"There's no reason only poor people should have the experience" - TED video of Bill Gates

Re:"There's no reason only poor people should have the exper... by wallflower on Friday February 06, 2009 @08:30AM (#469694)

I'll try to dig up the link later but I remember a Time or Newsweek cover story that said that the number one reason teachers quit the profession is the students' parents. I recall two horrifying stories from it: 1) A parent calling to complain about a 'C' that her daughter got because she wrote the daughter's report, 2) A college student handing his cellphone during class to the professor. On the line was his irate parent to complain for his kid about a grade.

That being said, I've discussed this with my friends many times and I've gradually been convinced that more than anything - parents' involvement in their education was/is vitally important. A couple of them made it out of the ghetto.

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Re:"There's no reason only poor people should have the exper... by wallflower on Friday February 06, 2009 @09:25AM (#469744)

Could not find the link directly but it was captured by a message board:

Why Teachers Hate Parents, Time Magazine

"Ask teachers about the best part of their job, and most will say how much they love working with kids. Ask them about the most demanding part, and they will say dealing with parents. In fact, a new study finds that of all the challenges they face, new teachers rank handling parents at the top. According to preliminary results from the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, made available exclusively to TIME, parent management was a bigger struggle than finding enough funding or maintaining discipline or enduring the toils of testing. It's one reason, say the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, that 40% to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Even master teachers who love their work, says Harvard education professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, call this "the most treacherous part of their jobs."

"Perhaps the most complicated part of the conversation—beyond all the issues of race and class and culture, the growing pressures to succeed and arguments over how success should be defined—is the problem of memory. When they meet in that conference, parent and teacher bring their own school experiences with them—what went right and wrong, what they missed. They are determined for it to be different for the child they both care about. They go into that first-grade room and sit in the small chairs and can easily be small again themselves. It is so tempting to use the child's prospects to address their own regrets. So teachers learn to choose their words with care and hope that they can build a partnership with parents that works to everyone's advantage and comes at no one's expense. And parents over time may realize that when it comes to their children, they still have much to learn. "I think that we love our children so much that they make us a little loony at times," says Arch Montgomery, head of the Asheville School in North Carolina. He winces at parents who treat their child as a cocktail-party trophy or a vanity sticker for the window of their SUV, but he also understands their behavior. "I think most parents desperately want to do what is right for their kids. This does not bring out the better angels of our natures, but it is understandable, and it is forgivable."

http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=8834&...

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Re:"There's no reason only poor people should have the exper... by access_denied on Friday February 06, 2009 @08:43AM (#469704)

Unreasonable parents are part of the problem, yes. In the case of the cell-phone, what would happen if the director of that school would enforce "law and order"?

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