Word: teacher
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...clear one reason many teachers loathe this part of the job is that they're not ready for it. Sydney University encourages role-playing by students, who take turns posing as parents, but this isn't the norm. Dosed up on theory, graduates are "unprepared for the real environment," says Brownlee. Confronted suddenly by parents, "they feel defensive and don't want to hear questions." Unfortunately, parents tend not to make allowances for callow teachers. "If someone is new within our walls," says St. Ives?based Howard, "they virtually have to prove themselves to parents. Teacher bashing is one thing...
...fact that some parents are bullies shouldn't cloud the issue of what decent parents might reasonably expect of teachers. Dissatisfied with the local primary school, Sydney mother-of-three Rachael withdrew her eldest daughter, now 10, and enrolled her in a private school. Her daughter's very bright, Rachael explains - with an IQ in the top 1% - but has a condition that interferes with her reading. So Rachael makes a point of meeting her daughter's teacher at the start of each year and regularly thereafter. "I make sure they've got all the literature...
...Most observers expect that the federal inquiry into teacher education will find that beginning teachers need more help than they're getting, starting with a beefed-up practical side to their training, then more support from colleagues. Dutch research suggests that mentoring - where schools assign experienced teachers to guide beginning ones - slashes attrition rates among the latter. Most Australian states and territories have dabbled in mentoring, but the practice isn't yet as widespread as it probably should be, says Sydney University's Ewing, who points to research indicating that up to 75% of beginning teachers in N.S.W...
...search for more harmonious teacher-parent relations, interested parties are brimming with ideas. Some parents are less concerned about raw teachers than about older, jaded ones. "Education departments need to give these teachers options to move on and do something outside the classroom," says the P. & C.'s Brownlee. "We're too narrow in our thinking." Some schools issue to parents written guidelines on how to approach teachers, explicitly forbidding bad language and threatening behavior...
...Other approaches are subtler: having identified the school's most demanding and exacting parents, schools invite them to address students in class on their field of expertise. The logic is simple: the kids will learn something, and so, hopefully, will the parents - about the challenges of teaching. A primary teacher wrote two pages of grievances against parents before concluding: "As a self-confessed smother mother, I've been guilty of several of the above transgressions." When steam's not pouring from their ears, even teachers will concede that parents act in nearly all cases out of passionate concern for their...