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Case: Feeling Betrayed I have had a wonderful school year with my 26 third graders all of whom were bilingual. Most of my students were Chinese Americans with two from India. I used very engaging interactive strategies with my students throughout the year. They have responded to my teaching strategies very well, and made a lot of progress in all content areas. To my surprise and disappointment, my school principal informed me that she received a letter signed by most of the parents of my students stating that I did not teach their enough math. In the letter, they indicated the previous year students came home with a lot of homework and completed a large number of worksheets, while this year they have been given fewer worksheets. I explained to my principal that I was more interested in using math manipulatives and meaningful real world math problems than repetitive worksheets. What disappointed me (or hurt me) the most was that I have had four meetings with all the parents, and they did not raise any concerns in these meetings. Why would they directly go to the principal? What did I do wrong? Is this cultural? How should I respond to these parents? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) As a Math teacher, I believe you are doing a great job making the material meaningful to the students. I would hold another meeting or send a letter home to the parents apologizing for not explaining your teaching strategies before hand, but that your teaching style has proven to be more effective through an abundance of research. I would provide a summary or quotes from research articles that proves your explanation and provide the parents with additional sources that discusses your teaching style. As stated in the other solutions, I would also try to provide evidence of the progress students have made. If possible, I would try to gather data from several previous years and compare the results to progress that has been made this year. If the results are in your favor, I would share this data with the parents as well. |
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