Does Your Kid Have a Great Teacher? Here’s how you know

After meeting with your child’s teacher spend some some time thinking about these
ideas listed below to help you decide if you have a great teacher for your child.
And even though most people make up their minds about whether they like others or
not in a few seconds, give your child’s teacher a fair shot and meet with her
several times to learn enough about her to make a decision. These may help serve as a
guideline for you.

1. Does she care about your child in every way? A great teacher is a trained
observer of children and looks out for signs of poor learning, social adjustment
problems, poor vision, poor hearing, learning problems, and whether he/she is happy
or not. These are documented and based on many observations and are not a subjective
and momentary judgment.

2. Does she listen to your concerns and your child’s concerns? Does she ask
clarifying questions about your child’s dreams, goals, desires? Does she make plans
and set goals with this information?

3. Does she exhibit good values, is she moral and honest, and considered respectable?
He/she may have different values than yours but they would not be considered a
harmful influence or morally bankrupt.

4. Does she respect your family and demonstrate that by being courteous and
considerate? Examples of this would be: Answering your questions with courtesy,
respecting your family situation- whatever that may be, returning phone calls or
emails promptly, setting up conferences when requested or needed.

5. Great teachers respect the importance of good grades and test scores but also
value the learning and growth that may have occurred that grades sometimes cannot
measure. She is able to demonstrate this growth through understandable and acceptable
measures. Examples might be learning journals, performance tasks, benchmark tasks,
essays, experiments, reports etc.

6. She communicates clearly, fairly and as frequently as is humanly possible and as
much as that family may wish. Examples of this may be: Newsletters, letters, phone
calls, announcements of events. Others might include letting you know your child is
failing in time for him/her to recover his/her grade before the end of the reporting
period.
Or if your child has been sick for a week, he/she is not required to complete every
worksheet he/she has missed but only the most important ones for learning.

7. She is equitable or fair with all students. Examples might include giving everyone
a chance to redo a problem on the math exam because everyone failed that problem.
She doesn’t punish the whole class for the infractions of a few.

8. She values the immense possibilities from learning through taking risks, errors, and
mistakes and sees learning as a journey. She encourages a low-risk environment in
the classroom. Kids are encouraged to take risks and are not chastised for mistakes.

9. She is knowledgeable about and values cultural, racial, and religious
differences, and teaches diversity in the classroom. This means it is an integrated
part of her curriculum all year, not just for a holiday.

10. She is academically competent and thoroughly trained in all areas. She may have a
certification of training for a special form of learning and that’s okay. But she
should be certified in the main area of her teaching. If she is teaching all the
math for fifth grade, let’s make sure she has a degree in math or the requisite
educational hours (this could be 18 hours at the collegiate level).

I hope you have found this information helpful. Remember to give your child’s
teacher a chance and interact enough before making any judgments- just like you
would like her to do for you!