Help - I have already managed to alienate my sons new teacher!

[PeacefulPoster]

Having just been told by my DS's new teacher, when I had told her that he is thoroughly bored and disengaged and that maybe giving him the same task with larger numbers would keep him focussed and that all I want to do is work with the school to achieve the best outcomes for him, that 'we only teach up to two figure sums in year two'! So struggling to keep my peaceful demeanour I think I managed to alienate her completely by telling her that no where in the National Curriculum does it say you are only allowed to teach two digit sums in year two then leave them sat on their backside for the rest of the year job done and that's it only says it is expected that children can perform two digit sums so as he already has that cracked maybe we could provide something a little more challenging? Oh lord even in black and white it's not getting any better. Why couldn't I keep my mouth shut!

Yes I am already beating myself up over it, and I can sympathise with DS frustration that nobody listens to him! This is only a snippet - I carried on making it worse! I'm interested in whether I'm the only parent who has totally managed to p* off their childs teacher whilst trying to help them out?

[user789653241]

First of all, if he can do 2 digit add/ sub confidently and accurately, doing 3 or 4 or whatever doesn't actually stretch him, imo.

A lot of MN teacher say they can go out of year group curriculum, but seems like some school has their own interpretation of NC and says they can't. My ds' school does, and I don't think I will try to convince them otherwise, I've given up.(At least for this year, if we're lucky, we may get more enthusiastic teacher next year.)

I am sure the teacher must be able to understand you are only trying to do best for your dc. Don't beat yourself up, think about strategy and talk to school/teacher about how they can help him get more challenging work.

[user789653241]

If you can't get school to give him challenging work, try to make him do it by himself.
If he was given 2 digit addition, when he has finished all of his task, he can do more work by adding extra digit to the given numbers, if you think it makes him less bored.
Or he can make same numbers into multiplication problems, or decimals, or decimal multiplications, etc.

Like 23 + 56 into 234 + 567, or 2.3 + 5.6, or 23 x 56 or 2.3 x 5.6, whatever he fancies. That's my ds' strategy to cope with easy work.

[JustRichmal]

When your ds grows up and leaves school, which would you regret most; not pushing harder to get him an education or upsetting his teacher?
It is very difficult not to get anxious and upset when going in to see a teacher and it spiralling into an argument.

One time that helped me keep calm was when I sat down to talk to them with the knowledge that I would not be leaving that seat until I got a better deal for dd. I just determined to keep calm and keep sitting there.

This was after years of trying my hardest not to upset teachers and seeing dd not getting an education in maths, then years more of having conversations when I was obviously irritated, but could not get past the wall of being told dd was not that bright, so there was no need to do anything different.

Good luck with your ds. However, I cannot help thinking that this is not how education should be. Why are teachers constrained into slowing the learning pace of the most able? Why can they not be allowed to set them on a computer to learn at their own rate if they are bored with class learning?

Like irvineoneohone said, giving longer sums is not stretching once they have the basic concept. Just as a for instance, dd was in the top set and moving on to looking at decimals when a year or two back she had mastered rounding to any number of decimal places.