powers' is likely to have deficits just as notable. That doesn't mean the child gets a free pass on How We Do; it means the child might need some extra help learning to do things that way.

"whenever this is addressed as a problem, some oldtimers will pipe up how "they were taught in classes of 50, and turned out just fine!"

Aagghhh! That phrase! It's uncanny, how the people who claim to have turned out "just fine" sure don't look or sound very 'fine'. "I was taught in classes of 50, and everything I know is wrong." "I grew up watching violent television, and violence doesn't bother me at all." "My parents and teachers beat hell out of me, and it made me into the kind of person who's not afraid to beat hell out of children." I've actually heard a parent object to the Waldorf pre-school curriculum with "How will they learn about the real world if they don't watch TV?"

"But if it's raising orchids, it's raising orchids from various different places in a greenhouse that can only simulate one climate and one environment. (Does that make any sense?)"

It makes perfect sense, which is why I hold with John Holt and John Taylor Gatto that the 'greenhouse' of compulsory State education is unnatural and unhealthy - that its primary purpose is to produce a monoculture of obedient worker-consumers who will follow the carrot, fear the stick, and not give any trouble to their corporate masters. That's not its only purpose, of course, but parents who want better than that for their kids have to get it for them themselves.

I had to work, so my daughter had to go to public school, but I mostly regarded it as supplemental to her education at home. She did learn some things there that she would not have learned from me, so it wasn't entirely a waste of her time, but a lot of it was. Group education is highly inefficient, because either the whole group goes at the pace of the slowest learners, or the slowest learners get left behind. If it was up to me, I would set teacher-student ratios at 1:5 in the primary grades and 1:10 in middle school... heh, if it was up to me, I'd restructure the entire educational system, but it's not. Oh well!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

English spelling, at least! (He's currently getting to grips with German spelling, which has more pitfalls than adults tend to realise, such as Auslautverhärtung and conventions on how to spell the /ʃ/-sound under what circumstances and -- anyway, I think it might be a bit too much to try learning German and English spelling conventions at once. On the other hand, Felix has proved me wrong on so many "I think 3-year-olds can't..." ideas that I probably should no longer expect anything...

Oh dear! I'm sort of the opposite: It's fine if other people's kids misbehave (that is, it isn't fine, but I don't feel awful about it), but my kids have to do better! Which is probably assumption of privilege as well (We Are Superior So We Act Better), just expressed differently. >_>

Felix did hit and shove kids in his kindergarten class, and we're still working on making him understand that This Is Not OK. He seems to have learned that it's not OK in kindergarten, but he tests the rules in every other social situation. I guess he hasn't yet realised that some rules are universal.

"I was taught in classes of 50, and everything I know is wrong."

My brother got into a huge argument with my grandmother because he actually translated her "... we turned out just fine!" into just what you said. My grandmother is a lovely old lady, just with a lot of very backward ideas. I think there's little point in arguing with her, because she's unlikely to change her mind (on the contrary, if at all possible, she'll work anything you say into her view of the world) and will only end up hurt and sad when you insist - like my brother - that she's wrong and you're right. (Even if that is actually the case). Sometimes, all you can do is change the subject...

"How will they learn about the real world if they don't watch TV?"

AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. As they say on Tumblr, I don't even.

that its primary purpose is to produce a monoculture of obedient worker-consumers who will follow the carrot, fear the stick, and not give any trouble to their corporate masters.

That's no longer the case here, fortunately - intentionally or accidentally, our curriculums rather tend to reward the intellectually rebellious. As long as you manage to meet the requirements, you can thwart a lot of rules.

Homeschooling is not an option here - you can either send your kids to a public school or to a (publically approved) private school, but you're not allowed to keep them at home teaching them yourself. Which is just as well; I know many people (such as our ex-tenants) who'd definitely make use of the homeschooling option if they could, and the result would be four kids with only the most basic general education (if any), an excellent knowledge of those parts of the Bible their father considers relevant, a mishmash of errors, and the firm belief that Anything We Do Is Right Because People Like Us CANNOT Do Wrong. And nothing else.

To be fair, though, even though I have a lot of misgivings about our educational system in general and most of our teachers in particular, I wouldn't dare to do homeschooling. I like to think that I'm well-educated, I'm from an academic background, I'm interested in a broad range of things and I'm sure I can read up on anything well enough to teach it on an elementary or middle school level. But I know I wouldn't have the necessary self-discipline to handle subjects I don't care about in sufficient depth. Heck, I probably wouldn't have the self-discipline to dedicating sufficient amounts of time to "school" every day!

So it's a good thing that education is firmly in public hands, here. But like you, I'd like to restructure the education system first...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Three-year-olds are at the lifetime peak of their brains' language-acquisition capacity - if every member of their family speaks a different language, they will learn every language and not mix them up, regardless of whether the languages are related. And Felix is the son of a linguist; expect to continue to be astonished at what he can do.

English spelling is a mess, and it gave my daughter fits. She could spell better in Gaelic than she could in English, and we don't even speak Gaelic; it was absurd. She's currently teaching herself Russian, and she adores Cyrillic because every letter makes only one sound.

"my kids have to do better! Which is probably assumption of privilege as well (We Are Superior So We Act Better)"

I was brought up to the idea that We Are Superior Because We Act Better. I've never been able to find it again, but I once ran across some nobleman's letter to his son, the gist of which was "Since you have been so fortunate as to receive advantages far above the ordinary station of life, it would be disgraceful and ungrateful if your achievement was not similarly above the ordinary." That's acknowledgement of privilege, and of the duty that comes with it, noblesse oblige.

LOL, I'd be a terrible snob if I wasn't such a 'class traitor'. Maybe I am one anyway, because I do look down on people who think they can buy their way into good society, not realizing that their manners are giving the lie to their social pretensions all along. There's a whole social class of boorish and ostentatious poseurs with more money than sense: they may have lots of privilege, but they're still trash:

"I have known many heroes and some were such oafs that one would feed them at the back door if their deeds did not claim a place at the table. I have known few men who were noble, for nobility is scarcer far than heroism. But true nobility can always be recognized...noblesse oblige is an emotion felt only by those who are noble.
-Robert A. Heinlein

My parents never let us run rampant in adult spaces. First there'd be the Hairy Eyeball, that frosty look that meant "straighten up and fly right" and if that didn't work, we'd be removed from public view for a little talk about expectations of proper conduct. I used the same method on my daughter, and it worked quite well.

Kindergartners are prone to hit and shove. That's basic bio-programmed behavior for little primates, especially strong and active males. The customs of civilization require learning more subtle, cooperative methods of social interaction, but that takes time and support - mostly by fostering empathy: "Look, your friend is crying because you hurt him - what can you do to help him feel better?" "Would it be okay for a bigger boy to shove you? How would you feel if that happened?"

" kids with only the most basic general education (if any), an excellent knowledge of those parts of the Bible their father considers relevant, a mishmash of errors, and the firm belief that Anything We Do Is Right Because People Like Us CANNOT Do Wrong. And nothing else."

Oh, do we ever have a PLAGUE of precisely that here in the US! But a lot of the schools are run like prisons, complete with sleazeball 'prison culture', and a lot of our government is run by adults with only the most basic general education, etc.

*wry grin* I'd like to restructure the whole world. And maybe we can, y'know? Here's hoping!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*hugs hugs* You know your son is a happy, healthy child; curious, loving, exuberant, engaged with the world, quick to learn. He will be a good student if he has good teaching, because he already has good parenting. He would be a good student even if he had no teaching - if he was Unschooled (https://www.google.com/#q=unschooling) - because his natural drive and intelligence will impel him to learn. The main thing he has to learn right now is that school is a Good Place, so the teacher's main job is to see that it IS a Good Place for every child.

Every parent makes both avoidable and unavoidable mistakes. In my experience, the important thing is admitting when one has made them, and being willing to back-track, reconsider and re-adjust, rather than clinging rigidly to rules and decisions that aren't working. Nothing's set in stone; both parenting and teaching are Art, not Science - and the 'material' we work with has a mind of its own; in fact that's the whole point.

I don't know whether they're available in German, but THE best books I've ever found for teaching social skills to Kindergartners are Joy Berry's Help Me Be Good series (http://joyberrybooks.com/en/). The great thing about them is that they're so clear (http://joyberrybooks.com/en/help-me-be-good-series) - because, y'know, a lot of the time (maybe even most of the time) young children don't really understand why they're in trouble. Even if they know they weren't supposed to do X, they have no idea what they were supposed to do to prevent X, or how their good intentions went so wrong. The books make it easy to explain, and provide a way to treat wrong-doing as understandable and fixable mistakes, rather than as acts of defiance.

Sheesh, sorry to ramble on so long! LOL, "teachers gotta teach" - I'll sure be glad when I get some grand-babies! (^^)

[sermanya.livejournal.com]

My mom was a teacher. And I can tell you, she did hate parent-teacher talks too ;)
She could never attend the school-wide ones as a parent for me and my siblings, though. We went to her school and she had to work on those days.
...which is much worse than having a mother going to parent-teacher-talks. She was informed about all and everything I did all day long. About me wearing nail polish or drinking coke in the school breaks. About forgetting my maths homework or saying terrible things like "Scheiße" in class. Big mom and big teacher jointly watching me. Yeah. And every day something to complain. Although I hardly ever had marks other than "1". And I was Miss-Know-It-All and I was stupid enough not to stop answering the teachers' questions. So the others bullied me and every single time I tried to do something against it, my mum was immediately informed about my misbehaving.
Oh wonderful time of adolescence. I was never happier than when I could leave the town and the county and the school and the people and everything else behind me.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Urgh. That's really bad style, though - constantly telling a colleague how her child is behaving (or misbehaving). If I were a teacher and my kids went to the school where I'm teaching, I'd be sure to tell the other teachers to shut up and only tell me things that'd be worth a letter or phone call to "normal" parents, too. Mind you, I have no clue whether they'd do...

And I was Miss-Know-It-All and I was stupid enough not to stop answering the teachers' questions.

Funny, I feel stupid now for not being brave enough to ignore the others. Whatever you do...

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I bet it will be really interesting with Felix! He sounds like the kind of kid that would never the subject of dull teacher conferences! Funny, smart, and with a will of his own!

I always loved going to them. My daughter's were usually pretty good expect for the constant refrain of her being caught chatting during class and passing notes but my son's were all about teachers wringing their hands in despair. (There was one memorable one, between me, the school director, and a teacher wherein the teacher burst into tears about how the Avari made fun of her and made everyone laugh whenever she had her back to the class writing on the blackboard).

But, in the end, it did not matter whether I was hearing wonderful things about my daughter or cringe-worthy horror stories about my son, they were always positive for me--something entirely centered upon my obsessive interest in my kids. For me they were all about having a captive audience who were being paid to listen to me, share my anxieties and concerns about the kids, and who would tell me what they had observed and maybe give advice. I would listen and perhaps argue if I disagreed. I was not a passive listener.

I am going to a parents' open-house event at Alex's school tonight, which will include a very short meeting with his new teachers. Laura invited me as her co-parenting partner, given that his dad has no interest in ever doing those things, only trying to weasel out of them.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

But, in the end, it did not matter whether I was hearing wonderful things about my daughter or cringe-worthy horror stories about my son, they were always positive for me--something entirely centered upon my obsessive interest in my kids. For me they were all about having a captive audience who were being paid to listen to me, share my anxieties and concerns about the kids, and who would tell me what they had observed and maybe give advice. I would listen and perhaps argue if I disagreed. I was not a passive listener.

Hah! I wish I could view it so positively. I'll try!
How did Alex's open-house event go? Can the teachers handle his... how did you say? Funny, smart, and with a will of his own ways? ^^

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

I even have the third perspective because my parents were teachers. They hated participating no matter at which side of the table they had to sit.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh, word to that!

The worst thing about being a teacher and a parent is the overwhelming urge to teach one's child's teachers how to do their job, especially if they suck at it. The primary reason I became a teacher is because my teachers sucked at it, and because my mother incautiously left her copy of John Holt's How Children Fail (http://iwcenglish1.typepad.com/Documents/Holt_How_Children_Fail.pdf) within my voraciously-hyperlexic third-grade reach. I read that book and was seized by the conviction that I could teach a lot better than I was being taught.

When I became a teacher, I found out - just like John Holt and John Taylor Gatto before me - that the reason I couldn't teach better than I was taught was because the system was totally rigged. In order for a small minority of children to shine, to be High Achievers, the vast majority have to be mediocre ("average") achievers, and a significant minority have to be outright failures, as an object-lesson to the merely-mediocre of what worse fate could be theirs if they don't toe the line.

The worst thing about parent-teacher conferences for me was having to sit through every one of them with my ex-husband. He was a rotten stonewalling jackass of a husband, but he's been as good a Dad as he could be, and he valiantly attended every one of those excruciating conferences. Unfortunately, we fundamentally disagree about a lot of things, and formal education is one of them. We tried not to argue in those conferences, but it wasn't always avoidable.

I'm sure her teachers dreaded those conferences like poison, and I can't blame them a bit. The thing I knew, and that most parents don't really grok, is that the teacher is the employee. The teacher has to keep her bosses happy, and they will NOT be happy if complaints start coming in over her head from parents, because they're employees too. Parents, not children, are the end-users of the educational system, and have near-total power over it, if they choose to use it.

Most parents don't know this because, as children, they were strongly conditioned to accept that the educational system has total power over them - and the higher one's social class, the stronger this conditioning is likely to have been. Therefore they go in to conferences cap-in-hand, "please like me enough to be good to my child", rather than with the proper parental attitude of "please demonstrate your fitness to be entrusted with the care of my child."

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I can't find my parents in that description. They kept their teacher personality out of the parent business and I am TBH kind of glad for that because it was difficult enough to be a teacher's kid. When I had a bad teacher they'd guide me into finding out WHAT was bad about him or her and how to deal with that myself - to a certain limit of course. Against clearly unfair or even damaging treatment - my brother had a teacher who wanted to flunk him completely out of spite - they would raise their voice. I think only once they overruled my opinion when I wanted to take French instead of Latin with 11, just stating that "you will thank us for it" and indeed - much later, when I was nearly 20, I found out that the French teacher was one of the worst in school AND that for all subjects I would be interested in university I needed a degree in Latin.

Parents, not children, are the end-users of the educational system, and have near-total power over it, if they choose to use it.

I don't know if it has to do with our different school system but that? Is not a secret here. Rather the opposite. The attitute that is grossing here is actually quite the reverse: "YOU are the employee, as soon as the child is in YOUR hands, it is YOUR responsibility and whatever goes wrong at home is not of your business".

My mom once told me this anecdote from a parental conference, she diplomatically tried to tell a mother that her son was not able to deal with constructive criticism, at all and would rather react aggressive and refuse to listen. The reaction of the mom: "WHAT?! MY SON? I don't believe this. I refuse to listen to this nonsense" and leaving the room.


I also think that as a parent I should be involved, but only to a certain degree. As a paedeatrician whose blog I read once wrote: raising one child does not make you an expert in childcare. And I think that's the same for education. And in the end it's my child that has to go to that school every day, not me.

For example, right now the method on elementary schools to teach children to read is completely different from how I learned to write - by listening and then writing "as you hear". I thought it was completely nonsese, but a befriended elementary school teacher told me how many successes she had with that method. So while I am still doubtful about it, I will certainly not just brush the experiences she had away.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

she diplomatically tried to tell a mother that her son was not able to deal with constructive criticism, at all and would rather react aggressive and refuse to listen. The reaction of the mom: "WHAT?! MY SON? I don't believe this. I refuse to listen to this nonsense" and leaving the room.

HAH! Well, at least it's clear where the boy got it!

I also think that as a parent I should be involved, but only to a certain degree.

I do think that the parents should be involved in that they ask how school is going, listen to what their kid tells them (if s/he is still willing to tell them anything!), take it serious but with a grain of salt, and then decide whether or not they need to do anything about it. They should also try to offer help with homework/ vocabulary/ projects, if they can.
They should NOT try to do the teachers' job for them, listen ONLY to their kid's side of the story, or blame the teachers for things they can't help, and that they may not like themselves.
(Like whatever Lehrplan they have to follow right now. I may think it's bullshit or at the very least inefficient - that's how I feel about the "write as you hear" theory, for instance - but a) I'm not an expert on teaching or even orthography acquisition and b) if that's what the teacher's got to teach, the teacher can't help it, either...)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"I don't know if it has to do with our different school system but that? Is not a secret here. Rather the opposite."

Here in the US, things vary a lot by state, and even by county, so it's hard to make any true generalization, but in many places there's a great deal of class politics going on in the public schools. The upper- and upper-middle-class parents know that they're the ones with the power, and make it clear to the school system that they know it. The lower-middle- and lower-class parents know that they have no power, and the school system makes sure they don't forget that. (The true middle-class barely exists in this country any more.)

The dividing line is based on litigation, just as it is with the police here. If you can afford a good attorney, and would look and sound good in court, the Powers That Be will do whatever they have to do to avoid risking a lawsuit. If not, they don't care.

"The reaction of the mom..."

LOL, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

I wanted the parents of my kids to be involved to a certain extent, and in some places I taught, the policy was for them to be more involved than I would have preferred, i.e. volunteer classroom assistants. I was the lead teacher, so it was for me to train the volunteers to work in my classroom, but I was also younger than most of them and not yet a mother, so I had to deal with them very delicately.

There are a number of ways to teach writing, like there are a number of ways to teach arithmetic. The questions I would raise about the 'New Reading' are the same as those raised by the 'New Math' of the 60's, and the Look-And-Say method of teaching spelling, both of which turned out not to be such great ideas after all, despite some initial success. It's great if some gifted teachers are having success with a method, but in order to be appropriate in public education, it has to be demonstrated to be more successful when used by average teachers than the standard method is.

My money's on Phonics as the most-successful go-to method. The procedure for teaching Phonics is clear, simple, and time-tested, so I say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Other peoples' mileage may vary, of course.

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

Here it's not that easy to just sue the school and also all schools are public and state-funded - there are some private schools but you can really count them on one hand and only very, very rich people can afford to send their children there. The difference is also that teachers are employees by the state here and more or less impossible to fire. You would have to prove that a teacher seriously hurt a student or broke a major law to get him or her fired, so there is not this lawsuit power that parents have. Generally I'd agree that the upper class parents are more aware of what they can do.

That's really a point where I say: this is not my field of expertise, I have to see what's in for my child when she's old enough and deal with it accordingly.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I can imagine it. Jörg worked as a teacher for only half a year, and I got the impression that at least one third of the parents were overconfident and entitled. I remember one mother who attacked Jörg for daring to suggest that a lab report should be a bit more specific than "We poured stuff from one thing into another thing", and for marking (not even grading!) spelling mistakes in her son's precious tests. "You have no right to do that! You're not his German teacher!"
Another mother insisted that her son, who kept disturbing each and every class, preferred to sit on the windowsill and stare into the playground, and only wrote his name on the test sheets (nothing else!), deserved a sehr gut instead of an ungenügend. Because he was "gifted", and his misbehaviour only meant that the class was too easy for him.

So yeah, these conferences are probably only fun if you're the type who enjoys job interviews, too. >_>

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

and I got the impression that at least one third of the parents were overconfident and entitled

Yep. And it got worse over the years. My mom went into retirement this year and doesn't cry one single tear of regret, she is glad she is out of it now. The stories she told me will hopefully stick in my mind until the time I have to sit at that table.