By: Tonya Mead, CFE, PI, MBA,MA Educational Psychology
This is a continuation of the 4 steps to ace the parent-teacher conference. Here is Part 1 and Part 2. Now that the parent teacher meeting is coming to a close, we must segue into building and maintaining positive parent-teacher relations.
Parent-Teacher Relations
*Refrain from discussing negative teacher feedback in front of the kids. Anger and frustration may be expressed verbally and non verbally. Kids pick up on cues that may negatively impact their perception of school, place limits to their abilities and de-legitimize the learning process in general.
Other articles you might like
- Post- The Benefits of Home Schooling
- Post- Home school curriculum buying tips
- Post- Create calmness in chaos
- Post- Wanted Nanny for College Kid
- Post- How to grow your child’s brain
- Post- Brain elasticity and children
- Post- Deep Brain Stimulation and children
- Post- Smartphone use, sleep and your child
- Post- Parents its ok to be predictable
*Let your children observe you and the teacher solving problems together. Help your child realize that problems are surmountable it approached one step at a time. Further, instill within your child that the problem currently presented is separate from the person and separate from the setting. Help him to understand that this current situation is not generalizable across settings or particular to a certain environment; rather it is a happening at this moment in time.
*Become part of the solution, not the problem. Bad interchanges at the school can drive parents to ‘turn off’ to school activities. They may choose to lead a parent rebellion and complain incessantly to school administrators and anyone else who will listen (the school board and editorial board of the local newspaper).
Our kids emulate our behavior in the best and worst times. Kids too will internalize negative feedback and ‘turn off’ to school too. They may band with the childhood bullies and seek validation in all the wrong places.
*Stay positively engaged. Our children are under the age of full legal responsibility and we must do our best to safeguard them from teacher conflict, cyber-bullies, educator misconduct, school violence, and the like. We can not do so effectively without being engaged.
Tonya J. Mead, CFE, PI, MBA, MA, Certified K-12 Administrator and School Psychologist is author of Fraud in Education: Beyond the Wrong Answer and president of Shared Knowledge, LLC http://ishareknowledge.com
