Friday 20 July 2012

advocating for my daughter in her classroom

Yesterday was the first time I was one of "those" parents that stuck my nose in in the classroom.
Miss S is only in kindergarten and still finding her feet. She is so confident in many ways, but so unsure in others. Yesterday was one day I realised that only 2 terms into school of course she doesn't know when or when not to tell the teacher things. And how are they supposed to know unless taught.

There i am at the back of the classroom listening to a little boy read to me. I am half concentrating on him but half concentrating on miss s who was only a couple metres away from me. I notice her work isn't getting done and she was no where up to where the other kids were. She looks back at me constantly and I quietly tell her to finish her work. I continue listening to the boy then from the corner of my eye see the little boy sitting next to miss s start poking her with a pencil. She got a pencil and poked him back. i told her to stop. keep listening to the little boy read to me, then see the other boy poke miss s again, and again. She uses her shoulder to try fight him off. Little boy finishes reading to me so I go over to miss s and suggest she talk to her teacher. The boy says no no no. I nod to miss s and tell her she needs to let the teacher know when another child is bothering her and stopping her from doing her work. Miss s went and told her teacher who acted straight away and moved the boy away up to the front of the class. He was bawling his eyes out. I felt awful....but....he can't be let to get away with thinking that is ok.  Miss s sat down and was able to complete her work.

Parent/teacher interview was only a few hours after this incident so I was able to discuss it with her teacher and apologise for what may have seemed like dobbing. She explained that this week she attempted sitting the more disruptive children in the class in amongst the more sensible children. She too had noticed that miss s's concentration in class was a bit less since sitting next to that boy and will have to think of new seating arrangements again.

I don't want my child to be a dobber but I do want her to know it's ok to tell the teacher especially if the child is bothering her enough that she can't complete her work and then she's the one in trouble. I know we can't cotton wool them but I can't help but wonder what if I never saw that and the teacher leaves them sitting together. Miss s is no angel and she loves being silly so it scares me that sitting next to a child like that might egg her on. I've got another at least 14 yrs left of this. eeekk!!


Linking with  twinkle in the eye for flash blog friday and with some grace for flog ya blog friday

6 comments:

  1. You won't be able to circumvent everything but every little thing counts. Thanks for linking up for Flash Blog Friday :-)

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  2. We are going through this with our Miss E (5) at the moment. Also in kindergarten, we started off telling her to tell the teacher when kids were bothering her because a little boy was targeting her in first term. Now though it has turned into full-on dobbing on anyone and anything, and she gets slightly anxious, trying to watch what everyone is doing in class. Now we're having to explain the fuzzy line to draw between telling when someone is upsetting/bothering her and just plain dobbing. Adding to the confusion is that she has two little sisters and sometimes things which would be "dobbing" at school are "mummy needs to know" things at home, as her sisters are smaller than her peers at school. Far out!

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    1. good luck. i know i am not alone. PS i liked your fb page :)

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  3. I totally agree with you. It wouldn't be dobbing if she was being disrupted.
    I think it's important to teach your children when to stick up for themselves and when to ask for someone to intervene. The sooner we can teach children that, the better.

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  4. I think you did the right thing. We start the whole formal education thing next year when our eldest goes to kinder. I am so not looking forward to it in so many ways!

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