As a parent, it can be hard to give feedback to teachers, even when the parent/teacher relationship is good. We fully realise that teachers face huge constraints on their time and so we don’t want to put them under additional stress or tell them how to do their job. We definitely don’t want to be an additional irritant. And yet sometimes, things do need to be said.
Parents of children with SEND struggle with this dilemma more regularly than most. They say that these conversations are so much harder for them as it is too easy to be misunderstood, to sound critical when no criticism was meant, to struggle to articulate what you are trying to say.
SEND is an area that many teachers can feel less confident talking about compared with other aspects of their job. And parents admit it can be tough to understand the teacher’s position as educator to a whole class and how this necessitates compromise.
With this in mind, I spoke to a number of parents of children with SEND who go to mainstream schools about what they wish they could say to teachers and what they wish schools would do differently. Here are two of the six major issues they wanted to address (read the full article in the 13 May issue of TES for the other four).
1. Acknowledge diagnoses and work with professionals
I found this one hard to believe at first, but it’s the biggest issue that parents wished to highlight. Just getting the school to acknowledge a problem can sometimes be a huge hurdle - even when outside agencies have made official diagnoses, even when children are medicated for conditions, there are examples of teachers not seeing the problem. Children are “just naughty” or “misbehaving”, or, actually (because they conform within the school environment) “completely normal”.
As a follow on from this, parents wish that teachers would listen to outside agencies (such as occupational therapists, educational psychologists, speech therapists, etc) and then work to incorporate the personal learning plans that have been put in place for children.
2. Provide additional training
Many parents felt that, although their child’s class teacher was trained to support their child, other school staff - after-school club workers, teaching assistants, other teachers, as well as lunchtime supervisors - needed to have extra training, too.
One school worked alongside a parent to produce an information pack that was distributed to all staff, to help explain why the student might act in a certain way and how best to communicate with them. It’s this kind of strategy that parents wish was in place in every school.
Fiona Hughes is a freelance writer based in Devon
@superfiona
The teacher’s view
Speaking as both a teacher in a mainstream primary school and as a parent of a child with SEND, I recognise much of this - from both sides of the divide. What this article highlights is the fundamental misunderstanding of each other’s position.
We can’t walk in each other’s shoes, we teachers can’t visit at tea time and bed time, and neither can we parents make ourselves invisible in the classroom. However much we might like to, the realities of life get in the way.
What saddens me, though, and I write as both a parent and a teacher here, is the constant colouring of the dialogue between schools and parents of children with SEND as conflict.
Neither group are warriors, smiting our opponents and winning, or losing. What we are is advocates. Advocates for someone smaller, someone more vulnerable and less powerful than we are; someone we love, very much.
Nancy Gedge is a primary teacher. She will write more on this topic in her TES column on 27 May
