What is the one thing you would like to be able to honestly tell a parent of one of your students?

Not in a jerky sort of way, but actual concerns you have to sugar-coat because of the fact that it's a child's parent.





Write it here.What is the one thing you would like to be able to honestly tell a parent of one of your students?
I would love to be able to say (and would if I could think of a way not to sugar-coat it but to say it tactfully or at least in a way that wouldn't devastate the parents) that their child is struggling academically because they're just not all that smart. I know that sounds awful but I had two students one year who went through the child-study process to see if they qualified for special education. Both had been held back (one twice so she was 13 in the fifth-grade), failing academically, frustrated parents and frustrated teacher. Neither qualified for anything except help with speech (because they were found to be in the bottom one percent of receptive language). Their parents, I think, wanted them to qualify for special education in the hopes that this would be the educational equivalent of a diagnoses that would proceed to the special education cure that would ensure their child would be normal. Both also were found to have IQs between 70 and 75. Not low enough to receive services for mental retardation but it made it really hard for them to do well in a normal classroom and almost impossible to qualify for special education.What is the one thing you would like to be able to honestly tell a parent of one of your students?
Your child isn't telling you the whole truth. I have to say this kindly to parents all the time (I'm a college Dean, so I'm saying this about the students of the faculty in my college when parents call to complain about a faculty member, after I have investigated the circumstances), and most parents don't react well to it, but their kids have told them that their teacher was utterly unfair, never told them that something was going to be included on the test, or that the paper was supposed to take a certain form, when it was all clearly on the syllabus. The students whose parents I have to tell this to rarely admit that they haven't been to class in months, or that they used their textbook money to go out drinking, or that the reason they are failing the class was NOT because the teacher unfairly didn't like one of their papers, but that they had failed five tests before that. Many parents choose to immediately believe their sons or daughters and to take their sides against an instructor, when in very clear fact the child was in the wrong.
I'm not a parent or a teacher but I think that it's insane that teacher's can't be honest to parents about their kids because their afraid of getting sued or something. I mean they shouldn't be able to say that little Johnny is a dipshit but they shouldn't have to sugar coat the fact that he's not the brightest crayon in the box and needs remedial classes (or whatever the problem is, especially if it's behavioral).
I had a very hard time with a student once actually letting his parents know the truth. I was teaching year 2 in a s private school in Uganda (UK system) and Roland had already been held back a year after being transferred from another Kampalan school. He was transferred because they had no facilities for special needs. I had to tell his parents at the end of the year that he had special needs. His parents thought (hoped) he was just shy, but he was being overtaken ';academically'; by his 3 year old brother. I had to tell them this. It was awful. But they had to know the truth, it was not because he was shy. He had almost no working memory, so he couldn't remember the numbers up to ten, let alone the alphabet. He was nearly 8 at this point.


In the end I had to burst their ballooon and just tell the truth. Of course by then we had a structure for his education in the next school year. Not easy, but I will never lie.
Stop babying your child! She won't do her work without whining and asking for help every 5 seconds! She CAN do the work, I've seen her do it! But she acts like a baby and doesn't try!
Your child has some serious behavior issues and can be an *** at times