by Dominic Wells

Created on: October 07, 2008

It didn't take me long as a teacher to discover the underside of teaching children. Two words which can evoke a number of emotions from any teacher. "The Parents". These emotions can range from delight to terror, respect to anger, confidence to frustration; all depending on the parents themselves.

I work as an English teacher in Taiwan, at one of the uncountable cram schools in the capital Taipei. A little background information on the circumstances regarding parents is necessary for you to understand my choice of "favourite parent".

At a cram school parents have a larger influence and far greater importance than at a regular day to day school, they want to ensure they are not wasting their money, they have the freedom to stop sending their child to your school and send him or her elsewhere, and they have the power of telling all their friends in the neighbourhood what they think of you and your school. While this can at times influence your teaching or the methods you use, a decent teacher doesn't let it get in the way of the bigger picture, it just means parents often get the final say in how their child is taught, especially if it is a one-on-one class rather than a group class.

The parents themselves are a mixture. Chinese culture, and therefore Taiwanese culture through proxy, puts heavy importance on the notion of "saving face" that is, never argue directly with someone, especially with other people present, causing someone to lose face will damage your relationship with them permanantly. Again, this is not a problem, i'm a patient person, as all good teachers should be, and I rarely find myself in a situation where I have to be careful how I act or speak, but there can often be problems where a parent is curteous to you and smiles and says goodbye to you like a satisfied parent would do, only to withdraw their student from your class the next day having decided you don't speak loud enough, or that you should spend 11 minutes on the spelling test rather than 12, without discussing this with you or your teacher. Little things like that can really frustrate me at times, but then, you can't please everybody, so you just concentrate on teaching to the best of your ability.

I've had my fair share of ignorant parents too. I say ignorant not to defame their personality as a whole, just their knowledge of teaching. They often have unrealistic expectations and after a child's very first lesson wonder why he or she can only speak 3 or 4 sentences. This is a very education

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