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I know what you’re thinking. But Monica, no one messes with my babies. Believe me I feel you, but you still have to be careful how you handle situations that arise. There might come a time when you need to stand your ground and say, “No one sticks Baby in a corner.” But most instances can be resolved relatively easily if we remain calm and reasonable and maybe even flexible.
I know emotions can run very high in instances. Especially when there’s a disability involved. I have a long sorted history of how I fought for 2 years to get my middle daughter the IEP I knew she deserved and required. I got to my breaking point actually and it didn’t go well at all. In the long run I don’t know that my public outburst (and by public I mean on a public blog which I didn’t think people were actually reading) really helped my daughter. It put everyone on the defensive and I want to help others avoid things like that.
I’m not really going to get into all the ins and outs of PPT (Planning Placement Team) meetings or even IEPs (Individual Education Plans). If it comes down to that I want you to know by law you have the right to have anyone there that you want and that includes an advocate. Someone who speaks on behalf of the child and who isn’t at emotionally invested is a good thing in many cases. I personally have not needed one yet, but I’m not dealing with a child who has autism or Down Syndrome or some other physical or mental ailment which can make learning more of a challenge. My friend Renee over at My Special K’s has done many great posts about the dreaded PPT meetings and how to prepare for those so if you’re looking for great information on that and the laws, which you should know when going through that, then I highly recommend checking her out.
Right here, right now I mostly want to talk about how to discuss daily classroom issues with your child’s classroom teacher and possibly even the administration. Because these can be just as important meetings in your child’s education.
What You Need To Understand
While we all might look at schools and teachers as people who work for us, they have other people above them who they have to answer to. I am not knocking the profession of teaching. I think teachers are great. I think in most cases the administration is great, but it’s a job, and just like with every job, has office politics. Only the public school politics are governed generally by people who don’t know the first thing about education let alone our individual child. So they have to work within a certain scope of rules and regulations. Of course there are laws too which to save a buck schools and their administration are asked to look for ways to get around over spending.
When I had my 5 year old’s physical this year as usual his doctor asked about all aspects of his life which included school. I told her that we had some concerns, but we were working with his teacher and we have put the idea of retention on the table. She said something to me that I hadn’t really considered. They might not allow that because the cost of paying for his education for that extra year would be too high. So now I’m worried of course. And I worried for nothing, but I’m not entirely clear on the whole financial aspect of retention. Do they have a cut off of how many students they are allowed to retain? This could be a serious issue in the larger cities. If we were located somewhere else my son’s needs might have been pushed aside to meet the greater needs of another child.
Teachers and administrators have lots of other people to answer to. So what I have observed ends up happening is what looks to me like lots of schmoozing. Teachers carefully choose their words when describing situations with your child. Administrators hold back a lot of what has their hands tied in certain situations because the people who are in charge of creating the rules generally don’t like to get their hands dirty. They don’t want to hear how dissatisfied mommy is about little Suzy’s math progress. So despite the fact that they made decisions on a curriculum from a place of not being in the classroom they’d rather not deal with the outcry. So instead everyone’s just trying to keep everyone happy and tell the other party what they want to hear. It’s psychological warfare and we have to play the game right along with them.
Playing The Game
So we as parents, we have to schmooze them all right back. Not to the detriment of our child mind you. This is advocacy not cave-acy after all. But it’s like when you go into the car dealership to buy a car. You need to work the deal to get the most out of what you want and this means you need to gather recon. You need all of the information on the situation you can possibly get. Talk to other parents in your child’s class to see what their children are saying about what’s happening. Talk to your child, but do remember no matter how honest your child is and how much you want to believe every single word he utters kids do leave important details out. Things they might be afraid to get in trouble for. Stress the importance of telling the truth no matter what and be sure to ask plenty of follow up questions, but do understand that there are 2 sides to every story and somewhere in the middle is the truth. So you have to be prepared to hear what the teacher has to say about a particular situation and then put the pieces together.
This leads me to my most important advice. Do not go into a meeting with a teacher ready to point fingers. If you go in there making accusations, this will put the teacher on the defensive. And this is when things can get ugly. Suddenly she is pointing out every slightly wrong thing your child has ever done in the classroom no matter how minor and insignificant it was.
So if instead you go in there and say I’m concerned because this is what little Johnny said happened and it really concerned me so I wanted to hear what you say happened. And then you want to make sure to always use passive statements. Things like, “When you say this, this is how it makes me feel…” Turn it around onto you so they can really understand that you are just concerned and not that you are blaming. Make it very clear though that you are not fully and blindly trusting everything your child says (even if you do believe every word) because all you want at this point is to hear what the teacher has to say, but the calm not on the defensive teacher. Once she has said her piece you can decide what the truth is and ask further probing questions if you need to.
Do not make public statements that can get back to a teacher or administrator. This means don’t call your child’s teacher a bully on Facebook. Even if your child’s teacher isn’t following you, you never know who might see it and say something to the teacher. This is also why I’m careful about what I say and how much when I blog. Been there done that one before. I blogged thinking no one really reads my blog and come to find out my blog became the talk of the school. It made for an extremely uncomfortable meeting. Despite my public apology before we even met, none of that mattered when we sat down to meet and my daughter’s teacher had points from my blog post in front of her. I sure wish I had known she was going to do that so I could have the blog post with me and recall the context with which I was saying what I said.
While I always know the gist behind what I write having something picked apart piece by piece when you don’t have it in front of you can be hard to counter. And that was exactly what it turned into. It was a shame that it had to be that way and ultimately it ended up making me dislike that particular teacher even more (I can say this now because she is not now, nor will she ever be my child’s teacher). But I learned in this no matter how involved of a parent you are (and I was the PTA president at the school at the time) the principal will stick up for the teacher in these situations. No matter how well you might know the principal he knows the teacher better and works long hours with her and in that situation his priority becomes the teacher and not the child.
It’s frustrating but true. I have even had meetings almost all the way to the top of the department of education and they tend to side on the side of the employee in these matters. They rely on these people to do so much for them and they don’t want to burn those bridges. While they also want to smooth over whatever concerns you have they have to keep their employees happy too and sometimes have union regulations to follow.
It shouldn’t be a them versus us sort of thing, but it sure does feel that way when we’re going through it. However, if you work the system, then you should be able to get most of what you want. Just remember, your child has to stay with the teacher for the whole year. You want to do whatever you can to make that as easy for her as possible and sometimes that means sucking up your true feelings about a teacher and keeping them to yourself for the sake of your child. Not to your child’s detriment of course. Follow the proper course of action though and give everyone time to improve things. Don’t go over the teacher’s head and go right to the principal for everything. The principal doesn’t like that and the teacher certainly doesn’t either. And don’t take things to the board before talking to the principal. You have to follow the chain of command and follow up before you take it a step further.
If you follow this advice you should be great at advocating for your children.
What tips do you have for educational advocacy?
