The main problem I always found with parents evening was that the parents you really wanted to see never turned up. If pressed, they would always have some excuse which was usually incomprehensible "Sally weren't right and the bus didn't stop on the way back an' 'ow am I supposed to know... blah"
Another problem was that many teachers tried desperately to be positive about the pupil "Kaylee would work really well if we could just get her to stop texting the layabouts who hang around the school gates..." and only told the parent good things; so when they got to me, they were unprepared for the truth and simply wrote it off as the rantings of a madman.
Some schools even give the kids a day off and have 'Parents Day' for no obvious reason, other to presumably make it harder for parents with jobs to attend. Amazingly, at other schools; parents don't even get to see their child's teachers, they just listen to a report read to them by the form teacher; which is an utter waste of time. Surprisingly few parents complain- I'd hit the roof.
Most parents never really had much of a clue about what they wanted or why they were there, as this report suggests. The ones that were clued up always took me by surprise. Best of all is when you mix up a child with another one who has a similar name and tell the parents how well they are doing before realising they were expelled last month.
5 comments:
Thing is, if Parent-Teacher (I use the word "teacher" without expectation of qualification) Consultations, as we grandly called ours, were in the middle of the day, I'd take unpaid leave to attend.
Most of our parents have f*ck all else to do, live half a mile away and still can't be arsed.
I remember being alarmed that Son1 seemed to be doing so poorly at Science in Y7 when he did the extension paper SATs in Y6 and was hoping to (indeed did) make a career out of it. Turned out that his first name was the same a s the class asshole and his second name differed only slightly. Good job I can read quickly-concealed markbooks upside-down, innit.
Absolutely spot-on. The parents who the teachers want and need to see almost never turn up. This lack of effort and interest is, of course, why the other problems exist.
The other problem is that most parents (especially Dwayne's and Chantelle's) don't understand educational lingo. If they hear "....is trying hard to follow instructions" they think their little bruiser really IS trying hard at soemthing, when it means that they're an absolute menace who can't and won't do as they're told. If they hear "XYZ are making an efford to apply themselves more actively" they think their darlings are making an effort to work when they're clearly just mking an effort to send of SMS during lessons....
Teachss should be allowed to talk truthfully and call a spade a spade, and bad behaviour shouldn't be labelled "challenging" because most parents simply don't get the message tht way.
I can do without little Tyson sitting with his oarents at parents' evening too. I am turning my head from side to side, switching from "he" to "you" and desperately trying to gauge whether Mum and possibly-Dad are going to thump me or Tyson for what i am trying to tell them between interruptions of "WotEVVa", "butbutbutbut", tossed heads and rolled eyeballs.
As a French teacher in France, I am pretty sure that if you didn't have freedom to choose schools, teachers would more easily tell parents that they have a serious problem with their child. Mobile phones should be banned from primary and secondary schools, anyway. If families are just like customers shopping, then you have a serious issue in your system ! It should be very clear that school is not to be run like a business... and our bloody president (I'd rather have your queen, tells a lot) wants to go your way !
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