If a teacher at a PTA conference actually said to you about your child?

Question

"She'll probably never learn to spell correctly anyway" with a wave of her hand in the air,

would you have a right to be upset?
or feel offended for your child?

are slips like this commonplace?
i'm feeling very alienated from the school now.

when i leaned forward and said "Excuse me, did you just say that my child........" I couldn't even finish talking, everyone jumped in for damage control, trying to explain to me what 'she meant'.

this actually happened to me 2 weeks ago at my daughter's Title I meeting; so i wrote a letter telling the teacher how negative and unprofessional i thought she was, and that i believed she said what she was thinking, and i'm not sure she will give my daughter the effort that is warranted to help her reach the required level........so now we're having another meeting, at my request, to map out a plan that keeps me more involved about what she is learning each week -

i thought there were things teachers never said.

what do you think?

thanks, i did cc the assistant principal, he was at the meeting and one of the people who jumped in.

she is in elementary school, 3rd grade, but i rarely go over peoples heads, i do try to follow the chain of command as i think it is helpful, and it makes you look cooperative (which i try to be anyway)....this was a stunner.

actormyk - thanks for trying, but my daughter is 8, and i don't spoil her with modern electronics yet.......we usually just bake together when she's not playing with her twin brother, or dig into the craft cupboard,.... you offered so much more assistance than i asked for in my question that i thought i would give you more info. the TV has never been a babysitter in my house.
also - this teacher takes her out of the classroom every day for a year and a 1/2 now, into a smaller group of 6 for more personalized attention. why can't she read? she can. she is having trouble writing certain sounds, like the 'ou' in house. she wants to spell it like 'howse'.......maybe that would help you to understand where her mind is at. thanks.

Answer 1

My son's 3rd grade teacher told me that some children can't learn, and he was one of them. On the street in front of the school, with him standing there. I went back in to get his class changed. I sat in each of the 5 (count 'em -- 5) 3rd grades and left him where he was -- the others were even worse. My son is Learning Disabled, but has an IQ of over 145. He's an audio learner, and anything he hears he absorbs like a sponge. He still can't spell, but he taught himself how to read because he wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.

I wish these were uncommon occurrences, but they're not. Teachers are human beings, and as such can behave as stupidly as the rest of us.

The meeting you're talking about is an IEP, independent educational plan, conference. I've been to these in several school districts and several grade levels. They all tended to use jargon and lots of initial. Stop them every time they say something you don't understand. If you don't know what some initials stand for, it doesn't mean your dumb...it means they're ignorant for using them. Poor customer service, they call that in the real world. Don't let them intimidate you. THIS IN NOT YOUR FAULT.

The problem with the IEP is that the resource people design a plan for an individual person, but the teacher has to implement it. She probably has 10 or so in each class that have this, and cannot possibly give each child the attention he needs. You have to be the obnoxious squeaky wheel. That way, your kid gets his share because the teacher doesn't want to see you come through his door. Not fair to the others, but it's up to their parents to do this for them. It got to the point at my son's primary grade school that the principal would hide if he saw me coming.

We also had tutoring throughout grade school from a local agency, the YMCA and Silvan.

My son would go to resource for two periods a day. There he was reading age appropriate material on his reading level. But back in the classroom, the material was presented at grade level. If something was written on the blackboard for him to copy, it might have been in Klingon for all he knew. They put the spelling words on the board in grade school, but he couldn't copy them. The teacher would do it for him, or let me come in the class to get them. I had to call another mother every Monday to get that week's spelling words. Is that ridiculous? You bet. The IEP said he should have 3 spelling words, but the teacher insisted on giving him the same 10 the rest of the class had. We spent hours on spelling every single day, using every learning techinique I could find (no internet in the 1980s), but the next day the words were gone from his memory.

My advice is for you to be your child's advocate. No matter what they say at school, you are the only one who really cares what happens to your kid. You have to stay on the kid and the classes and the teachers every minute. It's very wearing, but it's the only way your kid gets what she needs.

Good luck, honey. You have got a long road ahead of you. My son is a chef, doing very well now, but doesn't have to write things down.

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In response to Actrmyk's comments...in our house the tv was off, there were no cell phones, etc, and we pounded on spelling every single evening. It got to a point that the 4 year old (also not getting to watch tv) would be spelling from the other room. There are many reasons for learning problems, including the fluid that builds up in their ears during the time they learn encoding and decoding skills. My son was functionally deaf at that time, but the doctors in NYC told me I should accept he wasn't very bright and that older parents (I was 29 when he was born) look for problems where there aren't any. He walked at 7 months and at 9 months had a vocabulary of over 20 words. When he stopped talking at 11 months, they told me he was upset because I was pregnant. At every turn, someone was telling me it was all in my head, and then later that it was all my fault. Sorry to be so strident, but this situation really strikes a chord with me.

Answer 2

I would be rightly upset and I would question the wisdom of a teacher making that kind of comment. I think you are right to address this and make sure that the teacher is not automatically relegating your child to "second-class citizen" status just because she can't spell.

On the other hand, I would ask myself "why can't my daughter spell?" There is absolutely NO proof that there is some sort of genetic inclination toward being a poor speller, and it is definitely a skill that can be learned. I mean, children don't come out of the womb knowing how to spell. Since we now have SpellCheck on computers and any number of safeguards against poor spelling, why is your daughter still misspelling things? My first inclination is to think that, like most of my students, she is not taking the time to learn or do the assignment.

Children need to be made to learn that while they are at school, it is their full-time job to LEARN. There should be no distractions from this -- no cell phones, no iPods, no gameboys. There are already enough distractions that the school allows, like French Club, cheerleading, sports, etc. And when your child does her homework, she cannot expect to do it during the commercial breaks of her favorite show. She needs to turn off the TV, get off-line, and YOU should allow no incoming calls until she is done. She should also not rush through the assignment with the expectation of being allowed these things once she is through.

Also texting is a very bad influence on spelling. Is she writing "ne1" instead of "anyone"?

A successful student is the result of a partnership between school, teacher, and YOU. The school should not allow the teacher to make such remarks, you should not allow your child to get away with all the distractions that plague our school-kids today, and you should also hold your kid's teacher responsible, saying "If you are going to hold her responsible for spelling, I better never see a paper of hers come back with a misspelled word NOT marked! You do your job, I'll do mine, and by God this girl will learn how to spell!"

Answer 3

I have had experience with closed minded teachers before. Some teachers will decide that a child is unteachable and just not try to teach the child. When the kid gets bad grades the teacher will use this as proof that the kid is unteachable. A rotten system, isn't it.

It seems that this teacher may do this kind of thing often or else all of the other people would not have been so quick to jump in and do spin control. If it was a one time slip, most people would have been stunned by it and not been able to try to explain what happened. However, in this case it seems that within seconds there were people trying to undo what the teacher had said. That seems like the people were almost expecting this teacher to say something stupid.

Answer 4

Teachers are humans after all. Some of the teachers I've learned from were stellar. Some were unmotivated, unprofessional, or just plain mean.

You were right to feel upset. Absolute words like "never" and "always" are usually grossly inaccurate stereotypes and shouldn't be used to describe a person's performance. It was a stupid thing for the teacher to say.

It sounds like the teacher might dislike you or your child for some reason. It's a great idea for you get more involved with the teacher--she needs some guidance and motivation to try harder instead of writing off her students as unteachable. Is the teacher so cowardly or insecure about her own teaching abilities?

Answer 5

A teacher is there to teach and not to form an opinion... So you have the right to be offended, you have the right to take this to the LEA and complain to Ofsted as well as kick up a stink in the local papers about that teacher, the comment made and you have the right to have your child taught by a different teacher if you wish.

It is fairly easy for a school to swap things around for its own ends but a complete brick wall when it comes to the parent demanding something for their child, so don't move on your position or that could be seen as giving in.

If that was me I would be demanding a written apology on top of it all and I would be telling the school headmaster that its lucky that I don't have my solicitor dragged in to the mix.

Answer 6

What grade is she in? Is she in elementary school? If so, then this was very very unprofessional. Go over that teacher's head. Talk to the principal. Now if she is in high school, you cannot get mad at the teacher. Get mad at your daughter's elementary school teachers for not teaching your daughter how to spell. It is difficult for a high school teacher to teach a high school student with horrible spelling skills. I understand the teacher's frustration.

Answer 7

When you write a letter like that, be sure to CC the boss of the teacher (Principal).

Answer 8

You should have gone to the school administration about that comment. She's there to teach! I would arrange a meeting with her and the school administrator. Let them know how you feel about this.

Answer 9

I completely agree with you! Yes ~ Of course you should attend each and every conference, every open house, back to school night and all other events in which you/your child are expected or welcomed to participate/or attend. Good parenting is hard work for most of us. Meeting with the teachers that continue on a daily basis to influence and educate our children is one of the easier tasks in parenting. Regardless, if our children are carrying a 4.0 GPA or a 2.0 GPA it is important for the children to know that you care enough to meet with their teachers, school staff, etc., I have 2 daughters ages 13 & 14 years old and both my husband & I have always made it a point to be at all school meetings, open houses and conferences. I have made it a point to meet with both daughters teachers, exchange email addresses and on an average discuss one thing or another with them either about the grades and attitude(s) or maybe the handling of a fund raiser for that week. My daughters will sometimes get fussy about the correspondences between myself and their teachers, but I tell my girls that it is my job to make sure that not only are they doing well but to also make sure that their teachers are doing a good job also. Your son is doing well in school because of the parenting choices you have made so far in both of your lives, go with your gut instincts and remember when the teachers schedule conferences they know going into it how much time and to whom they will be seeing. I believe the teachers are happy/expecting to meet with parents. Keep up the great parenting skills!!