Listen Up: Teachers Are Not Co-Parents

Jan 22, 2019 by apost team

When parent-teacher conference time comes around, your brain may be scrambling with questions to ask your child's teacher. You want to know how they perform in class, but you also want to know what their concerns are about your child’s upbringing and what you could be doing as a parent to make your child’s life better. These are all appropriate questions to ask, right?

But before you ask the teacher some of your burning questions, remind yourself that they are not meant to be your co-parent. Their job is already difficult and complicated, and to ask them more than what they are qualified to answer can be dangerous and frustrating for both of you.

Remind yourself that it is not the teacher’s job to overextend themselves and try to guide you as a parent.

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Instead, think about the programs they enact at school. Many schools have developed different types of breaks throughout the day in order to let the kids relax, breathe and reset their brains before beginning to learn a new topic. But why would a school need a program like this? Perhaps it’s because we aren’t utilizing these behaviors at home and instead expect the most out of our children.

Even programs that require children to read for an entire class period can be the fault of the parents, not the teachers. Are we allotting enough time for our children to read for pleasure while they are at home?

The truth is, we need to be gentle with our children at home so they go to school with fresh minds and are eager to learn. Many teachers often wonder why their students show up unrested, cranky, and not focused on the tasks at hand. These problems arise from something that we aren’t doing correctly at home!

Perhaps each bad grade that our child gets doesn’t solely rest on the teacher’s ability to teach, but rather something that should be amended at the child’s home. Expecting a teacher to be able to balance our children’s lives in a seven-hour school day in addition to learning academics just isn’t realistic.

The truth is, teachers often deal with unrealistic expectations when it comes to their student. Their primary job is to teach them enough so that they understand the material and have high scores on tests, which in turn leads to the school keeping the funding that it needs to keep running.

But we also want them to instill kindness, patience, and determination in our children, which is ultimately our job and shouldn’t be crammed into a simple seven-hour school day on top of everything else that needs to get done in that time frame.

So if your child isn’t behaving correctly or is having trouble in school, it’s time to stop blaming the teachers. There are more things that parents could be doing from home that can help students excel in their learning programs.

Teachers are expected to not only inform our children about academic subjects but tackle tough topics like sex-ed, which should probably be the responsibility of the parent. We also need to instill mindfulness in our children so they perform well at school and don’t become too frustrated when they don’t understand something or someone is annoying them.

We should also be teaching them about the dangers on the internet and how to properly use it. Subjects about race and gender also should come from the parents, and instilling kindness in a child is a parent’s responsibility from the moment they come out of the womb.

Even though these seem like basic lessons of life, it isn’t a teacher’s responsibility to co-parent our children with us. Some of these things need to be taught by parents from an early age and taken into adulthood. Teachers have enough on their plate, and trying to mold our children into good people isn’t always a reasonable task to take on.

Of course, you aren’t slacking on these lessons intentionally, but sometimes we get busy and these lessons get neglected while we try to get everything else done. Teachers should be trusted, as they are courageous, wonderful additions to society that infinitely help our children.

But remind yourself next time you become frustrated with something going on at your child's school: is this something that I should be responsible to teach my child instead of their teacher?

What do you think? Are parents forcing teachers to pick up the slack? Let us know in the comments and pass this along to your teacher friends or to parents with kids in school to see what they think!