It's a question that every educator (whether teacher or administrator) asks him or herself, when it comes to communicating with the classroom teachers of his/her own children. I have a 2nd grade daughter who goes to school in my own school district--the one in which I work as an administrator-in-training. And a full three months into the school year, I'm feeling that this is simply going to be a "lost year" for my daughter in terms of her school-based academic growth. Most of the comments my daughter innocently shares with me about her every day, reflect a classroom environment where "management skills" are lacking. Once when I mentioned this frustration privately to my wife, she reminded me that my daughter's class has 30 students--a terribly difficult condition for a teacher to be effective.
I am a parent. But I've decided that for me (a fellow educator), I can not express my feelings with my daughter's teacher or school as freely as other parents would and should. This has nothing to do with concerns for my career as a future principal--it only has to do with empathy for her teacher. First of all, I know the difficulty of having a handful of challenging students in a classroom. Classroom management is not always a simple matter. But secondly, I don't want to be the kind of educator that wields "insider knowledge" to exert pressure or influence on another educator.
Today, my daughter told me that her school counselor described her class as "horrible". That's the kind of frustrating news that would prompt me to open up about a topic like this--one that I've been struggling with since the beginning of the school year. I will simply have to supplement my daughter's education with as much home-based learning this year, and hope for a better classroom experience next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment