- Share This Post
- submit
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
Dear parents of the new students I will get this year,
You are getting ready to send your babies to me. They’re all sorts of ages and are, by no means, a true “baby” but many of them will use their learned helplessness to try to get by while they are in my care at school.
I won’t let them.
If I could, may I tell you a couple of things about your child? A few things that you may not know from my perspective as an educator?
You’re done a great job so far. Really, you have. You’ve spent many years raising your child and the amount of work some of you do with your kids is staggering. The sacrifices you’ve made, the difficult choices in figuring out what’s best for them, and the general feeling of “I’m doing it all wrong!” can be enough to make you freeze in one position and stay still. It can paralyze you so that when they get older and return to school you start to tune out.
Caution: that’s a dangerous place to be.
I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while about this. Having been a classroom teacher for many years I can tell you that sitting down with parents during parent/teacher conferences is not when I’d like to meet you parents for the first time. As much as I didn’t think it was a part of my job I find myself looking into the eyes of parents who don’t have a clue what to do with their school-age children. It’s as if you reach a certain point and feel like it’s our responsibility in schools to finish raising them.
We can’t do that. But we can tell parents what we’ve learned about kids. Allow me to share some of them with you:
You’re invited into your children’s lives. They look enormous and keep on growing physically, but go ahead and butt in there.
Television and the Internet are no substitutes for a meaningful conversation. Ask probing questions. Encourage. Stimulate.
Read to your children. Even when they’re in high school. Read an article from the newspaper or from a trustworthy magazine.
Talk to your children to find out what is happening in their lives. Know who their friends are. Know who their teachers are, what their grades are before it’s too late to encourage them to work harder than they’ve ever worked to experience the best kinds of rewards.
Put your children first. I know you have priorities. That you have other things going on in your life, but put kids first.
Set some parameters. Live by some semblance of rules.
Hell. Just set some rules. Don’t wing it and hope for the best.
Be supportive. this is what it looks like: read together, play games together, do things that do not require batteries or an outlet. Do puzzles. Play dominoes. Talk to each other while you’re taking a walk. Set aside some time to ask about what they did. What are you reading? What are you learning in science? If they say “nothing” then ask another question.
Get deep with them. Teach them organization and preparedness. Don’t just expect them to be organized and prepared. Teach them what that looks like.
Teach them to work hard.
Teach them to be nice.
Know that as long as you’re trying your best, you’re being successful. Use the teachable moments. Things are going to be tough. If you need help, find it. Don’t just suffer in silence.
School is going to be hard for some kids. If your child struggles keep asking us for help and support. Go ahead and ask us the hard questions like: what are you going to do to help my child? When we’ve answered that be open to the hard questions we will ask you in return. How are you going to support this from home?
You’re going to entrust your child to our care for nearly 200 days of the year. We have to do this together and the partnership won’t always be easy. Don’t be their lawyer and defend their poor behavior. Don’t seek to blame, blame, blame the teachers. Seek to help your child. That’s what we’re going to do.
Sincerely,
A school employee
Read the Letter to My Child's Teacher and the Letter to College Students (and their parents). Write your own letter and link it in Mr Linky.
