Tag: Teaching

The Four Minute Teacher’s Gift

A giant digital clock rules the room. It ticks down the allotted six minutes in seconds, and an unignorable alarm leaves no one in any doubt of when their time is up. The space has a frenetic speed dating vibe.

But this is not speed dating. These are parent teacher interviews. And many of the parents are there to squeeze the most out of the teachers and every second they have with them.

I admire the teachers for being able to give the right information about the right kid to the right parents, respectfully and diplomatically. And I feel compassion for them because they are the shock absorber for a new parent’s emotions every six minutes. I’ve heard (from teacher friends) those emotions can be intense and not always politely expressed.

Teachers are overworked, underpaid, and too often disrespected by parents who should know better than to take out their frustrations on those who dedicate their career to educating our children. Parents should have the insight to recognise that their child’s learning outcomes are the result of many factors. What the teacher is doing is only one variable.

A child’s ability to function happily at school is affected by many things that their teacher has no control over.

Teachers (generally) have no control over whether a child has had a decent breakfast, no breakfast, or a slurpie for breakfast before they arrive at school. They don’t control whether that child is given the space to express their emotions safely at home, and whether they are given unconditional love and support in challenging times. Teachers often have no control over whether they have an adequate number of teacher aides and other support staff for the class they are allocated. Teachers don’t control whether a child has an undiagnosed and/or unmanaged medical condition that affects the child’s behaviour.

I appreciate that for many parents giving their child food, a safe home, and appropriate medical care, is something they are unable to provide. If a child lives with a medical condition or disability that is poorly understood or inadequately supported by the school, or if a parent suspects their child is being abused by a teacher, of course they must advocate for their child. But these instances are not what this post is about.

This post is about the parents who live with none of the above circumstances, stopping to appreciate what a fantastic job most teachers do with our children. This post is about stopping before you abuse or accuse a teacher of being responsible for aspects of your child’s development that they are just not responsible for.

I approach parent teacher interviews with empathy for my children’s teachers, even the teachers who other parents whisper sharply about. Over the ten years that I have had a child or children at school I have learnt that some years my children have brilliant teachers whom they love and work well with.

Some years their teachers do a good, solid job. And some years they have teachers who they don’t click with, who may not handle difficult situations in the classroom as well as one of the brilliant teachers might have. These last teachers may not be my children’s favourites, but they haven’t broken my children either. Because (unless a teacher is abusive) the ‘not breaking the children’ responsibility is largely mine and my husband’s.

I generally keep my parent teacher interviews to four questions:

How is my child’s behaviour?

Are they making an effort?

Are there any areas where they are falling behind enough to warrant additional support?

Does the teacher have any concerns about my child?

The answers tell me more than a six-minute gallop through their work books would.

I’ve found high school involves fewer parent teacher interviews. So, when the notification option to book in for parent teacher interviews was emailed out recently, I asked each child if they wanted me to book any interviews. The year 7 child nominated a teacher he wanted me to catch up with. I asked if there was anything in particular he wanted me to mention, and he said:

‘No. I just really want you to meet my favourite teacher.’

The interview was last night. Just after the screech of the alarm ending the previous parent’s time, I sat down opposite my child’s favourite teacher. We introduced ourselves. She sipped hot tea from a big, green mug. Her voice was a little hoarse. A Covid leftover. She asked me what I’d like to cover. I told her:

‘He just wanted me to meet his favourite teacher.’

The teacher’s whole face smiled: ‘That has made my day.’

We briefly touched on my usual questions and as I stood up, I said: ‘Thank you for everything you do.’

The whole interaction took exactly four minutes.

The teacher stood with me and smiled again: ‘I’ve got two minutes left to get a fresh cup of tea before the next one.’

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Reintegration: Be Careful Out There

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free image from Canva

This past week has not been pretty.

Aside from a call to the poisons information centre, three visits to the dentist, one to a paediatric physiotherapist, one to my psychologist, recalcitrance and poor behaviour from me and my children, it also included a near fatal accident.

I nearly killed a young man at the beginning of this week.

And I did not want to write about it. The shame and incomprehension of this close call burn me in waves. But this incident bore a loud message, which I did want to write about.

On the first day back of school after months of lock down, I hadn’t planned to drive my children to their schools. We are walking distance from both. But time does strange things on school mornings. It slithers away at warped speed and suddenly, the window to comfortably walk to school on time slams shut. So, I drove them, on the proviso that this was going to be an exception.

Driving conditions during isolation have been muted. The amount of traffic diminished to that of a tiny country town in the middle of the night. School traffic ceased. Work commuter numbers slashed.

On that first day back at school, cars converged on the local streets and clustered around the schools like flies on a carcass. Drivers were filled with more emotion than a regular school drop off warrants. Joy. Fear. Dread.

My feelings? Happiness over the end to at home learning mixed with mild irritation at not having managed to get both kids out the door on foot on time. And once I’d dropped them, an urgent need to get back home and away from the chaotic traffic.

Impatience bloomed. I decided to make a right turn from a side street onto the main road across two lanes of traffic, to get me home more quickly than a series of left turns would have. The car in front of me went during a break in traffic in the first lane and was let in by a driver in the second lane.

I could see the same driver in the second lane holding a space for me to cross. So, I went.

I don’t remember if I glanced to my right to check the first lane was still clear. But the moment I slammed on my brakes and a young man on a red motorcycle had to swerve to avoid me, is burnt into the pit of my stomach.

I am a careful driver. In over 25 years on the road I have never had a serious accident. I have never driven drunk or while under the influence of prescription medication or non prescription drugs. I don’t text and drive. I was not sleep deprived or sick that morning.

So why this serious error in judgement?

Distraction, yes.

But there was more to it. While we have been in isolation, our worlds shrunk to our homes and occasional short car trips on empty roads, it has almost been like a lengthy period of hospitalisation.

I know from all the times I have discharged from hospital after weeks inside that just because I am out of hospital, my life doesn’t just snap back into place. I have to put the pieces of it carefully back together.

Re-entry into the world after isolation is the same. Our reflexes are slower. We are more vulnerable to chaos.

I am not nostalgic for isolation time. I don’t want to regress into the woolliness of those early iso days, drifting down deserted streets, staring perplexed at empty toilet paper shelves surrounded by people with harried expressions behaving as though the world was ending.

I will be very happy to never again step into the uncomfortable ill-fitting role of someone attempting to assist with my children’s at home learning.

But the jolt of re-entry has been a wake up call. A wake up call that I need to take the time to consciously reintegrate after this most bizarre episode of ‘home hospitalisation’.  My brain and body need some adjustment time. My children’s brains and bodies need some adjustment time.

Perhaps the most poignant aspect of my near miss accident happened immediately afterwards. The young man on the motorbike pulled over and came up to my car. I wound down the window ready for, and feeling deserving of, his abuse and anger.

He didn’t abuse me or even swear.

He asked: ‘Did you not see me, because that was really close?’

All I could say was: ‘No, and I am so, so sorry. I am so sorry.’

I will never forget the young man’s face, his emotional intelligence and compassion in an adrenalin soaked moment. And I will never forget his parting words:

‘Be careful out there.’

We need to collectively ‘be careful out there’ as we re-integrate after isolation or we will misjudge situations and possibly make fatal errors.

Postscript:

The other lesson learnt the hard way by another member of the family this week (and one I doubt has anything to do with reintegration) was not to open a tube of superglue with your teeth.

 

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Don’t Try This At Home: Schooling

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I am not home schooling my children at the moment.

That implies a level of competence that far exceeds my attempts to provide a bit of supervision while they do what could pass for some form of schoolwork.

In fact, what I am doing could no more be called ‘home schooling’ than calling what my children’s teacher does when they are at school, ‘veterinary surgery’.

The new educational arrangements have made me ask myself this over the last week:

Are there any professions (apart from teachers) who are being asked to convey how to do their whole job to the general public in a very short time, using only online resources? I can’t think of any.

Yet suddenly teachers are expected to translate their university degree and years of practical experience into a format that parents with no training or experience in education can apply to their unwitting children at home.

And there will be some parents who will anticipate the same results as when their kids are being taught at school by the teacher.

I accepted a long time ago that I have no interest in the intricacies of how my children’s education is delivered. And I am not expecting to suddenly become enthusiastic about it, just because external circumstances have changed.

I do care about my children’s education. But my role and the teacher’s role in providing that education are clearly defined and there is little overlap.

I view these as my roles:

To love my children unconditionally and make sure they know it. To set clear boundaries for them. I am privileged to be able to afford to feed them, clothe them, and buy their educational resources. To do my best to allow them a good night’s sleep in a room free of devices, during the school term. To offer them a decent breakfast and a packed lunch, or at least the ingredients to make them. To offer them support in completing homework or schoolwork set by their teacher.

And to make myself available for communication with their teachers at any time.

I regard teachers with awe for the job they do. I know from friends who are teachers the high levels of empathy, patience, resilience, and emotional intelligence, among many other skills, they draw on to do their work well.

I also respect my children’s teachers enough not to encroach on the territory of their expertise.

When I attend parent teacher interviews, I only tend to ask four questions:

‘Does my child seem mostly happy and engaged? Is their behaviour appropriate? Are there any areas they are falling behind in? And, Is there anything else you would like me to know?’

Do you know what I never ask about?

The curriculum. Because I trust the teacher to know it inside out.

I feel for the parents who ask in depth questions related to the curriculum during parent/teacher information sessions, because right now they may struggle with the concept that they can’t single handedly provide their child’s school education at home, no matter how much they research the curriculum.

From an epidemiology point of view, at the time of writing, I believe the best place for my children is at home. But at the same time, my care factor for the quality of my children’s academic education ranks way below how much I care for not only my mental health, but the collective mental health of my family.

I acknowledge that while the two cares might not be mutually exclusive for many households, in mine – they don’t always sit well together. I may be biased by my own life experience, but that experience tells me this:

If my children fall behind in the curriculum, I am confident they will eventually catch back up to where they each normally sit. And they won’t be alone in that experience.

Yet if I tried to deliver the full curriculum to my children at home, I would transfuse the stress of my unsuccessful attempts into them. Over time, their mental health would suffer. Mine might suffer to the point of me having to be hospitalised again.

It would make as much sense as my children’s teachers attempting to perform surgery on their dog with only my online instructions to guide them through.

So, the alternative of my children having to work harder to catch up when this is over feels fairly benign. And this doesn’t mean they are doing nothing now. It just means I don’t hold myself to the unattainable standard of replicating my children’s in school educational experience at home.

And I could be way off here, but I imagine whenever I eventually return my children to their formal school based education – their teachers may prefer those children with their mental health relatively intact and their academic knowledge lagging, rather than the other way around.

(Additional note: The veterinary surgery analogies were drawn from my experience of working as a small animal vet.)

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