What I Wish Parents Understood About Teachers

Dear Parents of School Attending Children,

As a former teacher, there are some things I hope you'll keep in mind as you send your children off to school this year.

First and foremost, your child's teacher wants to be your child's teacher. She (or he) has spent more hours than you can imagine working to be so. Even new teachers have worked tirelessly to be the best they can be for your child. Please realize that.

Secondly, you and the teacher are on the same team. You have your child's best interest in mind and so do they. When I was teaching it seemed to me that quite a lot of parent's forgot that detail. Multiple times in my short career, I saw evidence of this. Sometimes it was simply in the form of speaking badly of their child's teacher in front of their child. Sometimes is was completely bailing their child out of a consequence or of a disciplinary action. Sometimes it is yelling three inches away from the teacher's face in front of their child. Whichever way, it communicates to the child that it's teacher vs. parent -and every child knows the parent always wins. This makes day to day classroom management much more difficult than it should be. Cutting each other down is just not what teammates do. Teammates work together and communicate.

Also, please keep in mind although the challenges they meet on a daily basis are more fit for super heros, your child's teacher is in fact a human. Your child is one of many in the classroom full of children who have unique and varying needs, needs that must be met multiple times a day, every day. To keep up with the demand most teachers put in ten to twelve hour work days. Try to keep that in mind when you get annoyed because your child's test wasn't graded right away, or a progress report didn't get sent home on the usual day.

I'll leave you with just one more tiny thing to think about. Similar to the work of mothers, the work of teachers is often unnoticed and/ or unappreciated. From time to time a simple "thanks" is really nice to hear.

Best Wishes,

A Former Teacher

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Heather likes to think of herself as A Goddess in Progress, which is where she normally shares the personal experiences of her life as a military wife and mother. She also can be found at Blossoming Bloggers, a blog for women wanting to grow their own blogs.