Talking to teachers at parents evening about dd teaching herself

[natellie1970]

I have parents evening soon and wondered if I should talk to the teachers about the fact that yr7 dd is teaching herself science and spanish at home. If so how do I approach it without sounding like I'm criticising them?

They will just smile and say its great that she's so enthusiastic about her studies and taking responsibility for her own learning is what they've been encouraging the students to do.

Depends what you mean by "teaching herself".

I think they will think the opposite and say that is great that she is so enthused by her lessons that she is going home and doing extra learning. Why is it a criticism?

As dalziel1 says. They will have heard it all before. What would you like the response to be? Is DD learning Spanish at school at all, or is she learning it as an extra subject at home?

FWIW (not much probably) a girl in my year at school (most definitely G&T but long before G&T was a 'thing') took GCSE German after teaching herself at home. She loved foreign languages & was only allowed to take two at school - so taught herself a third. She got an A as I remember (before A* existed I think).

I always read around the subject and further into text books etc. Wasnt a reflection on the teaching at school or a negative thing at all.

Ds1 is similar. He will decide he wants to know more about a subject and will research it. Is in year 3 - had heard that next topic will be Romans, so has been reading as much as he can access about the subject on internet/in books.

Surely the sign of a good teacher is that they inspire their students to want to know more about the subject?

Good for your dd as she is gaining the skills for higher up in education when students are expected to be more self reliant.

Thanks for responses. Struggling to understand but very happy with dd as ds does the absolute bare minimum at school (same as I did) if he's told to do a page he would struggle to do full page dd would fill two, after cutting it back from 5! She is doing spanish at school and is considering learning German at home. I know nothing about teaching and thought maybe the teachers would think that I was saying they weren't teaching dd enough at school so I'm relieved they wouldn't think like that. I don't think the teachers can do much more than they're doing now as she seems to have an unquenchable thirst for learning. (No idea where she got that from!)

I think it's a good idea if they know what she's doing, so they can check in with her that she's got appropriate resources and can extend her in class where possible. I should think they'll be pleased. I teach in a superselective grammar and find every year there are some students I feel more like 'coach' than 'teacher' with. As PP said, it's great that she's learning independently so young.