Teacher Roulette
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Since my children have been in school, I have received an annual letter from the principal about next year’s classes. In the letter, it states the school will begin assigning students to classrooms over the summer. The process includes input from the current teacher regarding each child’s temperament and learning style and who he/she thinks will be the best teacher for the upcoming year. The principal also states that although we cannot request a particular teacher, we can provide a letter about our child to be considered during the process.
Sometimes I have taken advantage of this opportunity and sometimes I have not. The reasonings behind these decisions have been numerous.
When my oldest was first starting school, I was naive and ignorant about a lot of the bureaucracy of the school system. I didn’t know what to expect. I put faith in the current teacher to know my child well enough to assist in her placement for the upcoming year. I didn’t really know what I should tell them that would be important. Finally, sometimes I simply forgot to write the letter.
As my daughter got older, I continued to have faith in her teacher, but there were issues that I felt needed to be addressed. For example, my daughter is highly creative and had a hard time sitting still. She often seemed distracted during lessons. However, she would surprise you by being able to answer a question you were sure she didn’t hear. She was highly emotional when she was younger and cried easily. It was important that she had a teacher that could be patient with her and receptive to her creativity.
When I took the time to write a letter to the school, I think my daughter got teachers who better matched her learning and temperament styles. When I didn’t, her school years were less successful. One year sticks out in my mind as a particularly challenging year. My daughter and her teacher did not seem to “click” and I often felt the teacher had “favorites” that did not include my daughter. We had many discussions that year about just surviving the year and the following year would be better. It was and things did improve.
Why is it that we have to play “teacher roulette” with our children? Although the school takes great care in placing students in the best classroom for them, some children still get the wrong placement. Parents who are more involved in the school have certain advantages. Parents who do not have the time to volunteer or the knowledge of the system sometimes unwillingly put their child at a disadvantage. Could there be a better system?
We think so. Our system is not designed to replace the school’s placement system, but to assist it. Schools who work with us have access to our online real-time system that can identify each student and teacher’s preferred communication, temperament, and learning styles. Administrators can use this data to eliminate any teacher/student pairings that are complete opposites. This can not only speed up the process of student placement, it can eliminate years where a student is unhappy and not excelling as well as s/he could. Our system matches students based on their answers to our survey, not their parents. In the current system, although I have my daughter’s best interest at heart, I may be missing some key information that could help her to be paired with the perfect teacher. Not to mention the school and student do not have to rely on the parent’s ability to write an effective letter and actually have it turned it in.
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How does your child’s school place students in classrooms? Do you get input in the placement? Do you think there’s room for improvement?
Currently, my children are in a private school with one teacher per grade (actually a few grades are combined). I recall my own childhood however, and there was a teacher or two that I didn’t quite get their teaching methods. Even though, I truly enjoyed school — primarily the academics.
I think this is a good concept. But, I worry when evaluating each student to go with the best fit of teachers, if sometimes a student might be labeled as ‘trouble’ and maybe given less important placement due to this fact?
Though, it isn’t like that doesn’t happen currently within the school system. I’m interested to learn more about how this project works.
N.,
Thank you for your comment. I understand your concern about kids being labeled, but that is one of the reasons for our system. Currently kids are being labled as trouble because they don’t click with the teacher either by personality or learning style. By using our system, there would be that Click Factor® so teaching and learning would be natural. It would help eliminate conflict and favoritism by the teacher because s/he can’t relate to the child. We believe our system would reduce the amount of labeling of kids as “trouble”.
However, we recognize that there are limitations to our system, such as the size of the school. In your situation, there is only one teacher and one choice. In those situations it is important to understand those differences in styles between teacher and student and hope that knowledge will enable the teacher to be more patient with those students who are opposite from his/her style.