Kerry Wright EDU7666 Journal Entries
Blog 5 Dr. Signer

Topic Heading

I was involved with a discussion initiated by a parent on the discussion boards under the Teacher.net, chat boards (elementary education). The parent is a teacher herself and was concerned about her son. Her son was in an advanced class last year and did well. However, this year the teacher was not challenging the class and her son was starting to hate school. The writer needed suggestions about how to handle the situation.

We agreed that dealing with a bad teacher is a part of developing skills for later life situations. We also suggested exploring other extra activities to help challenge her son. The discussion also brought up other issues and suggestions to deal with this problem. First, one of the participates felt that the parent needed to be more involved with the grapevine of her son’s school in order to use her influence to get a better teacher for the school. Another commentary stressed the importance of looking at a whole school rather than one teacher. According to this person it was more important to find the school that met her son’s needs rather than a teacher. There was also a suggestion to speak to the teacher in order to see if her son’s prospective is accurate.

In the discussion I wrote how I felt that the parent should not put down his teacher in front of her son. One of my professors spoke about the importance of working with your child’s teacher. If a student feels that his/her parent does not respect the teacher than any learning that will be done is lost for that whole year. However, one of the commentaries on this discussion wrote about how it is important to validate your child’s feelings if they are in a bad situation. Children learn and develop if they can express their feelings.

This discussion brought to light the difficulty of dealing with bad teachers and children. My husband and I had struggled with this issue with our own daughter. We had a difficulty time with my younger daughter’s principle. While we did not feel this principal was hurting any students, we had a difficult time dealing with the principal on some of our concerns. I did express my feelings in front of my daughter and felt I should not have done this because my daughter expressed negative feelings toward the principal based on my comments. However, my husband felt that my daughter should be aware that not all teachers or authority figures handle themselves in the most professional manner.

Questions I posed with responses
I participated in this discussion because I do notice as a teacher that it is sometimes harder to have advanced students in your class. I see this year that I really have to struggle with keeping the advanced students motivated. I did get some ideas from the suggestions about afterschool activities described in the discussion. This discussion did hit on my own struggle of how to handle difficult or bad teachers in front of my own daughters. I feel comfortable speaking directly to the teachers. But I am not sure how to speak to my daughters about the situation. This discussion gave me more reflection on the matter but I have not come to a clear situation.

Responses to other questions

When I read the problem outlined by the parent, I felt that the parent was listening to her child without verifying the information. As a teacher I have had situations in my classroom where the student presented a picture to the parent that was missing information or not accurate. I feel it is important to maintain good communications with parents so that the parent understands the classroom procedures and this will enhance the learning environment in the class.