Now first off I’m no teacher. But, I feel like every teacher should get their kid at least once. I think it would provide a feedback opportunity from basically as honest of a source as you can get.
If an assignment takes too long, your kid might confess that to you. If you think an assignment takes like thirty minutes max but your kid takes like two hours, that might mean something.
Students don’t always reach out to teachers, especially if that teacher is more of an isolated type rather than an outgoing one. When no students speak up, no reforms get made, and over time if someone does speak up, the teacher will more likely dismiss it since it’s been working for years and “no one else complained.”
I think that witnessing your class being tackled by your own kid gives some insight to what it actually feels like. Teachers might witness the struggles of a student they’ve never seen before because they never saw them work on the work at home before. These could all lead to reforms in the classroom that would lead to an overall more positive atmosphere.
I understand though if one still doesn’t want their kid in class. I probably couldn’t keep myself composed if my kid was staring at me while I walk around babbling.
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boob
I feel like this is the opposite of what you want? At basically every age group it would be distracting and detrimental to a kids education once their 30+ other classmates knew they were the teacher’s kid.
Kids act & treat their own parents completely differently than they do their teacher or any instructor. I just don’t see this working effectively tbh
I’ve seen a lot of kids who were the kids of a teacher struggle because of it. Whether due to expectations, the inability to escape the school world ever, the inability to slack off or take it easy, the social difference they experience, etc. I believe the opposite: Kids should not be placed in their parent’s class unless it is unavoidable.
You don’t really need your own kid to be in your classroom to know these things. Teachers just need to work on noticing what methods work and what don’t through trial and error.
Hahaha. Do you have kids? Or have you ever worked with kids? Kids have very different relationships with their teachers than they do their parents (as they should) so blurring those lines at school is unhealthy.
You think your kid is going to be an “honest source” for you? Nope. There are lots of ways that goes wrong: your child acts up because they’re “the teacher’s kid” and therefore think they can get away with it, your child retreats into themselves because there might be a social stigma about being the teacher’s kid and other kids treat him differently, you’d be biased and treat your kid differently than other students because they’re your kid. And that’s just off the top of my head…
It’s actually preferred the opposite so that if the kid does well othe kids/their parents can’t complain that the teacher kid is getting extra perks. Favoritism can be hard to prove, but also disprove. Better for them not to be in their parents classroom most of the time.
God NO!
OP: First off, I’m never done this before, but I think everyone should do this.
Have an upvote.
There’s no way in hell I would ever live—let alone raise my kids—in the district where I work.
I teach an elective. I didn’t want my daughter to take my classes because I could teach her my classes at home, and without the classwork and tests.
This is what I think schools should be doing – teaching what can’t be taught by parents or at home.
I wanted her to learn skills from the other electives that I didn’t know or couldn’t teach her. So my daughter knew how to read before kindergarten and could read cursive by 1st grade. Cursive wasn’t being taught in school, but she would read my writing and figure it out. And as she grew up, I taught her how to do the things I teach.
As a parent, you’ve already been “teaching” your child your way. They need to see other methods of teaching from others. It’s part of learning that not everyone is going to be like you (as a parent), good and / or bad.
I also didn’t want any accusations of being biased toward her, or her complaining that I was being harder on her, than other students in my class.
Regarding feedback on assignments, I look at what gets completed and how well it’s completed by all students in class. I have a variety, from high flyers to sleeping and don’t care. If my high flyers can get something done in 45 mins, but my don’t cares take 120 mins, I’m going to give some allowance on time, but lean more to the high flyers.
Some parents, and unfortunately teacher parents are in this group, need to be more realistic in how their kids behave in class.
My fifth grade teacher had her daughter in her class once. She said she was extra hard on her daughter, because she knew what her daughter was capable of. So, not exactly what you’re hoping for.
I went to the same elementary school my mom taught at and even that wasn’t ideal. I used to get in trouble in first grade for sneaking into her classroom and hiding under her desk lol. She basically picked which teacher I’d have each year. It was sometimes awkward for my friends who’d had her as a teacher.
i’m a former teacher and i can say that most principals won’t be down with that. the last thing they want to deal with is favoritism issues.
The kid would get preferential treatment because their parent is the teacher.
I had a middle school classmate whose mother was a social studies teacher. He was never placed in her class for the school year, and he had a different teacher instead.
It’s like any other job where they need to know if you have any family members that work in the company. My cousin’s ex job at a retail shoe store didn’t allow workers and their family members working in the same store location. The company would place them at two different shops.
I’m from a very small town, so at the high school level, any teacher with a kid in the school ends up with their kid in their class at least once. Both of my friend’s parents are teachers at that school. The lowest mark she ever received in a high school course was from her own father, and 15 years later, she still reminds him about it.
Teaching your own child can be great or awful, just depending on the individual people involved. It’s not one size fits all.
I am a teacher, and I did teach my daughter last year. She was in 8th grade, and I was teaching Social Studies. I was the only SS teacher for the whole grade level. So, there was no way around it. (Small K-8 school)
While at school, she never called me Mom. It was always Mrs. Ok. I never showed favoritism. We managed to get most of the way through the school year before the students realized she was my daughter. That’s what we wanted. We were both there to do our jobs. Me teach and her doing schoolwork.
I’ve always tried to be a thoughtful and caring teacher. I do think that since becoming a parent myself, it added perspective. I know how I want my own child to be treated, but I also know that all kids can be frustrating no matter how much we love them. So, I feel like I’ve figured out a good balance of firmness and fairness.
If you introduce their own kid you introduce favoritism and possible bias for the teacher, mostly of no fault of their own as its their kid, biologically they’re going to care that little bit more about them.
You also risk embarrassing the kid. Other kids are ruthless and if you give them an opportunity they’ll make at LEAST one joke about how your mom/dad is the teacher.
You want feedback just standardize a way to have kids submit anonymously to the teacher how they feel the class is going on regular intervals. In office work we call it a “team health check”. Schools can definitely benefit from it, I agree, just not in that form.
As a teachers’ kid, I strongly disagree. My parents didn’t teach any of my school classes, only as substitutes, but having them teach at the same school already got my classmates to make all sorts of wild assumptions about me. That preferential treatment because of my parents was the reason I was getting good grades (I didn’t always get good grades), that if I would likely snitch on them, that I would get away with more, even though I was more likely to get in trouble for making an innocent joke.
As for the whole speaking up and giving feedback part, I did not dare when my parents were tutoring me at home. They would have taken personal offence or seen it as making excuses.
I disagree. As a teacher ,from what I’ve seen from kids who have been taught by their parents ,or have their parent in the school, tend to be more entitled. It feels like they think they can get away with more or just not have to do certain things.
I was a teachers kid, my mom in grade school, my dad in highschool. It sucked.