Teachers duties

As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

Thanks,
Tasha

"Tasha" wrote in message
...
As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

Tasha, you might be interested in this article:
http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sit...ry/html/159460.

Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

In article ,
(Tasha) wrote:

As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

Thanks,
Tasha


yes, I have appreciated the teachers that take time and effort for
regular communication with us.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article , Tasha wrote:
As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

I like to get weekly newsletters (paper or e-mail) from the teacher
about what the class is doing, what field trips are coming up, what
the kids will be studying, ... . The newsletter can be combined with
the weekly homework assignment.

In addition, I like to get feedback from the teacher specifically
about my child. This can be in the form of graded homework, daily
behavior reports (red/yellow/green), or other forms as appropriate.

I like to have an e-mail address for the teacher, for communication
that takes longer than 10 seconds at the beginning or end of the day.
For example, in my son's current school, I had volunteered to help out
with cutting refrigerator boxes for the kids to make a model
community, and the teacher needed to change the time (he'd forgotten
about the kids' music performance that morning). Having an e-mail
exchange confirming the new time was by far the easiest way to deal
with it.

I read the article at
http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sit...ry/html/159460
about the new book "Teaching on Poverty Rock" and I'm not sure I'd
like to have that teacher as my son's teacher. While I can sympathize
with a teacher's desire to be free of unreasonable demands, I'm a
parent who likes to know what is going on in the kid's classroom---and
I can't get any information from my son, so volunteering an hour a
week to help out in the classroom is a valuable way for me to stay
connected with my son's education.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

In article ,
Tasha wrote:
As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

I'm a little confused by your question about parents wanting teachers
to do "a lot more" in schools. Most of the teachers I've known over
the years are constantly juggling way too much.

Communication is definitely important in my book. There are three
"levels" of this IMO:
1) overview of a teacher's style and expectations, generally
provided early in the school year. This would include things like
homework schedules/policies, disciplinary approach, etc.
2) regular notices about "current events" in the classroom,
such as the weekly newsletter another poster mentioned.
3) individual communication about an individual child.
The latter is of course the hardest to fit in on a regular basis.

The other thing that is important for me in a teacher is the ability
to deal effectively with the range of student abilities found in any
given class. I expect a teacher to get to know each child's abilities,
strengths and weaknesses, and to customize the presentation/expectations
accordingly. I realize that this is a tall order, but to me this is the
single most important quality for a teacher to possess, and I consider
it the mark of an excellent teacher.

Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)
--
"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to
work hard at work worth doing." -- Theodore Roosevelt

(Robyn Kozierok) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Tasha wrote:
As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

I'm a little confused by your question about parents wanting teachers
to do "a lot more" in schools. Most of the teachers I've known over
the years are constantly juggling way too much.

Communication is definitely important in my book. There are three
"levels" of this IMO:
1) overview of a teacher's style and expectations, generally
provided early in the school year. This would include things like
homework schedules/policies, disciplinary approach, etc.
2) regular notices about "current events" in the classroom,
such as the weekly newsletter another poster mentioned.
3) individual communication about an individual child.
The latter is of course the hardest to fit in on a regular basis.

The other thing that is important for me in a teacher is the ability
to deal effectively with the range of student abilities found in any
given class. I expect a teacher to get to know each child's abilities,
strengths and weaknesses, and to customize the presentation/expectations
accordingly. I realize that this is a tall order, but to me this is the
single most important quality for a teacher to possess, and I consider
it the mark of an excellent teacher.

Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)

Thanks for the reply! I agree with what you say about communication.
The three points in your response are very important to me when
communicating to parents and students. However, there are many
teachers who fail to communicate in these specific ways, and this is
possibly why I have heard many parents speak about teachers doing more
in terms of communication.

I also agree that teachers are constantly juggling too much, but
sometimes I feel that parents expect teachers to do more than what
they are already doing. I have spoken to a lot of parents who think
that the summer break teachers receive is too long and during this
time they should be participating in school related conferences, ect.

Tasha

Tasha wrote:
As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

Thanks,
Tasha


Yes. I always enjoy when a teacher can put together a brief
weekly newsletter - here's what we're studying now, the
student of the week is, here are some supplies we could use.
Our teachers also all have e-mail, and I use that to check
in on things that don't merit a phone call. If my kids had
any problems, I'd want to know about it from the teacher's
end before it got out of hand.

Lesley

"Tasha" wrote in message
...
(Robyn Kozierok) wrote in message
...
In article ,
Tasha wrote:
As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

I'm a little confused by your question about parents wanting teachers
to do "a lot more" in schools. Most of the teachers I've known over
the years are constantly juggling way too much.

Communication is definitely important in my book. There are three
"levels" of this IMO:
1) overview of a teacher's style and expectations, generally
provided early in the school year. This would include things like
homework schedules/policies, disciplinary approach, etc.
2) regular notices about "current events" in the classroom,
such as the weekly newsletter another poster mentioned.
3) individual communication about an individual child.
The latter is of course the hardest to fit in on a regular basis.

The other thing that is important for me in a teacher is the ability
to deal effectively with the range of student abilities found in any
given class. I expect a teacher to get to know each child's abilities,
strengths and weaknesses, and to customize the presentation/expectations
accordingly. I realize that this is a tall order, but to me this is the
single most important quality for a teacher to possess, and I consider
it the mark of an excellent teacher.

Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)

Thanks for the reply! I agree with what you say about communication.
The three points in your response are very important to me when
communicating to parents and students. However, there are many
teachers who fail to communicate in these specific ways, and this is
possibly why I have heard many parents speak about teachers doing more
in terms of communication.

I also agree that teachers are constantly juggling too much, but
sometimes I feel that parents expect teachers to do more than what
they are already doing. I have spoken to a lot of parents who think
that the summer break teachers receive is too long and during this
time they should be participating in school related conferences, ect.

Tasha
In my experience, most do. This will be the first summer since I started
teaching that I will not be spending at least 4 weeks of full-time days on
graduate work at my own expense, and the only reason why I'm not this summer
is that I am not allowed to travel due to pregnancy. Continuing education
and certification requirements effectively require this, because it is next
to impossible to meet them during the school year on your own time, and
anything done during the school day does not count for continuing
certification.

I don't think most people are aware of what the requirements for teachers
are, or what teachers actually DO with "all that time off". I average 40
hour weeks even during the summer session, when I am not paid, just on
preparation for next year. During the school year, it's closer to 80 hour
weeks.

LFortier wrote in message ...
Tasha wrote:
As a prospective teacher (hopefully in division one {grade's k-3]), I
would like to ask parents if they would like to see teacher's doing a
lot more in schools. Is frequent communication with the teacher
something that is very important to you?

Thanks,
Tasha


Yes. I always enjoy when a teacher can put together a brief
weekly newsletter - here's what we're studying now, the
student of the week is, here are some supplies we could use.
Our teachers also all have e-mail, and I use that to check
in on things that don't merit a phone call. If my kids had
any problems, I'd want to know about it from the teacher's
end before it got out of hand.

Lesley

I've thought about giving parents a call at home (sometime in the
evening)at the beginning of the year to introduce myself. As parents,
would you like it if a teacher did this, or would you prefer it if the
teacher just stuck to a newsletter?

Tasha

In article , Tasha wrote:
I've thought about giving parents a call at home (sometime in the
evening)at the beginning of the year to introduce myself. As parents,
would you like it if a teacher did this, or would you prefer it if the
teacher just stuck to a newsletter?

The few times a teacher has called us at home, we've had a moment of
panic (what's he done now?), even if the call is about something
innocuous. Also, the phone calls always come when we are eating or
trying to get our son to bed. I can't speak for other parents (and
indeed, the sample of mkm parents may be highly non-representative on
this issue), but I greatly prefer getting e-mail to phone calls,
unless immediate action or discussion is needed.

My son's public-school teachers never used e-mail (though I think some
of them had e-mail, they did not have particularly easy access). His
teacher at the private school (Meridian School in Seattle) has sent me
10 messages in 3 weeks, and I'm not even on the all-parent e-mail
list. The messages were informative: a list of supplies to buy before
the first day, rescheduling an event, request for parent volunteers,
passing my e-mail address on to some other parents who were
coordinating one of the projects, scheduling some volunteer activity
for me, and telling me about an unscheduled performance by my son (he
read his poem to the whole school and was videotaped reading the poem
by a professional film crew who are doing a short documentary about
one of the school's activities).

Personally, I greatly prefer the approach of the private-school
teacher. The e-mail doesn't seem to interfere with his other teaching
duties either---he's much more diligent about returning graded
homework than the public-school teachers were. (OK, he has only 16
students instead of 20, but that doesn't explain all the difference.)


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.