Insist On The Parental Support You Deserve This Year

Here is a post from 2012 on the topic of communicating with parents early on in the year before it’s too late:

I was communicating with a teacher about getting the parents of kids who act out in class involved early, actually right away, at the beginning of the year.

She said:

I have not called parents early on. When I have, later in the year, quite a few have answered that there is nothing they can do, that it is my job to make them do their work, etc.

I responded:

It is a disaster when parents throw their own solemn responsibilities onto teachers. You must absolutely refuse this comment. That their child is a jerk in class is to no small degree their responsibility, although you cannot say that to them, of course.

Tell them that studies show that when parents support teachers the results are better. Explain that their child needs a strong parent-teacher combination for the child’s education to work. Ask them if they really mean what they are saying, to throw the entire responsibility on the teacher.

Invite them in for a talk. You may want an administrator there in certain cases. Tell them that their child’s success in your classroom depends on how they support you. Ask them, honestly, if they are interested in their child’s success. Tell them that it is the schools that have strong parental support that succeed. Ask them if they want their child’s school to succeed.

We must ask for what we want. It is an atrocity that teachers accept the full burden of student behavior on their tired shoulders. Insist on the parental support you deserve.

What if the parent is not equipped to hear that message? What if the parent is just not going to get involved in the discussion? Then at least you have reached out in the first few weeks to let them know your concerns, you have documented that attempted communication, and you can then begin to work from there for a solution.

The point here is not to try to get the parent to suddenly change and get involved – most are in now in survival mode themselves in this imploding society. The point is to have set up clear evidence with parents and administration that their kid is big time on your radar. It sends a message to the kid and is a major CYA move. If the kid doesn’t hear you making any noise early on, she will keep making noise in your classroom all year.

I have never done this enough. There has always been too much to do. And it often has come back on me. The one thing that I know now after all these years is that we either act aggressively in the first month of school or we turn our classroom over to forces we don’t need or want for the rest of the year.

Counseling? Good luck with that. I have never seen jobs that are as impossible to do as school building counselors. If you have one with even one ear that can hear you, you are far better off than most of us.

Just start working with anyone with a sympathetic ear. Don’t put it off and don’t be defeatist. If the parent doesn’t show up, rattle cages wherever you can – with APs or the principal or anywhere you can. We have talked about this in the Pig series of articles from last year.

What about talking to the kid? It is a good question. My opinion and experience tell me that when in a new situation in which a kid must change their fundamental behaviors from what they know school to be (they must do that in our comprehension based classrooms), such talks are far less productive than we think they might be. Some kids have blown teachers’ requests off their backs for years. Why change for you?

Of course we talk to them, but we can’t make that our principle response to their acting out and fear of becoming more human because our class demands it. We can’t expect too much change without help. Most kids who act out in CI classrooms do so out of a lack of the skill set needed to actually do the class, and they just can’t change with a snap of the fingers. We have to work on teaching them how to act all year.

Act now beyond the quick conversation with any kid who exhibits failure to follow the rules or hold your peace, is the message here. If you don’t act now you won’t have the peace you need with those very few kids you need to confront NOW.