by Lawrence George

Created on: September 05, 2009   Last Updated: September 07, 2009

Your child's teacher is, for that year, the most important person in the education of your child beyond yourself. So building a good relationship is with them essential for your confidence as well as your child's.

Like any relationship, there are few hard and fast rules. It is difficult to pin down how to do it: there are a few things to look out for, though.

Firstly, try not to march in on or near the first day of term demanding to speak to the teacher, and then laying out how special, full of undiagnosed problems your child is or how last year's teacher treated them terribly. Teachers know that children are special. If a teacher senses that a parent is starting out the year by making excuses, or being aggressively defensive of their child, their alarm bells will ring and dealing with them directly will become harder. It won't affect how they teach your child, but it will mean that their opinion of you, and therefore, how they deal with you will change. If you have legitimate concerns about your child's progress then lay them out carefully and as dispassionately as possible, so that the topic can be discussed on a professional level.

Parents sometimes forget that the relationship is built on different foundations: the parent takes an emotive view of their child, the teacher a professional one. Dealing with a professional, therefore, requires more than the emotive outpourings we are all subject to when we talk about people we love.

This is not meant to be patronising. It simply means, that just as teachers need to understand - and they generally do, for they are often parents themselves - what it means to have and love a child, parents need to realise that teachers will approach any problem or incipient issue with a determination to discover the nature of it first, then to consider resolutions.

Secondly, when a genuine problem does arise during the term, parents should be aware of the best ways of resolving it. If you feel, as sometimes parents do, that your child's teacher is not approaching your child in the right way, it is better to go to them than straight to the head. That will ensure your relationship with the teacher is destroyed. Any professional educator will talk to you calmly about your concerns first and will respect you for it. If you are still not happy, then the head is there for you to see.

Consider the nature of the problem you face. Is it that the spellings are too hard? Is it that your child now hates math? Is it bullying? It is important

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>