“TEAM TEACHING”: YOU AND YOUR CHILD’S TEACHER

Choose Your Attitude

We’re beginning a new year and a new semester, so it’s a good time for AAA, Adjustment All-Around. Here’s the truth: it’s critical that you approach your child’s teacher with a Team Attitude. NO MATTER WHAT YOU SUSPECT, enter this relationship with an almost conspiratorial attitude: “It’s you and me together, Kid!” Create that attitude from the inside out, nurture it, and then finesse it like a card shark. Here’s what I mean…

I’m On Your Side

The message you want to give your child’s teacher is this: We are a team. I’m on your side. You have a tough job, and I’m here to support you. Let’s figure out together how I can give you that support.

Fact: The educator does indeed have a tough job. S/he is responsible for bringing the highest and the best out of a classroom full of kids, now complicated by the addition of your beloved child, for whom you want only the best. Right? Of course right.

Fact: Chances are good that this educator may be defensive coming out of the starting gate, due to past experience and stories heard from other teachers. If that’s not the case, Alleluia!

Your Job: Come in softly, supportively, giving the clear message that I am not like those other parents you’ve heard about. I’m easy to work with. Together, we will make a good team.

Not Your Job: An adversarial stance from the get-go, such as I know you’re not going to give me what I want and I will battle you for my child’s rights!, guarantees you’re not going to get what you want unless you’re willing to hire a lawyer.

The Process

I suggest we adopt Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy. He was quoting a West African proverb when he said: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” The “softly” part is your team attitude: We both want only the best for my child; I appreciate all of your efforts; how can I help support you? This does NOT always need to be spoken aloud; it’s simply the energy that drives your actions.

The “big stick” part is that you are immovably determined to get the best possible teaching and services for your child. Period. Non-negotiable. End of subject.

The Teacher’s Response

Some teachers will respond well and gratefully to this team mentality. Others will bear a strong resemblance to the Berlin Wall before it was sledgehammered. In the latter case, you know you’re going to have to move your child into a different situation, so just make plans to do so. (Note: Unless you have no better options, I don’t recommend staying with that teacher and battling it out with lawyers, etc. For one thing, our kids are very sensitive to energy, and the resulting energy just ain’t gonna be good.)

Learn This Now

I took me a few years before I realized how important this attitude was, and my son Jonathan (DS, now 28) benefited enormously from this approach over his school years–and in fact it continues to be important with both the staff at Goodwill (where he works) and with his home staff (caregivers at his apartment.) I’m not going to get anywhere without it.

So, welcome back to school this week, and here’s to a new version of Team Teaching!