to think some parents are totally unrealistic about how schools work?

[CailinDana]

I'm a former primary teacher (now SAHM) and I loved my job but the attitude some parents had towards me and my colleagues was one of the worst aspects of being a teacher. Despite having never taught, and being a maximum age of eleven when they were last in a primary school, some parents seem to think that they know far better than teachers how to run a school.

Some threads on MN give me flashbacks to those parents. It just makes my blood boil when parents seem to be putting everything teachers do under a microscope as though they're bound to be doing something wrong. Some parents seem to be under the impression that teachers are minor dictators, completely controlling everything in the classroom with no professional standards or supervision. Other parents believe that a teacher, one solitary adult, should be au fait with every little aspect of every child's progress and ability (eg reading books) at all times despite having at least 25 children to teach. Who do they think teachers are? Where do they get these ideas from?

I do definitely think that parents should be involved in their child's education but I have seen good, hardworking teachers ground down by overbearing parents who question their every move. Teaching is a difficult enough job without feeling like people who have no real understanding of the job are constantly monitoring you. AIBU to think that to a large extent parents should trust teachers to have their children's best interests at heart and that they should try to have realistic expectations of what teachers can actually do?

yes, quite HB.

but it is often the first line trotted out by LAs when parents ask for a statutory assessment, by Sencos when parents ask for backup in their request for a statutory assessment, and by health when parents ask for services such as SALT, OT etc.

one of the first things you have to learn as the parent ot a child with SN is how to (politely) say 'that is not my problem. my child is my problem, and I will do everything I can to make sure my child's needs are met'

it doesn't win you any friends.

TherealTilly

With regards to recommended books to read.

"Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew" by Ellen Notbolm

Excellent book I read and passed on to family and the HT who in turn willingly passed it onto the Teacher teaching my son. Its written by a mother of an autistic child and give a great insight into how the child thinks and feels from the inside. Well worth reading.

silverfrog - but the point is, they are a teaching professional. and do not know the intricacies of language development. the broad strokes, yes. but not the nitty gritty. the subtle overlays.

i disagree.

of course school is only one part of the picture, but by the time you get to statementing, you are not just looking at one teacher's view, if a considered consensus of the child at school.

you are seeing it way too personally if you think (most) teachers need to proove a parent wrong. if the school thinks a parent is unreasonably worried they will be most concerned about (1) the child being affected by the parent's anxieties (2) the parent taking limited resouces away from children who need them more.

to focus is on the child not the parent.

"working9while5 - right so DP has put together many productive helpful statements (that parents have been happy with), educated hundreds of children, turned around a failnig school...but isnt qualitied to comment?

who in, school, is?

(NB: there is only one incident where he & colleague thought the parents were damaging their child)"

Read what I wrote. I wrote that it doesn't make you qualified to say that a problem doesn't exist because you haven't observed it. Children are different in different contexts. This is quite obvious.

A very many mainstream teachers have very, very poor understanding of language development and virtually no training in it whatsoever. Language development is very complex. I am a Speech and Language Therapist with a lot of training and experience wrt to language disorder and apart from the most severe cases, I can't diagnose simply by listening to a child talk if their language is delayed or disordered. This is particularly true of impairment of understanding of language. A child with language disorder may be able to speak in sentences without understanding them and this is easily masked in a busy classroom environment, as many of these children comply and follow with group instructions ably with the breadth and extent of their difficulties really only becoming apparent as they progress through the school system. Even the very best of teachers can't really state a child's language is developing normally just based on classroom interaction and observation.

coff33pot thnak you for the book

Tilly, can you stop with the assumptions? I never said most teachers were out to prove parents wrong - I said 'the problem comes when teachers need to...' which I stand by.

I really cannot belive you are trying to argue that teachers have a thorough workign knowledge of language development, beyond the broad stroke 'x number of words by y age' and 'use of complex sentences by z age' etc.

beggars belief, and I hope your dp is nowhere near as deluded.

working9while5 but if you are a teacher you are maknig the assessment as a....... teacher so you cannot be doing it wrong using your knowledge & experience as a teacher!

how else can a teacher comment?

Tilly I'd recommend this book www.abebooks.co.uk/9781843108603/Understanding-Applied-Behavior-Anaylsis-Introduction-1843108607/plp.

It isn't about ASD per se, but it is about ensuring measurable progress and understanding motivation and reinforcement.

I wish it wad on the Teacher Training compulsory reading list.

StarlightMcKenzie thank you.

silverfrog - really cannot belive you are trying to argue that teachers have a thorough working knowledge of language development

ah no i am not - an NQT wont have a clue. but someone with 10, 20, 30 years experience is going to have spent a v large percentage of their working life assessing childrens learning.

but then the school would not give the NQTs option much weight & they would ahve lots of superivsion etc.

Tilly, Silverfrog has answered this question. You can say: "this is what I see". You can't say "X has normal language development and besides, Y is MUCH more needy so I think you are making a fuss over nothing", which is essentially what's at stake when you make statements about schools not wanting resources to be given to those who don't "need" them (based on their observation).

I work in language units for the most severely affected children with language disorder. The prevalence of their disorder is less than 1% of the population, yet they have normal non-verbal intelligence. This means, effectively, they are "locked in" with their thoughts speeding ahead of what they can communicate. I have listened to students talk about the terrible "rushing" they have in their head trying to follow a lesson, seen their drawings of their anxiety. Yet is is not at all uncommon within mainstream language units for mainstream teachers to feel that resources are unfairly diverted to these students because they are well-behaved and appear to cope.

Honestly, it's not a massive point being made here. Teachers aren't best placed to comment on whether a child's development is normal or not. They can say what they see in the classroom and that can be very, very valuable in determining a child's needs. It is not everything though.

I'm more than a little concerned at the implicationthat teachers can prioritise parents concerns. This is exactly why there is so little in terms of early intervention for children with SENs who aren't much of a problem for a teacher whilst young but due to lack of attention and support become self-harming teenagers and suicidal adults.

15% of young people with high functioning ASD have attempted or succeeded at suicide before they reach 25. Over 50% develop mental health problems that are seperate from their disability. This TERRIFIES me as a mother of a child in that category. Schools have a significant part to play in those statistics And you can betcha bottom dollar that I'll be a PITA Parent to any teacher that I think might be sending my child down that path regardless of whether their opinion is that he is coping and learning.

I can understand from a teaching point of view that a teacher can only see through his/her own eyes and observation that there are no language issues. But they are definately NOT experienced to expect their view as gospel and therefore there are no issues whatsoever. A SALT has the experience but STILL has to go through thorough assessment tests and a SALT wont pass any opinion just on observing the child talking.

My DS as an example is perfectly verbal, excellent language, talking from 9 months in sentence. Great you would say. Marvellous say the teachers.

However he rarely actually understands what his coming out of the teachers mouth. He comes out with big words and in context but they are words learnt, not words understood. He is too long winded and so peers dont understand him but the teacher thought he was just old talking and intelligent.

Unfortunately a previous teacher was constantly annoyed with him as because he was so smart (as she put it) she was adamant he knew what she was telling him and refused to listen to otherwise and could not understand why he would run away when she repeatedly asked him to do something.

He has a communication disorder which affects socially. But to the human eye? Smart boy just naughty. thankfully teacher changed.

And while we're doing stats, upwards of 70% of the youth offending population have undiagnosed language and learning difficulties that have never been spotted at school. This has been replicated across several studies.

Students with Specific Language Impairment have an increased risk of mental health disorder, failure to make and sustain relationships, be a victim or perpetrator of crime and fail to gain any meaningful employment, yet their needs are very commonly not identified at school.

Tilly - after 20 years, or even 30 years teaching, a teacher's knowledge of language development (actual language development, not just the conversational stuff that goes on in a classroom) would be, erm, exactly as it was when they were an NQT (assuming no further study on the actual topic in quesiton)

10/20/30 years of putting a tick in a box when a child hits whatever target has been laid out by the curent administration does not make a teacher an expert in language development. neither in spotting apotential issue, or assessing the severity of the issue.

and spending 10/20/30 years assessing a child's learning does not mean that the teache ris doing anything at all to do with langugae development anyway

Tilly, schools get additional funding if the statement is specific and quantified carefully but most parents have to go to tribunal for this.

Regardless of whether a school gets additional funding or not, most get very little just dictation about how they must spend their SEN budget that is not ringfenced and if unused can be spent on a new vegetable garden to attract new mc parents.

working9while5 i think we largely agree.....

i havent said teachers make medical diagnoses!

Tilly For me it would be "The Little Class with the Big Personality" here It's one I've shared with numerous teachers, it does away with the stereotypical views of autism that teachers probably pick up in the half hour of training. It combines parents' perspectives with teachers experiences and it manages to throw in great management tips along the way.All round a great book easy to read, not bogged down by too much jargon and not too lengthy so can be read in a couple of hours.

Tilly, I have currently stacked up 50 days of training on my ds social communication disorder, spent approx 16 hours a week reading, researching and flagging down relevant professional opinions, and hold a degree with a significant element of child development, Plus an almost completed MSc in Educational Psychology as well as having been very lucky to have had a considerable amount of free time and advice from some high quality SALTs on MN

thank you for the book insanity.

this is the type of observation DP makes about a child in his school (causally in a conversation to me, this morning):

ok XXX has started... a bit worried about him. he is obssessed with [topic] always talking about [topic]. he doesnt expect you to know what he has said to you in the very recent past. he is not having a conversation, he is saying words.

now he did mention ASD but he obviously does not think he is making a diagnosis.

And yet I was shocked to discover the extent of my ds' language difficulties when he was thoroughly assessed (2full days) by an Independent EP and SALT.

I cannot see how it would be possible for a teacher of any calibre to have spotted his problems as he is very bright and his coping strategies mask his difficulties.

so if teachers know so little why do they contribute to statements?

based on posters comments, it is just a waste of everyones time.

That's like saying "but if GP's know so little, why can they write prescriptions?" because they aren't the specialist in every area of medicine.

It's not so much that their contribution to the statement is the only consideration because it is written by the Inclusion Officer at the LA using reports from various professionals and parents.Which is then (if you want a decent specified and quantified statement) fought out a Tribunal using independent expert witnesses.
They are of course responsible for writing IEPs based on the objectives of the statement and you wouldn't believe how many teachers can't write a decent IEP and don't write them in accordance with the SEN code of practise involving parents and other professionals.
I think what parents of SEN children are saying that some teachers perhaps assume their knowledge is greater than it actually is and ideally they should consider themselves one of a team supporting a child rather than the key player.

it keeps coming back to this 'teachers' arrogance'