There is a growing concern of parents for students attending the Teaneck Public Schools. This concern varies on many fronts.
Students are failing math and science at an alarming rate and parents are distracted and engaged in other pursuits. Some are busy working 2 and 3 jobs to meet the monthly mortgage and tax note, another group knows something is wrong but does not know where to start and other parents does not expect much from the public school system so they compensate by paying for private tutoring to supplement for the lack experienced in the public schools.
What happens with the parents who depend solely on the public school to educate their children? Some parents are duped into thinking that the teachers are advocates for their children as they are told all the politically correct verbiage.It is so convincing that when your child comes home with a complain you would be tempted to doubt him/her. Parents never doubt your children, explore and investigate everything that is told to you by the child. Be reminded that whatever is committed to parents verbally will not be committed in writing. This has been the sub-cultural tradition of the Teaneck school system. The teachers maintain camaraderie and self preservative adherence in conducting their duties routinely. There has been no specialized attention focused on meeting needs versus teaching methodology. For example, it is common knowledge among all teachers that the math curriculum and teaching strategy for the middle school has been failing for the past (6) years.,yet for our highly favored teachers it is business as usual as our children are consistently failing and pass through the system to the next grade. The continued trend of weakness,fear and failure for math continues among our student population.
Why are we surprised as parents when our children are not doing as well as we expect them to? I have attended countless PTA meetings,and have seen the disappointment on the faces of parents and the despair on students as they get the news of poor performance. We cannot blame the failure to perform or the failed results on our students. It is very easy to point blame on the student as they are the obvious and the more likely candidate to be blamed for failure to perform. After all the students are the ones with poor study habits, failure to return the home work in a timely manner, or simply lacking interest in school work. As tempting as this seems, there is yet a deeper more sinister contributor to the high dropout rate of our students and the high failure of our most deserving students.
Indeed all our students are deserving of the best that we can do as parents, teachers, administrators, politicians, and the community. When we negotiate the raises and benefits for staff, why are we simultaneously injecting consistent cuts for student services? Why are we not hiring more teachers who care about students and less of those who are in the vocation for career advancement and steady income?
I agree with the fact that Teachers hold some responsibility. I just also believe rather my opinion is that Parents are to be held More responsible. Working 2 to 3 jobs is a poor excuse for not parenting. Some forget that the lack of discipline is one of the many reasons our children fail. If your child does not do homework and are not responding to threats, just remove all technical devises from home, take away phone, let the consequence fit the problem. Take your day off whatever day that is and sit with your child going through all the weeks work. Take them to shelters on your day off, show them where they could end up. Kids need to see the bottom to aspire and reach the top.
ReplyDeleteYes, some teachers are in it for the above stated reasons in article. If they are in it for those reasons then they should not last long because parents must monitor teachers. A whole other subject, but I do monitor my child teachers.
We as people more often then not blame others. Look in the mirror are we as parents really doing all we can. Obviously, we are not.
Thank you for your comment. The fact that you made yourself anonymous technically invalidates the points that you tendered relevant to the issues discussed, and endears me to inquire whether or not you are a concerned parent or a teacher defending the interest of the teaching profession. To the contrary, I never asserted that the parent holds no measure of responsibility for their own children,that article has not been published as of yet. You have proceeded beyond my projected editorial schedule. Be it far from me to excuse or judge any parent from doing everything possible in their powers to both provide food and shelter for their children, pay their taxes, and trust the Board of Education to provide the basic necessary tools for the child's scholastic success.
ReplyDeleteWe know that it seems like a good idea to teach lessons from exposure to the lower nature elements of our society, however how about mentoring from the top of our highest ideals.
Why should we expose our children to what is wrong and hope that they will strive for something better. We also know that parents cannot effectively monitor teachers under our current system. A teacher giving you a report on a student's performance is not monitoring the teacher.A teacher's reported success or failure of students for the academic year is not monitoring the teacher. I am interested in knowing how you monitor your teacher. What were your expectations? Self introspection is always good. One should not hesitate to have healthy, balanced input into parental responsibility for child educational support and meeting the childs basic needs.