Teachers Need Parents

I’ve intentionally picked this meme to start my article today.

This meme isn’t the reason I’m writing this article today. However, I do remember seeing it and being shocked by it. I was in the later years of high school and considering teaching as a pathway. When I saw this it scared me a little (although was not the reason I didn’t go into teaching). My family wasn’t like that though. Whatever grades we got were because of how well we did and not about how well the teacher taught us. Some years, we would have great teachers and others, some good ones. Doesn’t matter though. If you want to do well at school, that’s up to you. That was the mentality in my household. 

Growing up with this as our family’s mentality, I thought the second image mustn't be true. But as I finished up school and then began working as a tutor at a local High School, I can confidently say that the second half of that meme is more common than I thought. I’ve seen many different kids come through whose family thinks the teachers aren’t doing a good enough job. My opinion though, those kids just did a lot better when they were forced to sit down and study for an extra 2 hours 1-3 times per week (when our tutoring centre was open) [1] . For teens, I can see parents putting that pressure on them to hold themselves accountable. For kids however, Dads. You need to step up and make them do their homework. They probably won’t want to do it by themselves.

But, just as common or true either picture is, I think they’re both wrong and we’ve entirely missed the mark on what a teacher-student-parent relationship should be like.

A Little Bit About Teachers…

From my experience, most teachers are great. They’ll go above and beyond. Whether it’s replying to emails literally at midnight the night before an exam was due or coming in over the school holidays and spending 12+ hours at work just so their students could work on their year 12 projects. These teachers are the gems that you’ll find all around. Or for a primary school context, they’re the ones who will book in meetings and phone calls with parents on their drives home or the ones who’ll email through the kid’s school work if the family goes for a week away during the term. 

I’m not saying that every teacher is like that, or that I expect every teacher to make these insane commitments but so many are. So when you find out your kid has that teacher, be excited and be ready to work with them to help your child succeed. 

As for the “average” teachers. Yes, they’re being paid, but they’re still dedicating 8 hours a day to teaching your kids, and that’s a hard job sometimes.. The alternative is you staying home to teach your kids for 13 years of their lives. Don’t know about you, but I’ll take the former of the two options. 

Teachers Are People

Teachers are people, working a 9-5 (more like 8-4) and have hobbies they enjoy outside of work.

It can be so easy to forget this. But they are people too. So remember to treat them like people too. The relationship between you and your kid’s teachers can start to feel like ordering a Big Mac if you forget what the point of teachers is. I worked at maccas for a few years and the biggest thing I took away was that you never know what’s going on until you’re there. I have heard countless screams from both customers and upper management at why one of my coworkers isn’t working at 100%. Many times I’ve taken the screams and shouts for my coworkers who are just trying to survive another shift. We all sometimes forget that we’re all people and that most of the time, we don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. People have bad days. They have bad weeks. And sometimes people are just lazy. But jumping to these outlier conclusions is not helpful or productive. We need to have some humility to know that we don’t know.

The same goes for teachers. They have good days, bad days, and everything in between. So, let’s get to know them first. Build good rapport and you might just learn something new about them.

What Can I Do?

The very first step to getting to know your child’s teacher is to meet them. Whether your kid’s school does classroom pickup or you wait till parent teacher interviews roll around, make an effort to find the times where the teacher is present and ready to have a chat. Now I’m not saying you need to book in a meeting with your child’s teacher immediately. That would actually probably be negative because, teachers are so busy with other things that they don’t have the time for another unnecessary meeting. But try to be around at the start of the year, make your face known and get alongside the teacher in helping your child learn.

Now, working with the teacher doesn’t mean that you need to be there for every school pickup ever or make sure you are emailing the teacher the second anything comes up. The best way to go about it would be through your kids. If your kids are given homework, then they need to do it. If they come home with a note from school, make sure to sign it and send it back promptly. All a teacher really needs from a parent, is for them to be present and active in their child’s life. 

I am certain that a teacher would be much happier if a child came and asked for help on their homework because mum and dad weren’t sure what to do rather than because “it was too hard for them”. Teachers are happy to help, but they need help too. They are literally there to teach your kids, but if you think that they have the time of day to be with each student 1-1 all the time, then you’re crazy. They have between 20 and 30 kids to be teaching and so, they need to find a way to helpfully teach them all, for 6+ hours a day, 5 days a weeks. Nowhere near enough time to  do 1-1 with each of them [2]. With parent’s help, each student they have will be able to get the best overall learning they can. The less teachers are having to help kids one on one, the more time they have to be actually teaching and working on other things to enhance the classroom experience.

Why the meme is wrong

I said I disagree with the starting meme. Actually entirely blaming kids or teachers on the grades is not helpful. Now talking all about how grades aren’t everything in a child’s schooling is a whole other conversation. But for now, the point is that you can’t point fingers at only the teacher or only the child when it comes to the grades that come out. Instead, try pointing the finger at yourself. Have you been engaged with your child’s schooling? Could you be doing something different?

DADDING IN ACTION

Get alongside your child when they're doing their homework this week.

Footnotes

[1] - The school I worked at had a model where students in years 7-12 were able to come to the library for free on a Monday-Wednesday afternoon for up to 2 hours after school. Me and 2 others would work 2 days a week for an hour before the students came in to; help answer questions from previous days and do some admin work for the school. The students would then come in and sit anywhere in the library and we would do check-ins, help with study plans, or answer any questions (especially in our “specialist” areas). Many kids, though, just used it to hold themselves accountable and would study privately for the whole 2 hours.

[2] - Let’s say a teacher did do 1-1 teaching all day. Take an under average class size of 20 kids and an over average school times of 8am-3pm (minus 1 hour for the student’s lunch and recess breaks). That’s just under 20 mins each day. So either, a teacher can teach 1-1 for 20 mins a day, or 6 hours for the whole day to a larger group.