My son hates his teacher

Hmm. This conference will tell teacher that he's been talking out of school, so to speak. Go forward with it anyway, but be aware that he might be subject to some subtle retaliation.

You are probably picking up that with Duckie's past history that I don't think he is the problem.

Oh, teachers are liars in exactly the same percentage as the rest of the population.

Oof.

You can probably just say something like, "My son usually loves school and he seems to be having a really hard time so far this year. I'd like to meet to find out more about the situation and how I can help."

It could be a little bit of a lot of things -- like, maybe he misses his friends and is therefore generally grumpy and that influences how he views the teacher. Could have something to do with the teacher currently being at maximum disciplinarian setting that I just mentioned on the Naughty Pants thread.

Could be that she's just plain a lousy teacher, of course. I agree that meeting with her and getting more info is the way to go.

bookmarking

Well, as he's new to the school & it's obvious he's so unhappy with the experience, an "information sharing" session between you & his teacher would be a pretty understandable request. I suspect that the things you're concerned about could naturally emerge in the process of the discussion. You never know, his new teacher might welcome the opportunity to share a few concerns, too. As long as your approach is not hostile or threatening (& I don't believe for a minute it would be!) this meeting could turn out to very useful. And it'll help you sort out whether it's an adjustment problem or something more worrying.
Good luck!

Thanks ,guys, for all the good advice.



Do you mind if I plagiarize you?



I definitely can see this happening. When he gets grumpy he just gets in this negative spiral where everything he does is from the grumpy perspective and he just self-reinforces his grumpiness. And the teacher doesn't know him and is probably trying to establish order first and foremost. And he can be very sensitive.

She's also pregnant and will be leaving in a couple of months -- ironically just as his first grade teacher did last year. She seemed nice enough when we met her, but it's hard to tell. And he is clearly bored with the work, which also probably has something to do with the fact that he's new and they are evaluating his abilities. But they should have a lot of information from his old school that would help in that regard, so I'm not sure.

Suggest you discuss this with the school principal.


Similar (but completely different) situation here years ago. After about 12 months digging, documenting, ancdotal references from past parents, letter writing, phone calls, brick walls, calls not returned, regional education board etc etc. the teacher dissapeared from the school.

Meeting with this teacher had no effect whatsoever,she was nice as pie when being observed, great person for parents to talk with.

None of this helped my son as it all took way to long but certainly improved things for future students.

Ok, I sent her an email basically plagiarizing sozobe and as an aside mentioned that I'm available to be a teacher's helper. That's something I enjoyed doing last year as it allowed me to observe while contributing to the classroom. So we'll see.

I'm interested to know more about your situation dadpad. How did it start out? What turned out to be the problem?

A teacher rorting the system.

She was calling in sick 2 or 3 days then teaching for a few and another day off then at school for a week or two then another couple of days off sick. This continued for most of the first term ntil I got wind of what was going on and started documenting when she was there.
Substitue teachers were provided but these were essentially babysitters for the class. No lesson continuity with a different substitute teacher each time.

I started to ask questions of other parents and found out this had been going on for 3 or 4 years.

The entire 12 month budget for sick leave and substitute teaching staff was being used up by one teacher inside one term.

I finally got onto the president of the school council who (off the record) told me she had been doing the same thing but to a lesser extent for as long as he could remember because she thought she should have been appointed the senior (non teaching) teacher.
I had to write letter after letter after letter and follow up with phone calls which would not be returned or returned when I was not available then not followed up by the department and I had to call again. It was a real red tape bureucratic nightmare.

That sounds awful. I'm sorry you had to go through that.

I don't think that's what's going on here, but I do leave open the possibility that the teacher is not a good fit for my son or vice versa. I'm still hoping to find out more.

Anybody have some suggestions on what I can tell my son to help him cope in the meantime?

Talk about "going along to get along". thats hard for a little one to understand but a valuable lesson if it can be learned.

Yikes, dadpad, that sucks. I wonder if that would be allowed here? I tend to think not, but who knows.

FreeDuck, I think you can mostly listen for now. Sympathize while broadcasting an assumption that whatever is wrong is fixable. (Tricky, I know.) Until you know more, I think the thing to do is make sure his concerns are validated without cementing any possible over-reaction. I'm sure he's looking to you for cues, and I think if you assume the worst, that'll reinforce his negative feelings. As in, stay as neutral as you can (without dismissing what he has to say) until you find out more.

Not as the initial contact. Down the track a bit, perhaps, if you feel there is reason to or you want to make a complaint. Besides, the principal will probably suggest a meeting with the teacher to discuss the problem. Makes sense.

Oh and I think you can go ahead and tell him that you are planning to talk to his teacher about this -- it indicates that you're taking his concerns seriously. But you can talk about it in an information-sharing rather than accusatory way, like, "I know this easy work has been boring for you so I want to make sure she has your records from your old school and knows how smart you are so you can get to more interesting work sooner..." that kind of thing.

Also (sorry I'm scattershot, I'm doing lots of things at once), I think you can reinforce some general principles about school while talking to him about this -- "I know you usually love school and that's something I think is great, and I'd like to do what I can to help you really enjoy this school, too."

FreeDuck--

I'd give him lots of sympathy about the difficult role of a Stranger. Does he have any favorite literary heroes who encounter alien situations and survive gloriously?

Are there any Monsters-with-Hearts-of-Gold in his favorite stories?

Tell him that you're going to talk to the teacher and ask him to come up with two or three things at the new school that make him unhappy and two or three things that he enjoys.

Part of his boredom is that the first 4-6-8 weeks of school are devoted to reviewing the work of the year before which most children have forgotten over the summer.

You're doing exactly the right thing by having an early teacher conference. I hope everything can be ironed out with good will on all sides.

Thanks all. Those are more good suggestions. The balance between being sympathetic and taking sides is difficult.

I think I may have reinforced some of his negative feelings recently by making a comment about the number of times they keep sending home forms to fill out that we have already filled out. Oddly, this only comes from his class and not my daughter's though they were both registered at the same time. It's an irritation to me because it took me a very long time to fill out two sets of 6 or more forms of mostly identical information for the two of them for registration. And now they have been sending many of those same forms home each week to be filled out yet again. I'm afraid I expressed my annoyance audibly. I don't have much patience for this sort of thing and the whole process is just screaming for automation, which I thought about offering to do for them for free just to avoid the annoyance. Anyway, he got a little upset and told me that he would get in trouble if I didn't fill them out and return them right away. So I think that negativity probably doesn't help and that's something I can work on is being more positive in general.

I also just emailed the mom of one of his friends from his old school to arrange a play date. Maybe that will cheer him a little.

The teacher was very responsive and already emailed me back. I will talk to her on Monday and hopefully things will start to look up from there.

FreeDuck--

Since you want to talk and the teacher wants to talk, the omens are excellent.

Hold your dominion.

listening in as a prospective teacher.....

Back to this. With the conference on Monday I'm not sure what I should say. I don't want to tell her what he's been telling me. Maybe I should ask her some questions? How's he adjusting, does he seem happy, etc... What if she says, "he seems fine to me"? I'm not sure how I can characterize the problem other than just saying that he's unhappy. I agree with msolga that this should be an information sharing meeting, I'm just wondering how much information I should share.