Reception teacher wants me to do homework!

[Janey01359]

This is my first post. My four year old brought home a book called home/school book
Inside, the teacher had written that he is settling in well but as she doesn’t see me (he gets the bus with his brothers) it would be nice to know how his evenings are? I think she is asking me to write in this every day. I’m actually a bit annoyed but am I being unreasonable? Evenings in my home are chaotic, by the time all my children are settled in bed all I want is to cuddle up on the sofa.

Op your update had me rolling round the floor

Obviously it's slightly different as my son goes to a special school,but sometimes I do write things like he didn't sleep.well.so.might be tired or refused breakfast so will probably be hungry when he gets to.school,school give. them "Tuck"

No teacher wants to know what a kid’s had for tea. Really. They. Don’t.

However, some posters have suggested telling her precisely that, while others have suggested telling her all sorts of minutiae about their DC's evening.

Without even knowing your teacher it's obvious all she wants is a line of communication with you as she never sees you and it wouldn't have taken a genius to work that out.

As there have been such a diverse range of suggested responses even from posters who are in favour of the idea, it would seem far from obvious what the teacher actually wants from this. It would probably need a psychic, rather than a genius, to be sure. So I am inclined to agree with the poster who said;

Is it even communication or the paper version of small talk? Pointless and no really cares about the content.

And if all parents respond and she get 29 sets of Tommy had fishfingers for tea or Emma watched Eastenders, I would have thought that problems that genuinely needed to be communicated would be likely to be overlooked. I certainly wouldn't rely on this method form communicating actual problems to the school.

Op, I like you

PS I’m 633 months, so I know a lot.

*She wrote what the evenings were like once the dcs were off the bus. So how long it took to walk back to the house, what things the Dcs had to do before tea , Who cooked cleared way etc . If they had time for tv or tablets and then bath/bed routine.
Just normal stuff that would be chatted about at the school door you know *

Not once in the 9 years I've been going back and forward to school have I ever spoken to my childrens teachers about any of those things. They don't have the time and neither do I, and I lick up from school every day. Apart from waving at the gate so she will let the kids come to me and parents night twice a year, I have no interaction with teachers unless something really needs to be spoken about.

I missed that post, Drogs. It would be unbelievable that a teacher could listen to all that stuff from every parent who did pick their kids up in person.

There are multiple ways in which good engagement can improve your child's outcomes. Why on earth wouldn't you take every opportunity?

Oh jeez, it's one of those parents. Being engaged in your child's education in reception class involves making sure they are clean, washed, fed, have clean uniform to wear, getting them to school having had breakfast and in a state of readiness to learn, hearing them read of an afternoon/evening, or whenever you can, helping with homework if there is any, trying to keep up to date with communications and requests from school. It doesn't mean cornering the teacher every drop off and giving them a ten minute account of your life, or wanting to know about very minute of your child's day from them at pick up. As several parents do. For the entire seven years of primary school. Always the same parents. And I'm not talking about the ones with kids with SEN.

And whoever said, concerns have been flagged because a parent doesn't take the child to school, I'm presuming the have never heard of school busses? FYI these are busses that pick children up from their homes and take them to school, there is usually more than one child on these busses at once, they also pick them up from school and take them back home. It's a pretty common thing, and I don't think a child using the service is anymore at risk than the children who don't.

CecilyP it would be unbelievable that they actually want to. I work with children, only a few at a time, and I am very close to them, I spend longer with them than a teacher spends with her class, and I couldn't give a shiny shite what they went home and had for dinner, or what toys they played with etc. Can you imagine having to read that for maybe 30 children!

Yes it's rather ironic that showing you care,that your child is worthy,that you're a good parent,communicating with the school etc involves beans on toast,Eastenders and grandma came to visit.

It either is this big,vital ,important thing or it isn't.

There seems to be quite a wave of "LOOK AT ME LOVING MY CHILD MORE THAN YOU" posts lately.

@shearwater I raise your passive aggressive dig at my suggestion that it's good to be engaged with your 4 year old DC and give you back you're clearly one of those parents who couldn't care less about your DCs well-being 🤷‍♀️

Of course. You can tell that because I'm one of those terrible working parents who often isn't there at either drop off or pick up

Surely it's an easy thing to do to assist I your child's free education?

Would you care to add a little something to convince OP that it would assist he DS's free education, James?

What a nonsense.

Some people would literally find an issue in a grain of sand.

I feel sorry for teachers. My friend is a reception teacher who dared to put a note in this type of book that OP finds so highly contentious. They were making an alphabet table in the class, so each child was asked to bring in an item or two which began with a specific letter of the alphabet. When the boy who had been asked to bring something beginning with “f” was asked if he brought anything in, he told his teacher - to her face and in front of everyone- that what he had brought in was “f* all.” He was sent to the head and it emerged this is what his mother had told him to say.

Truly depressing.

There was a group of about three mums in that class who were hideous basically and made any issue they possibly could out if the slightest thing. They even demanded that any conversations with the teacher must be on “neutral ground” - ie in the street and not on school premises. They always had vicious dogs with them and were truly vile and obstructive at any possible opportunity.

So OP, are you going to get over yourself and write the odd sentence of communication every so often? Or are you going to be a PITA going forward?

Can you not do it, while he’s doing his reading? Or when the other children are doing their homework

espress0s I think perhaps you should get over yourself and climb down from that high horse you're on there.

Just normal stuff that would be chatted about at the school door you know
5 DCs, three different teachers when they were 4 and two in Kdg. Never once did I or anyone else from 1994 to 2005 ever stop the EY teachers to chat at the school door about mundane stuff. Big things like the death of a pet or a grandparent or the arrival of a baby were the only events mentioned.

The more teachers know about a pupil's home life the more effective they are going to be and the better experience at school your child is going to have.
How so?

Pegasus, there was no shortage of engagement or enthusiasm on the part of my DCs' teachers. There was no hierarchy of communication methods either, just methods that were possible and methods that were not.

There was no talking to the teacher at the door, and parents did not enter the school building at any time. Unless a child was so upset that they were refusing to go to school there was no reason to communicate the ups and downs of a 4 or 5 year old's life with the teacher.

Early years formal ed where I live is partly about encouraging children to speak up for themselves (with teachers drawing their own conclusions about what they are seeing and hearing in the classroom), and practicing resilience.

I recall being asked to fill out a questionnaire about each child before they started in PK4 and also Kdg, with questions about preferred style of learning, number of siblings, who lived in the home/ relationship to child, name/species of pets, previous experience of daycare or nanny or sahp, what language was spoken at home.

Early years formal ed where I live is partly about encouraging children to speak up for themselves (with teachers drawing their own conclusions about what they are seeing and hearing in the classroom), and practicing resilience

Yes exactly. That brought back memories that DDs never held back on telling teachers and nursery staff about what was going on at home . It was always "My mummy" this and "My daddy" that, a lot more detailed than could have been written in a small space in a book .