When you have a sense that your child needs something different from school, resist the temptation to fire off an email or corner the teacher at drop off. Take a deep breath, remind yourself that children are resilient, and remember that you need to keep your relationship with the school positive for several years to come. Advocating for children in public school is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t act quickly unless you child’s safety is at risk.
All discussions with the school require evidence.
Take notes and collect evidence. This is step 2.
My first experience in one of those Huge, Intimidate The Parents Meeting (aka “intervention team meeting”) at my child’s school came part way through my daughter’s 2nd grade year. As any good, modern parent, I googled and posted questions on message boards seeking guidance on how to prepare (Here's the most comprehensive article I found, though there are major gaps that I'll address in time). My kid was bored, clearly ahead of the class in multiple areas, and asking for more. And suddenly, she was refusing to go to school. Something had to change.
The universal response to my question was to bring evidence of what the child does at home, like workbook pages. Ummm, my kids don’t do workbooks at home. They don’t like them, and I have been cautious to not make the fit between my child and their school day worse. I had no evidence, or so I thought. My main problem, in retrospect, was in record keeping. Start this now, even if things are mostly ok. It's a good habit to establish.
When planning this blog, I asked folks for topic suggestions. Organization came up several times. I should be the last person on this planet to discuss organizational schemes. Here goes nothing.
Note taking: Jot down direct quotes from your child with dates and times, and annotate the context. I now use a calendar that sits near that spot where paper accumulates in the house. I print out a stack of 1-month calendars at the start of the school year. Each kid is in a different color. I also jot down notes of other issues that may or may not be related to school.
As a parent advocating for my child, I need to figure out what my child is experiencing as well as to figure out what my child needs. I don’t get a lot of details from my kids about their day. Sometimes issues require sleuthing out an underlying cause not directly evident to my child or that my child can’t or won’t express.
When my daughter was in second grade (in this blog, you’ll see lots of her 2nd grade stories. It was a pivotal year in many ways), my daughter was having awful days about twice a week. She would be upset at the end of the day, only saying she hated school. Jotting notes on the calendar, I noted that it was a consistent two days each week, days that I ultimately traced to days her class went to art. Something in the art class was causing her tremendous stress. This allowed me to have a productive conversation with the teacher about art class, and the issue was ultimately addressed.
On this calendar, I now also note things my kids do that surprise me, books read, startling questions and uses of vocabulary, as well as comments about wishing she could learn something at school just once. I go for direct quotes when I can (denoted by double quotation marks) and as approximate as I can remember (denoted with a ‘~’ and single quotation marks). This long record is not necessarily immediately useful, but it’s potentially very valuable in the long run.
I had no such thing available to me at the time of that first intervention meeting.
Collect evidence: Teachers generally do not see or hear the same things about school you do. When your child is asking for more or is struggling in a particular area, start a folder and collect returned schoolwork or other things your child does. I keep the folder the teacher passes out for back to school night and shove everything into it for later sorting. Things I keep include spelling lists where my child miscopies the words from the book, speed multiplication tests where handwriting causes issues, math worksheets where my child shows real insight, and poetry with adult-like vocabulary.
I also collect drawings and other things my kids do at home spontaneously. Add the date and the child's naThe one pictured here is the single piece of evidence I could bring with me to that intervention meeting when my daughter was in 2nd grade. On the walk to school one day, she’d noted how tree branches were like mini tree trunks, and twigs were like mini tree branches, and so forth. I told her what that was called, and we discussed other examples of fractals (mountains and coastlines), and I later showed her some mathematical ones when it came up again at home the next day. My drawing was black and white lines. This fairy drawing is what she drew in indoor recess about a week after those discussions. I brought the to the meeting (it went badly. Very badly. Note the planned post on Mistakes Were Made). Part way through the meeting I gave up on the rest of the 2nd grade year, and decided not to say anything about the drawing. It was silly, I thought. My daughter was asking to learn multiplication, what did this fractal fairy have to do with that? By this point, the teacher had seen dozens of such drawings that my daughter had put on school work, filling time when she was done with her work. No one in the room would care. Well, I placed the drawing next to me as I looked for a different sheet of notes. Sitting next to me was the gifted teacher. At the end of the meeting, the gifted teacher quietly and casually said, “you know, we can test your child to see if a subject acceleration in math might be warranted. All you have to do to get the process started is to fill out a form.” In the end, the right person saw the necessary evidence.
More fractals
All discussions with the school require evidence.
Take notes and collect evidence. This is step 2.
My first experience in one of those Huge, Intimidate The Parents Meeting (aka “intervention team meeting”) at my child’s school came part way through my daughter’s 2nd grade year. As any good, modern parent, I googled and posted questions on message boards seeking guidance on how to prepare (Here's the most comprehensive article I found, though there are major gaps that I'll address in time). My kid was bored, clearly ahead of the class in multiple areas, and asking for more. And suddenly, she was refusing to go to school. Something had to change.
The universal response to my question was to bring evidence of what the child does at home, like workbook pages. Ummm, my kids don’t do workbooks at home. They don’t like them, and I have been cautious to not make the fit between my child and their school day worse. I had no evidence, or so I thought. My main problem, in retrospect, was in record keeping. Start this now, even if things are mostly ok. It's a good habit to establish.
When planning this blog, I asked folks for topic suggestions. Organization came up several times. I should be the last person on this planet to discuss organizational schemes. Here goes nothing.
Note taking: Jot down direct quotes from your child with dates and times, and annotate the context. I now use a calendar that sits near that spot where paper accumulates in the house. I print out a stack of 1-month calendars at the start of the school year. Each kid is in a different color. I also jot down notes of other issues that may or may not be related to school.
As a parent advocating for my child, I need to figure out what my child is experiencing as well as to figure out what my child needs. I don’t get a lot of details from my kids about their day. Sometimes issues require sleuthing out an underlying cause not directly evident to my child or that my child can’t or won’t express.
When my daughter was in second grade (in this blog, you’ll see lots of her 2nd grade stories. It was a pivotal year in many ways), my daughter was having awful days about twice a week. She would be upset at the end of the day, only saying she hated school. Jotting notes on the calendar, I noted that it was a consistent two days each week, days that I ultimately traced to days her class went to art. Something in the art class was causing her tremendous stress. This allowed me to have a productive conversation with the teacher about art class, and the issue was ultimately addressed.
On this calendar, I now also note things my kids do that surprise me, books read, startling questions and uses of vocabulary, as well as comments about wishing she could learn something at school just once. I go for direct quotes when I can (denoted by double quotation marks) and as approximate as I can remember (denoted with a ‘~’ and single quotation marks). This long record is not necessarily immediately useful, but it’s potentially very valuable in the long run.
I had no such thing available to me at the time of that first intervention meeting.
Collect evidence: Teachers generally do not see or hear the same things about school you do. When your child is asking for more or is struggling in a particular area, start a folder and collect returned schoolwork or other things your child does. I keep the folder the teacher passes out for back to school night and shove everything into it for later sorting. Things I keep include spelling lists where my child miscopies the words from the book, speed multiplication tests where handwriting causes issues, math worksheets where my child shows real insight, and poetry with adult-like vocabulary.
I also collect drawings and other things my kids do at home spontaneously. Add the date and the child's naThe one pictured here is the single piece of evidence I could bring with me to that intervention meeting when my daughter was in 2nd grade. On the walk to school one day, she’d noted how tree branches were like mini tree trunks, and twigs were like mini tree branches, and so forth. I told her what that was called, and we discussed other examples of fractals (mountains and coastlines), and I later showed her some mathematical ones when it came up again at home the next day. My drawing was black and white lines. This fairy drawing is what she drew in indoor recess about a week after those discussions. I brought the to the meeting (it went badly. Very badly. Note the planned post on Mistakes Were Made). Part way through the meeting I gave up on the rest of the 2nd grade year, and decided not to say anything about the drawing. It was silly, I thought. My daughter was asking to learn multiplication, what did this fractal fairy have to do with that? By this point, the teacher had seen dozens of such drawings that my daughter had put on school work, filling time when she was done with her work. No one in the room would care. Well, I placed the drawing next to me as I looked for a different sheet of notes. Sitting next to me was the gifted teacher. At the end of the meeting, the gifted teacher quietly and casually said, “you know, we can test your child to see if a subject acceleration in math might be warranted. All you have to do to get the process started is to fill out a form.” In the end, the right person saw the necessary evidence.
More fractals