A recent Gallup survey found that 71 percent of the American public trusts teachers. These teachers are the primary source of information for parents. However, many times misunderstandings impede effective communication and can erode that vital trust. I can't speak for teachers everywhere, but there are a number of things that teachers wish parents knew about school.
1. School Our Work Is Complex
Because you've been a student doesn't mean that you know how to teach. People don't assume they're doctors because they've been patients or architects because they've been in buildings or accountants because they can balance a checkbook. However, they do think they know how to teach. This is one of the most challenging realities of education as a profession. Teaching is remarkably complex. To teach the students in our classrooms, we must be experts in content, pedagogy, and each person. Great teachers pour their lives into their work.
2. School Is About Learning, Not Grades or Sports
Focus on what your children are learning, and grades and assessments will be checkpoints and tools to better understand this amazing process. When parents fixate on grades and sports, they send the wrong message to their children. Additionally, varsity high school athletics aren't the pinnacle of achievement for your children. They don't have to be on the 4-year-old travel soccer team to be successful middle and high school students. When parents attend to what their children are learning, we have healthier, better students. Incidentally, better grades usually follow.
3. Our Work Can't be Encapsulated in a Test Score
Just as grades can't fully capture what students know and can do, much less who they are, test scores can't fully capture the work we do. We want students to be better human beings because they've been in our classrooms, played on our teams, participated in our clubs, and served in our communities. If students feel safe, challenged, and supported, test scores usually demonstrate growth, but please don't reduce our work or your child to a single number.
4. We Don't Want to Make You or Your Kids Miserable
We didn't go into teaching to develop devious ways to make students suffer. Moreover, we weren't trained to think up projects that require parents to go back to school. We aren't sitting in a teacher's lounge thinking of ways to suck life out of school. If you or your children are struggling with something, and we seem to be unaware, encourage your children to let us know. Teach them to advocate for themselves in a respectful, solution-oriented way.
5. We Will Make Mistakes
In a profession where we're responsible for facilitating the learning of anywhere from 20-200 students a day, we're certainly going to make mistakes. We won't be amazing teachers for each student every day. We will miscommunicate. We will make grading errors. We will fail. However, we want to teach your children to take risks, fail, succeed, reflect, and grow. Mistakes are a necessary part of that growth, and we have to be transparent models of perseverance.
6. We Love What We Do
Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, says, "When you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art." We feel the same way about your children. We love what we do. If my pre-service teachers at Wheaton College don't love working with students all four years they're with us, we counsel them out of the education major. We can't always express to you the joy we derive from teaching. When I taught middle school students and non-teaching friends would ask me, "What do you do for work?" almost always the follow-up response to my answer was some form of disbelief, "You teach middle school and you like it? I hated middle school." Yes, we do love what we do.
7. We're on Your Team
We know parenting is hard but also the most rewarding thing you do. Many of us are parents as well. We want to work with you, and we value the insights you have about your children. Your attitudes toward school, work, and teachers matter. Just remember that teachers also have insights that might be valuable. I will never forget our son's extremely intuitive teacher who would send us an email to let us know that something was bothering our first grader. On multiple occasions, she had a better read of him than we did. You are your children's first and most impactful teachers — don't forget that all teachers are broken vessels of God's grace. Be gracious this year.
The article courtesy of HomeLife magazine.