Posts filed under 'advocacy'
As I was driving past the middle and the high schools yesterday, something occurred to me; the communication between teachers and parents has a tendency to fall apart or become nonexistent by the time children reach the middle school level. Once high school rolls around, many parents don’t even hear from the school or have contact with the administrators or the teachers unless their teen gets in to some sort of trouble.
Why is that? Why do we allow the schools to dictate when they want to hear from us? Last year was my son’s first year of middle school. On every occasion in which something was going on with him, I had to initiate the conversation. In a couple of instances it was only after multiple emails were sent where I said, “Hey I called and left a message for you, I haven’t heard back…” did I get a reply. We as parents tend to think that communication at the elementary school level is important – and so do the teachers: School wide newsletters as well as classroom newsletters get sent home, we have parent teacher conferences at every grading period, and if you’re lucky enough, you get a teacher who will call you just to see if everything is OK because little Suzy or Billy isn’t quite themselves this week.
However, when we get to middle school and high school, those letters, the phone calls and the conferences come to a screeching halt. It’s now up the parents to make the first move if we want to hear about how our kids are doing. Between middle and high school more kids fall victim to drugs, alcohol and suicide than any other time. It’s when the pressure to perform, to fit in and find their own sense of self takes control.
Once the schools reopen their offices and the teachers start reporting to school to set up their classrooms, make an appointment to at least meat the teachers face to face. You want to know who they are, and you need to make your presence as your son or daughter’s advocate known. Introduce yourself and let them know that just as you expect them to have an open door policy for your child to come to them with problems, be it social or academic, you also have an open door policy for them to approach you as well. Let them know that as a parent, you have a duty to your teen to help them do their best so you may request a sit down with them if you see your teen suddenly starts having problems.
It’s their job to teach your child what they need to succeed in this world and unfortunately, it’s become our job as parents to keep those lines of communication between home and school going.
June 25th, 2008
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You’ve made it this far.
You’re upset with the way certain policies are handed down in your child’s school and you are frustrated but beyond that you don’t know where to begin. I’m about to share the biggest and easiest way to become an activist for parents your child’s school. What can you do to make next year different? Better?
At the beginning of every school year, your son or daughter brings home a stack of paperwork 6 inches thick. You read through and sign what you must and toss the rest right?
Don’t. Look through the paperwork to see if there are newsletters from the principal, district or even your child’s teacher. They will be looking for help. Volunteers to come into the classrooms, into the school and do anything from working with a reading group or in the library to making copies and sorting and stapling.
I know it sounds like boring, mundane tasks but getting your foot inside the school door is exactly what you need to do.
If you don’t see papers like this or you get the chance to meet with your son or daughter’s teacher for the next year, introduce yourself, offer your cell phone or home phone number now and ask what help they typically need most. Teachers know what they will need and they are more than willing to get the parents into the classroom to help - even if it’s just to help staple and sort.
It’s a start.
June 10th, 2008
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Something I realized today as I went through my feeds and message boards.
I see a lot of parents taking issue with the way their school is run; they don’t like the teachers, the kids, the administration, and the rules. The number of things we have problems with seems to grow and grow but in many of the threads I read, there is little to offer in the line of help or solutions.
I’m always pleased when someone offers some great ideas on how to help a parent. My feelings of elation soon dissipate when the parent says they can’t do it because of work.
Here are my thoughts on this and someone tell me if I am wrong but… if you want change, you are going to have to go out and get it. The school is not going to change for you based on your blogging, messages or complaining to your friends.
It’s the same message we try to send our kids, if you don’t like something, you have to do something about it in order for things to get better.
But how? I can hear you asking me already –
That’s what we will work on this week. How we make the changes. How we become the activists in our schools. We must become a presence inside the halls of our children’s schools in order for administrators and teachers to take us seriously.
We have all summer and we can create a better school year for our children.
June 9th, 2008
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I’m not sure if I should be appalled, sick, disgusted or down right lit up like a raging fire… either way when I read this story out of CBS about the little boy who was voted out of Kindergarten because he was “different”, well it didn’t take long for my mommy radar to go off the charts!
I’m torn, one side of me wants to be diplomatic and say, “Well the teacher obviously didn’t have the resources to handle a child with special needs.” You’ve heard me go on and on about budget cuts and the lack of funding for schools and teachers. If a teacher wants to learn more about how to properly educate and work with special needs children, they often have to pay for it themselves because the money from the schools to fund it simply isn’t there and That. IS. SAD.
Another rational side wants to say, ” The school should have worked with the family, teacher and the child to come to an agreement or alternative learning environment for this child.” There are certain avenues that have to be taken in order to have a child removed from a classroom. Plus, I can certainly understand the need to be able to properly teach the other students BUT… Unfortunately for the teacher… the MOM and ACTIVIST in me says…
This teacher used the poorest judgment imaginable. She behaved no better than the five and six year old students she was teaching. Not only did Wendy Portillo (the teacher in question), humiliate, bully, and send the message that if you’re different from everyone else, then we can get rid of you… But what’s worse is that she just taught a room full of young impressionable children that it’s certainly OK to discriminate. Ms. Portillo knew the boy was being evaluated, was even working with the school and the parent to get him properly diagnosed, but clearly that wasn’t enough for her.
Want to hear the really fun part? The state attorney’s office says this isn’t emotional abuse.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
The whole situation is unprofessional on so many levels. Ms. Portillo is the adult in this situation and conducting a poll of children in which it’s not only OK for you to say you don’t want a kid in your class but it’s also OK to tell why you don’t like the kid in the first place.
The little boy is being evaluated for Asperger’s which is a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now for those of you not familiar with Autism you can learn more about it here and here . I, myself will admit to not knowing much about the illness but I can tell you that it has varrying degrees of severity and also manifests itself in different ways. Some children are fully functional in a classroom, some are partially, with the help of an aide and others cannot function at all. Either way, the teacher involved does not get to be judge and jury alone about whether or not a child being evaluated for Asperger’s or Autism should or should not be in her classroom. There are rules, protocols and other people in the decision making process, not her and 16 or so five and six year olds.
I also have to question what else Wendy Portillo has taught these youngsters with her crash course in democracy. In an age where we are trying desperately to get rid of discrimination in all forms, she just opened the door for any child to “poll” out every kid they have a problem with, doesn’t like or even smells funny… and because she did it, they will expect to do it and have it be OK too.
Ms. Portillo is the adult in this situation and her behavior was anything BUT adult-like and that is what saddens me.
She is an educator. She is expected to educate the children and teach them right from wrong, to be tolerant of those different from us and have acceptance for people. Unfortunately, for the children in her classroom at Morningside Elementary in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Wendy Portillo was absent the day they went over that in College.
I don’t want anyone to misunderstand; I firmly believe that the other children have a right to a positive learning environment but how positive is your environment when the teacher allows you talk down and negatively to another student? What do you think the children learned that day? It sure wasn’t shapes, colors, sentence structure, or the life cycle of a butterfly, that’s for sure.
Luckily, she’s been moved out of the classroom while this is being investigated (here’s hoping she’s moved out of a teaching license as well). But if you would like to read more about Portillo’s rendition of Survivor - Kindergarten style and also her allegations of what finally led her to create the worst moment in teaching history (among other things), then check out Thinking in Metaphors , the author has some excellent information and advocacy for Autism as well as comments from the boy’s mom and updates.
It’s a shame Ms. Portillo didn’t remember that SHE is the adult, not one of the children and is expected to behave as such.
How would she feel if the tables were turned? Feel free to cast a “vote”!
June 2nd, 2008
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When it comes to schools that is.
It seems that some schools are already doing what I’ve been thinking for years.
They are taking the initiative and creating smaller high schools so that the kids don’t actually get left behind. While it doesn’t necessarily improve the grades as much as they would have hoped, it does get the kids in the classroom. You can read the full story here .
I like this. I think this should have been going on for years and not in just inner cities where it’s easy for a kid to slip through and get lost unnoticed. No this is something that speaks to a school’s overall success. Not just the success of academics. There is much more to school than academics. Kids need to know that if they have problems, people will be there and be able to help them. In a graduating class of over 400 students like mine was, how many do you think got lost along the way?
Time and time again studies have shown that smaller schools, smaller classes directly contribute to the success of a student. Teachers are able to devote more one on one time to students who need it, problems and issues can be identified faster and acted on as well too.
What’s more is that the schools that are doing this, aren’t waiting for Uncle Sam to get involved and lend a hand with the the pocketbook. They apparently know exactly how much Big Brother is really concerned about a few inner city kids not getting the education they deserve.
May 30th, 2008
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