We could talk about this situation for years, and indeed we have, as this kind of communication with parents is not our first rodeo with it. I would guess we’ve had this conversation twice a year for over fifteen years.
Some observations:
- The parent and kid are victims. They too a worksheet intro class, I’m guessing in 7th grade, and the kid was able to get the A by studying the day of the exam. So naturally this falls back on the teacher, who must now defend her position even though she did nothing wrong and is in fact doing everything right by the research and best practices in our field.
- The child would have been so much better off had he never taken the intro course. What a disaster to be given worksheets bc it made the kids “soft”, made him think that learning a language is not about rigorous listening but easy memorizing.
- The admin team in this school needs to be alerted in no uncertain terms that this is happening and that in now way does it align w professional standards or research.
- This teacher should go to to the “Admin/Teacher/Parent Re-education” category on the right side of this page and look around. She should also go the Primers (hard link above) and look for the articles posted there on this topic.
- In the next article I will post a sample response for this parent.
