Your child is unhappy because they are not happy with the teacher. This video gives 3 ideas to consider when this happens:
1. Understanding
2. Life Skill
3. Outside Support
TRANSCRIPT
Good morning! This is Jason Ursino from Learning Space and I’m driving to school.
This morning I’m going to be talking about what happens if you don’t like the teacher that your child has, so what happens or the three things you can do if your child has a teacher that just doesn’t work. Now being a teacher myself I can tell you, you could be the best teacher in the world, however, if that relationship between teacher and student is not there and there’s not that connection then it’s not going to work. So I can completely understand where you are coming from when you start to say things like that. You do have to be a little bit careful because it is kind of sensitive when you say to someone they’re not good at their job. I mean, you can think about yourself in your own job if someone comes to you and says you’re not good at your job, it’s a little bit offensive, especially in the vocation of teaching because you don’t become a teacher because of the money, that’s for sure, you become a teacher because you have some sort of passion for the vocation. So, it is a bit offensive to a teacher if you say, “you’re not a good teacher”. Perhaps wording it like, something like, you know, “the relationship between you and my son just doesn’t seem to work” rather than just say, “you’re not a very good teacher”.
So the three things to do if your child does not like the teacher.
The first thing is an understanding, understand that if you just ring up the school and say, “I would like my son to have a different teacher”, that’s not going to work. Simply because the teacher is a representative of the school, the school has hired this person so the school is going to support the teacher. You have to understand that when you are hired by a company or school or an entity, they’re going to support their staff because the staff is somewhat a representative of that entity so the teacher represents a part of that school. The school will support the teacher. So saying something like, “I want to change classes” or “I want my son/daughter to change classes because we don’t like the teacher” is simply just going to fall on deaf ears. The only time a school would change classes would be from a logistics point of view so for timetabling, if your child changes subjects then that means that they will change classes.
The second thing to consider is this whole thing is a life skill. So if you leave school and go into the workforce and you don’t like your supervisor you can’t simply say, “hey, can I change supervisors?” You sort of need to learn to work with that supervisor. Learn to work with the supervisor that you don’t like very well. Vent when you need to vent, talk to the supervisor, talk to someone above the supervisor. These are all skills that the child should learn when they're in school. Afterall, being at school is all about learning for the real world or the workforce. So when a child does not like their teacher, it’s an important life skill to learn if you don’t like your supervisor. The sort of skills that they should be doing should be things like having a chat with the teacher, sit down with the teacher after class and say, “hey, looks like that we’re not connecting very well. I want to have a chat with you about it”. If it doesn’t work, you can go to one up above and speak to them but I think it’s important for the child to learn the life skill of what they should do when they don’t like their supervisor when they’re going to the workforce.
And thirdly, I would say, get outside support. If the connection between the student and the teacher does not work, it doesn’t have to end there, you can get a tutor, for example. Now some people say, “well, if you don’t like your teacher then that means the tutor shouldn’t be a teacher as well because then that means you get the same problem”. That sort of classifies that all teachers are like robots, they all have the same personality, they all have the same thing. You can have a teacher that connects very well with your child even though it doesn’t happen in the classroom, you can find a teacher outside of the class as a tutor and work with your child. I do recommend, as always, that you get a real teacher as a tutor simply because the teacher will be qualified, experienced, understand programs, especially when programs are changing, and also that have a passion for teaching. If you get a uni student, there is a good chance they’re just doing it for a bit of extra cash on the side.
If you like my videos you can go to learningspace.net.au/drivingtoschool and have a good day!
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