Parents, parents, parents

What a week dealing with parents! A spokesperson for some of the parents asks to meet with me on Monday--from some comments I thought it was going to be about my substitute assistant; they had said her English was not good enough to be working in the classroom. Five mothers showed up to complain that their children were getting short changed because I wasn't academic enough. The other class sent home worksheets and gave homework. They had already scheduled a meeting for the next day with the Elementary School Principal. He said, "I think they had the meeting with you, just so they could say that they had met with you--not that they were going to listen to anything you said." The principal is very supportive--and recognized the very different style the other teacher has.

I left the meeting with parents to go to the early childhood staff meeting, where we are discussing the book "About the Authors" as the K, 1 and 2 teachers want to shift to writers workshop. I had to share with the group about the parents complaints. It made me think that writers workshop will not go over well with those parent

By Wednesday, several of the parents had heard about this meeting, and contacted me in various ways to express their support of me, and in some cases extreme disapproval of certain complaining parents. I began to worry about being caught in the cross fire. One of the "complaining" parents is very reasonable and I think she helped calm the others. Then another one e-mailed me to say how much she liked my style, saw growth in her son, but just wanted to see more of the work he was doing.

By Friday, the principal, the other kdg teacher and I had a plan. I would eliminate my rest time, add a half hour to guided reading. We would have a joint newsletter to the parents about the curricula, weekly. I drafted a letter to my parents telling them about the change. And I am putting together packets with take home games for families to do with their children. I am still resisting worksheets in the classroom, but will be sending home more of their work and not waiting until the end of the week. The math program comes with "home-links" and I'll be sending home those pages that are interactive with parents. I continue to push reading aloud from higher level texts--I have sent home a list of suggested chapter books that the school library has in their collection.

During the week the kids continued to be terrific. On Friday, Sedi, the assistant teacher on maternity leave came to visit with the new baby. We had read the book, "Honey, honey, Lion" and in which the honey badger's "tummy is as flat as a pancake". One of the boys (who has two younger siblings) ask Sedi, "Is your tummy as flat as a pancake?"

We have also been doing lots of rhyming, and during the day, kids will dash up to me saying, "chair and hair rhyme" or some other rhyme. Thursday, one of my most proficient rhyming boy, said excitedly, "say and sand, (Pause), they don't rhyme."

When I skyped my sister, Monday evening, she said, "Lucky this happened to you now, not your first year teaching!" And as an experienced 5-6 grade teacher--she added, "This happens more in the early grades, K,1,2 so I had to deal with less of it" I am also much more sympathetic to all the teachers who have complained about having to deal with pressure from parents who want more of everything. I remember Sally saying that when parents asked for more of something at the nursery school she directed, she would ask them what should be eliminated to make room for it.