Okay, I have a hard time confronting people because I like to avoid conflict. But seriously, when a teacher criticizes my child for having a paper that was "bad" (after saying to others, "Perfect, good, good, perfect....BAD!") and there's "too much on it", I think that's where I have to draw the line. I believe in constructive criticism and by all that is holy and mighty, I believe that if you negatively criticize a child, especially in front of her classmates, that's damaging to their self esteem. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying my child should have her hand held and be cradled in the teacher's arms. I'm saying that teachers have a major impact on kids with their choice of words.
The above allegedly (and I use this word because I realize there's two sides to every story) happened to my daughter by her social studies teacher. My daughter, who LOVES school and everything about it, came home and told me she no longer likes social studies which happened to be one of her favorite subjects. When asked, "Why not?", that's when she told me what the teacher said to her. If this really did happen, I could have thought of about 150 different better ways that statement could have been said. And I think I may send this teacher an email suggesting ideas for her to use in the future. Perhaps, "Wow! This paper has a LOT of stuff on it! Maybe next time you can try to focus on just a few states and make sure they look their best rather than trying to get all 50 on the paper!". Or "Maddie, your paper has too many states on it. I think it would have looked better if there weren't as many." Or "Next time why don't you try to keep the paper a little less crowded." I think ANYTHING rather than simply saying it's "bad". I'm saddened that my daughter was hurt by this and the Momma Bear is starting to growl. In fairness to the teacher, though, this needs to be discussed before I go all "bear" on her.
On a side note, my husband called and spoke to this teacher and she said she didn't remember the moment but knows that such a comment is damaging to children and she said she would never have done that. My husband pointed out that, while he believes her, he also believes our daughter feels that really happened because she was and still is upset. She may have misunderstood or misconstrued the words.
ReplyDeleteI give this teacher SO much credit for addressing this issue with us. Perhaps my daughter needs her ears cleaned so she hears better. Who knows. But the teacher gave us her home phone number, her cell phone number and told us to call her any time of the day up until 11:00 p.m. if we have any concerns. Now that's a good teacher. Momma Bears asleep...FINALLY!