Does Your Child Have a Bad Teacher?
If you find yourself repeatedly frustrated by the practices and attitude of your child's teacher, you may want to thoroughly think through the issues to decide whether or not this teacher is simply mediocre, or is in fact, a bad teacher. To help discern, first begin with evaluating the teacher's ability to teach well. This is no small task, and will require quite a lot of footwork for the parent. However, when trying to determine whether or not your child may be wasting a full school year locked in a classroom where the teacher is not teaching well enough, you will likely agree that the effort involved in making the determination is worth it, but necessary.
You may want to request to be permitted to observe your child's class for all or part of a day, to get a feel for whether or not the children are being taught adequately. You can also ask around among the parents of other students in the class, to get a feel for whether or not any of them feel as though the education in your child's class is less than adequate. Another way to make this determination, is to go online and find out what the curriculum standards are for your state, for your child's grade, and measure that up to concepts being taught in your child's class. Check your child's schoolwork when it comes home to see what they are working on in class. You can also use the concepts you found online as a guide to spend a day or two assessing at home whether or not your child seems to be familiar with, or to have mastered, the material that should have been taught according to state guidelines.
In order to determine whether or not your child's teacher is having a negative effect on their self esteem and/or emotional well being, it will be necessary to ask your child some very specific questions about how they feel while in class. You might ask if they ever feel badly when their teacher is speaking to them, or if their teacher has ever said anything to them that made them feel sad or upset. Another very important step would be to pay close attention to your child's moods and behaviors as they pertain to school. Does your child act as though they don't want to go into school in the morning? Do they seem sad or angry when you pick them up after school? Although you likely will not witness your child's teacher treating your child poorly in your presence, asking for permission to observe in your child's class may give you insight as to how the teacher is treating other students. If she's treating them in a questionable manner, then she is likely treating your child similarly when you are not around.
Identifying whether or not your child has a bad teacher can be tricky. If you feel strongly that your child is in a class with a bad teacher, convincing school administration to do anything about it will be even trickier. In a worst case scenario, you may need to consider having your child moved to another class, and if the school principal seems dead set against allowing you to do that, you may even need to consider switching schools.
Published by Maggie Blake
I m a homeschooling Mom of four. As a result, most of my articles focus on parenting, homeschooling issues, and educational travel with children. View profile
- Tips on Getting the Most out of a Parent-Teacher ConferenceThe parent-teacher conference is essential to your child's success. This article list ten things teachers wish parents knew about conferences.
Preparing for the Parent-Teacher ConferenceMany parents feel intimidated by the thought of the parent-teacher conference. Being prepared will help ease the tension.
The Substitute Teacher Dress CodeYour first few times as a substitute teacher can be nerve racking and scary. One of the many worries that may be on your mind is how you should dress for the job. 
How to Talk to Your Child's TeacherFor parents, communicating effectively with your child's teacher can be frustrating. Between letters back and forth and what your child tells you, many things can be lost in tra...- Math Teacher Stephanie Ragusa Arrested for Having Sex with Student Stephanie Ragusa, a 7th grade math teacher at Martinez Middle School in Tampa, Florida, was arrested Thursday, March 13, but only after authorities felt they had enough information to charge the 28-year-old with five...
- What to Do If Your Child Has a Bad Teacher
- What to Do When Your Child Complains About Their Teacher
- Parental Response to Bad Grades
- Back to School '06 -'07: Surviving "That Teacher"
- Merits of a Good Teacher
- The Substitute Teacher
- New Teacher Mentoring
5 Comments
Post a CommentAnonymous - I hope your situation is better now, although I can't understand WHY anyone would feel strongly about keeping their child in an atmosphere where they were being treated abusively. I teach my children to respect elders, also....but to a point. If an adult doesn't DESERVE respect, than I wouldn't want my children to feel they needed to blindly just do whatever that adult said, or to suffer the abuses of that adult, all for the sake of "respecting" their elders. That isn't respect....that's allowing abusive adults to victimize children.
Our sons have a head teacher who victimises them as they know when i was little and attended that primary that i was trouble.
I did have a bad background and was poor but i was no bully and only retaliated when being mocked by the wealth kids.
However i did spend a lot of playtime in the Heads office.
My Kids are nothing like me and we have a lot of money now.
I teach my kids to respect their elders and not to retaliate with any violence towards other kids.
Just tell the teacher.
The Head used to make my kids miss their bus home causing us distress and worry and when we phoned to view our concerns she would say we know what to do if we are not happy with the school ie. go to another.
Kids hit my kids and call them names as they know my kids wont retaliate.
When my kids did call them the names back we got called saying that our kids are out of control but the kids that called the names first and hit first for no reason got let off and no phone call home.
We tried all the right
I agree Brandy. Most teachers are great, but every once in a while, you just come across one that you know should not be working with children. It's not always the parent's fault. Like there are good and bad people, there are good and bad teachers. Thankfully we've only ever dealt with one and we're likely homeschooling for a while to come, so maybe won't have anymore to deal with. Don't worry. We're not homeschooling because of a bad teacher. LOL:-)
Not by me, Mister Writer. I always look to the parents first. However, we personally have had the misfortune of being assigned to a couple of different really bad teachers throughout the years. No matter what they're parents are like, or whether they were decent kids, there is no excuse for things like helping third grade students cheat on standardized testing, or not teaching at all effectively. Don't get me wrong, we've had some wonderful teachers too, but there have definitely been a couple who had no place in the classroom.
One important element that has not been covered by this article is the sad fact that in today's society, the blame is almost always put upon the teacher rather than the parent or the child. The reality of a "bad" teacher is qualified by the entire classroom, not just one student. While a learning style may be different, children should be taught to become adaptive to all kinds of teachers. In the end, it is the student who must learn to adapt in the real world of "mean" bosses and the parent who should encourage solutions rather than blame. Teachers who are worth anything have an open door policy to parents to spend time inside classrooms. Parents need to be objective in their expectations.