One of the things I love about my job can also be the thing I hate most about my job....working with parents. I have had a week full of conferences, phone calls, and meetings with parents. I have been lucky this year and for the most part I have a pretty awesome group of parents. I was very sad this week to lose my AM class and that was mostly because their parents rocked! They were involved, kept me in the loop about important things that I should know about their child, kept them home when they were sick, and most of all they appreciated and took the time to learn more about their child and their "life at school".
As a teacher of 3-5 year olds with special needs, I need to rely on the parents quite often. None of my students can come in and tell me if there is a note in their backpack...so I check it daily (I would hope you do the same). They can't tell me if they're sick, have a new baby brother/sister, moved houses, that they love Dora or their favorite food is animal crackers, they can't tell me they are afraid of bubbles...so I need to rely on the parents. When I know these things I can better support their child, and when I discover these things at school I relay that information to the parents. There is nothing more frustrating than sending home paperwork that I need back and it still being in the child's backpack two weeks later. Or making a phone call and never getting a return one. I don't have children of my own and I do understand that life is busy, but is it too busy to take 5 minutes a day to look inside a backpack or respond to a phone call or note to help your child's education? Like I said, I get it, life is busy and sometimes things fall through the cracks and it happens on my end too, but when it is repeated over and over it is frustrating. I think of the parents, students, the other professionals that work with your child, and myself as a team. We all work together to support your children in their learning and it's hard to help your child make progress as a one man team when I only see each student 2 1/2 hours a day.
On the other hand, when I get parents that are involved and join "the team" it is amazing what we can do to help your child thrive at school and home. This doesn't only apply to the students that I work with, but with all young students. Little kids are smart (sometimes smarter than us), they're funny, have great imaginations, but let's face it...they're not always the most reliable source of information. So after this long week of amazing parents, I want to say thank you!! Not just thank you to the parents that I work with but to all the parents out there that are awesome. Thank you for being on your child's team! Their teacher appreciates it! :)
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