Requesting

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Home : 2005 : May : 11

Requesting
By Mary

Originally posted by Liz:
"Plus, you wonder how the "other" teachers feel when they're not chosen by parents - sure it might make them look at their teaching, but it also has to make it more difficult to get along with
their colleagues knowing the parents think they're bad teachers."
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My response:
Although I am now a stay-at-home mom, I used to teach in an inner city high school. Of course in a HS setting, teachers & courses are "chosen" all the time.
Initially, when I became an "elementary school parent", I was shocked to hear that public elementary schools allowed

requests. I agree that requests are, but shouldn't be, abused by parents wanting a teacher that puts on a play each year or some other low-impact issue. However, I now realize there are often requests that teachers and other parents never know about, and if they did, they still would NOT know the reasoning behind the request - Nor should they always.

I must ask you - are parents TRULY supposed to be concerned about one grown-up teacher being difficult for other teachers to get along with??? Or are they supposed to be concerned that their children get the best education possible?

I believe that in an elementary school setting - or any school setting for that matter - that has multiple teachers for one grade level, a principal SHOULD take a good look at teachers that are receiving a lot of requests as well as those that parents request NOT to have. It IS an administrator's job to evaluate the teacher's in his/her building/district.

Maybe the teachers that are not being requested need more training. Maybe there's even something more wrong. Hopefully something minor that can be helped.

In the case of the teachers that ARE being requested, administrators should be looking to see what they are doing RIGHT! Or if people are requesting them for inappropriate reasons such as "not much homework".

I've seen too many instances of teachers achieving tenure and the district then regarding them as untouchable. It is the children that suffer in these cases.