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Tag: parents

  • Teacher Workload: After the Standards

    There was a small sigh of relief when the Rt Hon. Chris Hipkins announced that National Standards were no longer a government requirement for primary schools to use. Okay; it was more of a large cheer than a small sigh, but suddenly we are nigh on six months from that announcement, and as a teacher, I’m not seeing much of a decrease in workload.

    Yet we’re assured that the government is working to reduce paperwork in the teaching profession.

    When announcing the scrapping of National Standards, Hipkins got rid of the four point ruler for measuring children, but ensured that teacher workload remained high. You see, he said that “Parents will still receive reports at least twice a year on their child’s progress and achievement in maths, reading and writing as well as across the curriculum areas. But this reporting will focus on children’s progress, rather than measuring them against arbitrary National Standards.” – Chris Hipkins

    So now, not only do we have to continue to report to parents twice a year (suggested at every 6 months), we are now also commenting across all of the curriculum areas.

    You see; National Standards themselves did not add any extra work to the teacher workload. We already know from day in and day out interactions with the students, whether a student is below, at, or above – and so making that call took a matter of minutes and a slightly different grey shade on the report. The issue teachers had with National Standards was largely around the barbaric way it labelled children as failures, and was too broad in its measure to show any progress students might have made.

    No; it wasn’t National Standards themselves that caused an insurmountable amount of additional workload. It was the need to report to parents formally in written form twice a year.

    Prior to that, parents would usually have a parent/teacher meeting in the middle of the year to chat about how their child was doing, and a written report at the end of the year as a summary of how well their child was doing. Evidently this wasn’t enough. Too many children were slipping through the gaps and failing. We needed to keep parents informed on their child’s progress (or lack of) so that we could catch them before they fell through.

    Except, now; with the requirement of two written reports, teacher’s workload doubled. But not just in writing screeds and screeds of reports. Teacher’s also need to gather data on each student, test them (and re-test them), anaylise their data, and compare it to an arbitrary set of benchmarks in order to see their progress. Instead of doing this at the start of the year to inform teaching and then repeating in Term 4 to write a summative report, we are now carrying out these tests throughout the year, to spread the workload out, and to be able to write two reports.

    So while the National Standards have been scrapped, their remnants still remain, and continue to add to the workload and stress being experienced by teachers across the country.

    Time for some Maths.

    In our school’s current reporting format (which is largely based off a Ministry approved/suggested template) I have written on average 105 words for each of the Reading, Writing, and Maths curriculum areas. This includes the current progress a child is making and their next learning steps. That’s 315 words per report. My current class has 31 students in it. That’s 9,765 words. Double that because we report twice a year, and add some on for a General comment on the final report, and we’re bordering on 20,000 words each year in reports. To give an idea of how much this is, a Massey University Research Report worth 60 credits should not exceed 20,000 words, and a 90 credit Thesis paper should not exceed 30,000 words.

    Every year.

    What’s the solution? There’s no easy way to say this; but getting rid of the mid year report and replacing it with parent meetings seems the only way to bring the workload back to something more manageable. In my experience, there are parents of below expectation students who are aware they are below. Parents who don’t know their child is below the expectation are usually ones who a) aren’t actively helping in any way and won’t help in any way just because it’s written on a piece of paper, or b) aren’t all that concerned. This is a generalisation, sure; but I suspect that parents who care about their child’s education are going to be aware of where their child is in relation to where they’re expected to be without the need for it to be written down in a report. I also suspect that making parents who don’t care about their child’s education aware of where their child is in relation to where they’re expected to be isn’t going to change the amount of care or effort that they are going to be willing to invest in order to make any sizeable difference.

    Therefore, the need to report twice a year is somewhat redundant. It’s created twice the workload, and stretched assessment throughout the year (instead of letting the teacher teach throughout the year) and adds to the stress without actually adding anything to education.

    Related Reading

     

  • Principal views on parenting and schooling

    This has been an issue that I believe is one of the biggest shifts in society in the last 20 years. As parents get so wrapped up in their own lives, their career, their jobs, the things they love to do, children get left by the wayside. They become an afterthought, a burden, even an inconvenience to some parents continuing their self absorbed lives.

    Don’t get me wrong. This is certainly not all parents, and not all children. But increasingly so, there are so many things that schools are picking up the slack on that traditionally have been parents and families roles. This puts additional pressures on schools, teachers, staff, resourcing and funding that are far in a way more than should be expected under the umbrella of ‘education’.

    Parents are the first teachers.

    Unfortunately, there are an increasing number who leave the basics up to the school to do. We’ve heard reports of children turning up to school in nappies and are not toilet trained, let alone know the alphabet or numbers. We’ve heard in the news lately how parents are expecting teachers to teach about social etiquette, social skills, and other things that have traditionally been the role of society.

    Original article: Principal bemoans threats to schools

    A Dunedin school principal is  increasingly  concerned  by the  social expectations imposed on schools,  and says some parents need to take more responsibility for their children’s actions.

    During the recent King’s High School senior prizegiving, rector Dan Reddiex praised his present cohort of pupils for their outstanding achievements  during the year, but went on to express deep concern about the future of education in New Zealand.

    He said the school’s ability to educate boys “in mind and in heart” was under threat.

    “Alarmingly, in my view, we are increasingly becoming as much a social institution as we are an educational one.

    “The expectations imposed upon us now as a school, to attend to and reverse the ills of our society, are completely unrealistic and they are beyond our resource capability.

    “It seems now, the first questions about the inappropriate text message sent by a school-age person in the weekend, or the under-age young person attending a party that goes wrong, are not ‘what were the parents thinking and what will the parents do about it’?

    “The first questions now are ‘what school does the young person go to and what is the school going to do about it’? And we’ve seen that in the national media this year…

    “I believe it’s not our parent body who thrust these expectations upon us. It’s the media and it’s increasingly a broader societal expectation.”

    Mr Reddiex said the lines of demarcation between parental and school responsibility and accountability had been “completely obliterated”.

    Following the prizegiving, he told the Otago Daily Times there was an expectation that schools would, in part, fulfil the function that historically had been the role of a parent.

    “The vast majority of parents are doing a fantastic job, but there are some who need to take more responsibility for their child’s behaviour.”

    Otago Secondary Principals’ Association secretary Gordon Wilson said it was a widespread issue.

    “Schools are under increasing pressure to help the community solve some of its issues, and often schools are seen as the last place where some of these issues can be addressed.

    “That’s not where schools should be. A lot of these issues that schools are being asked to deal with are not internal issues. They are issues that have arisen from outside the school.”

    Read more.

    Source: https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/principal-bemoans-threats-schools

  • Parents want teachers parenting

    Care provider. Call centre operator. Kitchen hand. Negotiator. Detective. Judge. Medic. Counsellor. Social worker. Psychologist. Personal trainer. Caretaker. Cleaner. Don’t get me started on the numerous things that teachers have to do each and every day. That’s even before they have to teach a class full of students some Maths, English, Science, Technology, Music, Art, Dance, Drama, Social Science, and Languages.

    Original article: New Zealand schools need to teach more life skills.

    Kiwi parents want more life skills taught in school, a new survey shows.

    From cyber safety to sex education and manners, two-thirds of parents believed it was the responsibility of teachers to impart lessons traditionally handled at home, according to a survey of 500 New Zealand families.

    Ethnicity played a role in what parents regarded as important in a public education, with Asian parents more likely to want schools to handle the teaching of life skills.

    Parents perceived schools’ responsibilities increased in secondary school.

    But Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) junior vice president Melanie Webber said that while teachers were role models, it would be difficult to fit more life skills into the curriculum.

    The study by the Australian Scholarships Group (ASG) and Melbourne’s Monash University found a “social shift” away from valuing scholastic success towards a more holistic education, ASG chief executive John Velegrinis said.

    “There are increasingly blurred lines as to where (teacher responsibility begins and ends as parents’ perceptions of their traditional roles and responsibilities change.”

    Asian amilies viewed education more traditionally and set higher standards for their children’s academic success than Pākehā parents.

    About 92 per cent believed a degree would help their child achieve their ambitions and 38 per cent did not think their child could be distracted from learning.

    Just 18 per cent of Pākehā families felt that way about distractions and only 66 per cent said they set “high standards” for their child’s education or agreed a degree was important to their success.

    Asian families overwhelmingly supported schools teaching more about social skills and public behaviour (91 and 88 per cent respectively), with about 42 per cent of Pākehā parents on board.

    Christchurch mother Michele Fantham said she wanted daughters Bella, 10, and Neve, 6, to be taught social skills and financial literacy at their school, Fernside.

    “I think the curriculum is pretty cram-packed full of lots of things the school or Ministry (of Education) think are really important that are just not going to benefit them in the real world.”

    She was concerned technology impacted children’s ability to “use manners and communicate properly”. She was among a third of Kiwi parents who believed teaching cyber safety was a school’s responsibility.

    Read more.

    Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/97798269/new-zealand-schools-need-to-teach-more-life-skills-parents-say

     

  • Scrapping National Standards Bad News for Parents

    It was only a matter of time before this response came forward from the opposition.

    It is scary to think how blind some people become by their own ignorance. Nikki Kaye shows just how out of touch she is with schools and what National Standards actually provided.

    The government’s plan to scrap National Standards in schools is bad news for parents and will remove a key source of information, says former Education Minister Nikki Kaye.

    Chris Hipkins, education minister in Jacinda Ardern’s new Labour-led government, has said primary schools will have to report to parents on progress across curriculum subjects.

    But National Standards, which set out levels of numeracy and literacy for Years 1 to 8, will be abolished.

    Mr Hipkins told the New Zealand Herald there were a range of tools schools could use for that, and it was a matter between teachers and parents.

    Ms Kaye says it shows a disregard for parents and students.

    See. No. If anything, it shows regard for parents and students. No teacher wants to label children, and even less so when we’re being asked each year to label kids with labels that have extremely negative connotations. No student needs to work hard all year, only to be told they’re “Well Below”. A generation of students who think “What’s the point” and who have learned to give up because all the hard work they have done hasn’t met a certain standard? Yeah… disregard for parents and students. Totally.

    “Parents need to know where their kids are up to and children need to know how they are getting on,” she said on Monday.

    National Standards didn’t help with either of these two things. Firstly, no school to school moderation was ever held, and so these were not National, and nor were they standard as schools were left to interpret them themselves. Students will still get to know how they’re getting on, and probably more so now that teachers can talk about progress, and hard work, as well as countless other topics and interests held within the many facets of the curriculum, rather than just the narrow and prescribed view held by National Standard supporters.

    “Families also deserve to know what Labour will replace National Standards with – not be told they are going to overhaul the way our students learn but will get back to you with the details later.”

    Once again, Ms Kaye is wrong here. Why does National Standards have to be replaced with anything? Do doctors get rid of tumours and replace them with a benign lump of fat? No. Get rid of it. Destroy it. And let it heal. That’s what needs to happen here. In addition, National Standards has not been a system for how students learn, and never has. It has had a profound impact on how we teach, because of the complete restriction over the subjects that require the most attention, but it has not, and was never designed to, be a way that children learn.

    Ms Kaye says National Standards also provide the Ministry of Education with key information that allows targeted interventions when students are not achieving well.

    “Key information” that the man himself, Sir John Key, called ‘ropey’. Yeah. Such a loss to the MoE having to try and justify the standards. As for targeted interventions – I’d like to hear about where the Ministry had provided any kind of support to schools who had students that were not achieving well.

    This has been communicated numerous times to the Minister, the Government and the Ministry of Education. Maybe instead of sticking by the National Standards, own up and try and see that you might have gotten it wrong. No one will think less of you. But don’t come out and start sprouting out ideals and hyperbole about how integral National Standards were when quite clearly they aren’t. Trying to use parents and students views to justify them is poor, because for every parent that ‘raves’ about them, there are those that oppose them.

    Original Article: Scrapping National Standards ‘bad news’

     

  • Private school parents speak out

    Original Article: Private school parents speak out against “8-year-olds ‘self-directing’ on iPads and Twitter” after half the school’s teachers resign.

    Families at a prestigious Christchurch private school have complained to its board and some have withdrawn their children amid a protest over modern education styles.

    In a letter to Bishop Victoria Matthews and the Cathedral chapter, 34 signatories slammed Cathedral Grammar School’s board of trustees, the chapter that appointed them and principal Scott Thelning, claiming they were out of touch with their “customers” and teachers, half of whom had resigned in the last two years.

    Parents feared there was “no longer a Grammar way” at the 250-pupil primary school, New Zealand’s oldest independent preparatory school.

    The parents took umbrage with “8-year-olds ‘self-directing’ on iPads and Twitter” when they were paying up to $17,000 a year to avoid “a quagmire of modern learning” in public schools.

    The letter, sent last Saturday, said the board appeared “intent on ignoring the reasons why many of us have sent our children to this school – a traditional education that is the basis for a successful life”.

    It said the board and school leadership “paid little more than lip service” to parents’ concerns at an erosion of heritage. An emerging focus on soft skills was “a poor masquerade for declining standards in the basics of education” to the detriment of the reputation of the “once proud school”.

    Staff losses were “massive” and families, including some of the signatories, were moving their children to other schools, the letter said. Seventeen out of 34 staff had resigned in two years, including three of four senior staff.

    The school was looking to hire four teachers and an assistant principal. The lack of specialist teachers would “likely be the death knell for Grammar’s previously hard fought reputation for excellence,” parents said.

     

    Read more here.

    Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/98307054/parents-pull-children-as-letter-expresses-major-governance-concerns-with-christchurch-private-school

  • National Standards Plus

    Seriously. How ridiculous?

    Mum is running late for work, driving over the hill to her 9 til 5 job in the city centre. A notification comes through on her phone at 9:01am, and although she knows she shouldn’t, she checks her phone anyway. The message preview reads “Sally Burgess*: Reading – Below, Writing – Below, Mathematics – Wel…” before it gets truncated to fit on the screen. Opening it up to see the $45 million dollar app in all it’s glory, Mum forgets about the upcoming corner and drives off the road into the fence of the unfortunate homeowner. This instantly lands her in hospital. It could have been so much worse though. She probably counts herself lucky not to have plowed through multiple crowds of children at the local school 300 metres down the road.

    That’s right. The government would have parents being updated in real time every and any progress their child is making in National Standards throughout the school day.

    They’re calling this ‘National Standards Plus’, largely because of the additional time and energy that is going to be chewing into teachers already busy schedule. The additional testing, the additional data gathering, the additional reporting and notifying and uploading to the app’s system. All this PLUS actually teaching the children.

    National Standards Plus would allow parents to track their child’s progress in more detail online.

    “We will show you your child’s progress on your mobile phone, English said. “Some schools have already rolled out tools that support this approach.

    – Stuff, 28 August 2017

     

    The benefit to this will be of course that parents are kept up to date with their child’s progress as it happens.

    Of course, to get this, teachers will be required to input data as it happens. Which will have to be regularly for it to be a worthwhile app to keep on your phone. So now instead of teaching, teachers will be in a constant state of testing, assessing, marking and upload results to the app, for each and every child in their class, each and every day.

    What the government is forgetting however, is the cost of equipping each classroom in the country with one of these:

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    Find out more here.

    Using these scales to weigh the pigs is one thing, but teaching children so that there is progress to notify parents about is another.

    Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said National was ‘”doubling down” on its National Standards system which was not improving student achievement.

    “Kids in New Zealand are over assessed. What we need is less reporting, more teaching.”

    And he questioned how teachers would find the time to update assessment records for continual online access.

    Education union the NZEI said plans to spend millions building a computer tool to track children’s progress as it happened,” based on shonky National Standards, is an obsession with data gone mad”.

    “Requiring teachers to input standardised assessment data across a range of subjects in real time for 30 or more students in a class will reduce the time teachers have with children and increase children’s anxiety about learning,” NZEI Te Riu Roa President Lynda Stuart says.

    “No parent wants their child’s teacher sitting entering data for hours when they need to be face to face with kids.”

    Seriously. How ridiculous?

    Oink.

     

    In relation to – Stuff – National launches official campaign with education bid

  • ERO strikes again. Seriously!?

    In their latest document of propaganda, ERO have made the following recommendations for schools to work towards improving the way they deliver education for their students. It is, however, only in draft format in it’s present state, but makes pretty clear the direction that they’re heading. It’s called “Effective School Evaluation”. Within it they have a table which includes examples of shifts in practice that schools have made to improve outcomes for learners. Their words, not mine.

    In it, they have different headings and different recommendations within each one. I’ve had a quick perusal through them, and there are a few that stand out that I wish to bring to your attention.

     

    Educationally powerful connections and relationships

    FROM: 15% attendance by parents and whānau at interviews – TO: 85% after introducing a whānau tutor system and giving parents and whānau a 20 minute interview with one teacher.

    Shifting from 15% of parents and whānau turning up to 85% turning up is not as easy as writing it down in a statement and assigning a “whānau tutor” . I’m not sure where ERO get their 15% of parents turning up for interviews, but I can only assume that it was from a school who was REALLY struggling.

    15% of a class of 28 (the current funding ratio for class sizes) is 4.2 families. At a meeting of 10 minutes each, this impacts on a teacher of…, wait for it,  42 minutes of additional non-contact time expected of teachers.

    ERO would like to increase attendance to parent-teacher interviews to 85% through the use of ‘whānau tutors’. Who will these tutors be? You guessed it – teachers. Who else is there?
    What will we be expected to do? And how will that ensure that parents come to teacher meetings if they are busy, or can’t make it, or are sick or looking after the tamariki? Seriously. It’s almost like ERO have no touch on reality.

    ERO also mentioned that the expected length on such meetings would be 20 minutes so that discussions can be in depth and meaningful.

    85% of a class of 28 (the current funding ratio for class sizes) is 23.8 families. At a meeting of 20 minutes each, this impacts on a teacher of…, wait for it, 476 minutes. That’s a total of 7 hours and 55 minutes additional time expected of teachers.

    Now; let us assume that in an alternate universe where teachers would be paid by the hour, and the pay rate would be on par with other trades at $80 an hour. We can safely assume that this would happen after school hours, so we’d have to pay time and a half. However, let’s be generous and just charge out the usual rate (That is the usual treatment of teachers time these days anyway!).
    So at $80.00 an hour, for 8 hours, that is $640 per teacher. That’s just for the interviews. That does not take into account the “whānau tutoring” that will also be expected of teacher’s time. I’m not sure when I last had 8 hours of additional time in my already jam packed schedule. Or are we expected to come back on the weekend to meet with parents?

    This goes along the same lines as a PacT Tool Workshop that I attended, in which they said that it’d probably take 25 minutes for each child when you first start doing it. I worked that out at the meeting and it was the turning point in my support for it. It worked out to be an additional 11 hours just to create an OTJ for every student in the class; something that should take no more than 30 minutes in my opinion.

     

    Responsive Curriculum, effective teaching and opportunity to learn

    FROM: Teaching Writing – TO: Teaching Writers

    Move from Teaching Writing to Teaching Writers.

    They think that this is a clever statement to cause thoughts and shifts in thinking. There are a few flaws however.

    To be a writer, you need to know how to write. Many new entrants do not know how to write, and yet we probably should teach them something about writing?

    Secondly, let’s look at the language being used.

    Writing – noun. The act of writing. A subject of study.

    Writers – noun. A person who writes.

    The shift ERO want us to make is from teaching a subject, to teaching the people. However, as a teacher, what am I doing when I teach Writing? I’m teaching students how to write better. What am I doing when I teach writers? I’m teaching students how to write better.

    Well, it would seem I can tick that one off the list of things to do.

     

    Responsive Curriculum, effective teaching and opportunity to learn

    FROM: Deficit thinking and blaming students for poor outcomes – TO: Teachers recognising the need to improve their teaching.

    Finally (for this post anyway), the last recommendation I’ll touch on is this. ERO wish us to move from deficit thinking on why students are failing, and instead, focus on how teachers can teach better.

    Go on. Bash away. We know you don’t respect us enough to give us credit, or even acknowledge that some of us (if not all of us) are actually doing the best we can with what we’ve got. They also forget that most of the students we teach are doing the best with what they’ve got. But the truth of the matter is there are other impacts on a child’s learning beyond that of their academic ability and the teacher’s adequacy in being able to teach. Poverty, hunger, broken families, abuse, violence. Need I go on?
    No. It couldn’t possibly be any of these mitigating factors. No. It’s because we are not teaching them well enough that there are poor outcomes.  Pffft. To suddenly start blaming ourselves for why students are not progressing is just as counter-productive as saying it’s the student’s fault that they aren’t succeeding.

    It’s enough to make my blood boil.

    At least I’ll stay warm while the educational winter is setting in.

  • Problem Parenting

    Through the course of my career, I’ve come across them all. I’ve met the over-protective mother, the stern but busy father, the parents who we never see (for various reasons) and the parents who are as flaky as a puff pastry.

    At all times, I try and maintain a professional attitude when dealing with all parents, regardless of which category I might think they fit into, and I certainly endeavour to do the same here in this article. As always, confidentiality is paramount, and no examples in this are intended to identify any particular parent or family.

    Too Soft

    Over the course of the mid 2000’s, the culture of society changed, and the lawmakers began putting child rights to the top of all law making. Domestic violence cases where punishment and beatings to keep children ‘in-line’ were the target, but ultimately covered every kind of physical discipline for children within the home, and outlawed parents who were discouraging certain behaviours through use of smacking (most of whom will have only ever seen and used this form of discipline, as it was how they were disciplined as a child as well). I don’t advocate the use of physical discipline in any way, but when you remove the one strategy that parents use, you completely de-power them. Some parents stepped up their game and use other discipline methods. Many were left with nothing, so did nothing, in fear of being ‘caught’.

    The result of this has lead to two things. 1) Children are now well aware that parents can’t do ‘anything’ to them, and 2) Parents left without any discipline strategies to keep their children in line.

    Ultimately, these kids who rule the roost in every setting they are introduced to, beit school, home, shops, wherever – are immune to boundaries, purely because none have ever been put in place for them.

    However, as soon as they hit school and they are confronted with rules and boundaries, and a teacher who is going to enforce them, then the problems start arising. The child who is “untouchable” and has an ego to go with it constantly challenges the authority, often using “You’re not the boss of me” phrase which we can only come to expect.

    Unfortunately they have been taught, directly or indirectly, that no one is the boss of them. You can do what ever you want in life. Rules don’t matter. People can’t tell you what to do.

    So when someone does try to tell them what to do; like – do your handwriting, this becomes a challenge on their authority and troubles ensue.

    However; instead of the parents (often solo mum’s) coming up and laying down the law for the child and telling them in no uncertain terms that the rules at school are above everything else, that you do as you’re told, and that any consequence is followed through with, they often come in and say okay, okay, and take the child home. After a short talk, maybe a smack because they’re out of strategies, a sending to their room, the child is then back out and about, and rides their bike around the school grounds well into the late stages of daylight, in some sort of reclaiming of their territory. None of the consequence is remembered, acted upon, or even means anything to the child and so the process continues, albeit escalated. Eventually, the school has the “5 stand downs in a term” chat with the parent/s, and the decision is made to jump before they are pushed, and the child moves to a different school, rather than face up to the actual facts, the actual consequences of the behaviour and actually trying to change the child for the better. Restarting at another school (where the same process is likely to be repeated) is the easy way out; less confrontational, and less traumatic for the child. However, the child goes on to learn that they can do whatever they want, and that they can get away with anything because at the end of the day I’ll just change schools. The long term effects of this however, are staggering.

    Fighting every fight for them

    The other worry is of course those parents who treat their darling like the fount of all things true, will go in to bat for their child, and will fight every fight. They enable them through allowing them to stay home rather than face the bully, call meetings with school leadership instead of with the teacher, see their child as blameless in every situation, regardless of the all-too-common phrase “Oh I know he/she’s no angel…”, and encourage the drama of otherwise very small and meaningless situations that other children deal with on their own in the course of a day. Anxiety levels are raised for all involved, until eventually, instead of fighting, they take flight – uprooting that child from one class and finding another school that will take them for a fresh start, where all to often the process is repeated because the child has not learned how to actually deal with the situation. The only thing the child learns from this is not resilience (the one thing that child needs more than anything else), but that it doesn’t matter what happens, I can go to Mummy and it will all be fixed.

    “Celia Lashlie has lashed out at mothers who mollycoddle their sons, saying many teenage boys are killed on the roads because their mums smother them and refuse to let them discover the consequences of their own actions.

    Speaking to a Traffic Institute conference in Hamilton yesterday, the former prison officer turned author admonished wealthy, so-called “helicopter mums”, who “hover” over their sons, refusing to accept they can be blamed for anything.”

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/5981627/Too-soft-mums-put-sons-at-risk

    I’m not suggesting here that these kinds of students are heading down this path. I’m a primary teacher, and driving is a way off for the majority of my students. But if the only way you are going to teach your son or daughter about resilience and perseverance, and standing up for yourself, is by running away from the trouble and going somewhere else; then that is what they will do for the rest of their lives. Come running to mummy.

    The Power of Mothers – Celia Lashlie

     

    The reality is that these parents have no strategies. No ideas about what to do. Many of them have given up because it’s all too hard, purely because they didn’t lay the groundwork back in infancy. When parents give up, the schools suffer. The 29 other students in the class suffer. The teachers suffer. But ultimately society suffers. These kids who don’t have ‘parents’ will become parents and will have no idea of how to be one, because they haven’t actually been parented themselves.

     

    Not all is lost.

    But you have to make an effort. It’s not going to be easy. But nowhere ever worth going is easy to get to. Here are a list of parenting supports in New Zealand that you should get in touch with.

  • How to be the kind of parent teachers like – Nigel Latta

    498571-240882-34

    From: Politically Incorrect Parenting – Nigel Latta

    It’s really easy to be the kind of parent teachers like. And it’s really important. Imagine, for example, just before first class two mums come to drop off their kids for school. The first mum smiles at the teacher, says hello, and then exits. The second mum smiles, says hello, and then traps the teacher in a long, tedious, and accusatory discussion about why her daughter isn’t in the top reading group when she is clearly reading at a level that is far above that of her classmates. Which kid do you think is going to get the broken crayons in art classes?
    Teachers have to put up with a lot of crazy stuff from parents these days, and they mostly do it with great patience and grace. I think that it would be fair to say, though, that there isn’t a teacher in the western world who isn’t at least a bit fed up with some of the nonsense they have to endure at the hands of generally well-meaning, but often ridiculously over-involved parents. Here are just a few examples of the mad stuff teachers have told me they have to deal with now:

    • A mother in tears because her six-year-old daughter didn’t get into the ‘advanced’ art class.
    • A parent who approached a principal wanting the next term’s syllabus so they could get a jump-start on it during the holidays.
    • A father who was outraged because his son was made to sit outside the staff room at lunchtime when ‘all’ the boy had done was tell the teacher to shut up.
    • A parent whose response to repeated angry/disrespectful outbursts from their child in class was that the boy ‘wasn’t being stimulated enough’ by the classroom teacher.
    • A principal had to endure an outraged blast from a parent whose daughter had lost a game of tennis at lunchtime after the other children changed the rules mid-game.
    • A parent complained that their child was being unfairly disadvantaged by having to sit at the back of the class, furthest away from the board.
    • A parent who engaged a lawyer to appeal the decision of a school talent quest which went against his daughter.
    • Complaints from several parents after a teacher told off some boys for yelling. The teacher allegedly ‘raised her voice’ which the parents thought was inappropriate.
    • A parent complained after being ‘told off’ by their child’s teacher for getting to school an hour late every day. The parent didn’t think the teacher had any right to tell them what time their child should be at school.

    Now, I could go on, but you probably get the point from even this brief list of examples. For some reason some parents of today believe that children always tell the truth and teachers always lie, and if anything goes wrong at school it’s the school’s fault.
    Teachers don’t like whiney, anxious parents. They just don’t. They may well act as if they are listening to Sarah’s mother as she angrily points out that Sarah never behaves that way at home because she is always stimulated appropriately, but inside they will simply be thinking unkind thoughts about Sarah’s mum, and making a mental note to give the girl the broken crayons next time.
    Apart from the whole crayons thing, the other reason it’s good to have a strong relationship with your child’s teacher is that if there is a problem they will often be your best ally. You don’t want them to roll their eyes when they see you coming — you want them to look up and smile.
    So how do you be the kind of parent teachers like?

    • Don’t make a fuss about every little thing
    It’s simple thing, but important. Teachers are busy people, and schools can be a bit chaotic at the best of times. Sometimes stuff doesn’t get done, and sometimes things are less than perfect. Be forgiving and understanding and don’t complain about very last little thing. If you don’t, they will be much more likely to take you seriously when you do need to talk to them about something important.

    • Take responsibility for problems with your child
    If your little one has got into trouble for something, make sure you get the message across loud and clear that you are taking the matter seriously, and want to get sorted. It isn’t the school’s problem, after all — it’s yours. We all want our kids to blend in with the school community and get about the business of getting educated. If there are problems, we need to make sure we’re onto it as soon as we can.

    • Work with the school, not against it

    You’d be surprised how many parents end up in fights with their school over things which shouldn’t have been fights at all. If you’re practising the previous step, you’ll find this one much easier as well. Basically, you need to sit down with the teacher if there’s a problem and work with them to get it solved. If you approach any problems with the philosophy that you’re part of a team, and the teacher gets the fact you aren’t out to blame them, then most of the time most problems can be resolved.

    It really is that simple. From time to time there might be things you disagree with, but my advice is pick the big ones and don’t worry about the little stuff. Obviously, if you’re really concerned or upset about something that you feel is important, you absolutely should go in and talk with the school about whatever it is you’re worried about. If, on the other hand, you constantly feel like everything is important and everything necessitates a sit-down meeting with the teacher and/or principal, the odds are you’re probably getting a bit too worked up about things, and should take a breath and a step back.
    After all, who wants their kid to be the one with the broken crayons? Where’s the dignity in that?

    Source: Nigel Latta – Just thought I’d share this from the ‘Politically…

  • Where are the kids learning?

    I was told not so long ago, that kids only spend 13% of their time at school. It was in relation to say that kids actually don’t do a lot of their learning at school. Kids will learn through all sorts of means, from what they hear, what they see, what they experience.

    Even as a teacher, I thought, that can’t be right. That can’t be right at all. Only 13%!!?

    Here’s the Maths:

    40 weeks at school. 5 days a week. 6 hours a day.
    6 x 5 = 30 hours per week.
    30 x 40 = 1200 hours at school per year.

    365 days per year. 24 hour days. 8760 hours per year total.

    (1200 ÷ 8760) x 100 = 13.7% of total time spent at school each year.

    So my question to you is “Where are the kids learning?”. Is it at school? Because only 13 percent of their time, the things they see, the things they hear, and the things they experience, is at school. So what happens in the rest of it? Is it in front of the TV? Playstation? After School Care? Internet? Where is your child learning? 87% of your child’s time is outside of school time. What are you doing to help your child learn the right things during that time? Teachers are paid to teach. That is their job. And I can say whole heartedly, that teachers work hard to ensure that every hour that the children are in their care, that they are providing learning experiences and tasks for those children. And they certainly have to maintain a strict criteria to ensure that they are teaching things suitable for the children to learn (unlike some TV channels!). But no matter how hard they work to teach effectively, and teach the right things, they still only have 13% of the child’s time.

    There are some parents doing wonderful things to provide a well rounded education for this generation of young people. They are following up homework, they are reading to their children, they are providing experiences that kids can learn life skills from, they are getting them involved in weekend sports.

    But others choose to point the finger at schools, and fail to see the three fingers pointing back at them.