How to Support Bullied Daughter

CCsiteObsessed
Sun, 16 Oct 2011 21:41:47 +0000

Okay, when my kid was sick, she absolutely was in touch with everybody. The teacher doesn’t do e-mail, Facebook, or texts or have a conference period because she’s not faculty and teach other classes. Understanding her on cell is a problem because she doesn’t enunciate. At least she has an office, but she has a number of roles so she is not always there.

DD became alarmed when she saw that the committee had only done a tiny portion of what needed to be done and then stopped. They planned games, but didn’t recruit players or think about what equipment/supplies they might need. They didn’t plan a run through, or think about have the next group ready and waiting so there wouldn’t be a lag in the program, that type of thing. So DD felt she needed to coach the committee on what they needed to be thinking about and doing; she had no intention of doing it herself. I’m sorry folks, but IMHO, I think this is what the teacher should have been doing: Coaching them on preparing a detailed timeline, pushing them to identify every detail that needed to be addressed, having them thing about worst case scenarios and developing contingencies, etc. And the teacher DID review and approve DD’s schedule BTW.

I think DD was hoping to take this urban school from disorganized last minute seat of the pants chaos to a semblance of middle class professional expectations, but you don’t go from zero to ten in a couple of months. This year, there is an influx of freshman from middle class families, so parental expectations for functionality are high.

DD says she is stepping back and will only do the bulletin boards, the FaceBook page she created because she realized it was the only way most students would get announcements, and communications on the parents’ listserve. That’s plenty. The old time parents appreciate the greater communication and give her kudos in private emails and in person so that seems to be feeding her soul because she is being acknowledged for her hard work. Has she made mistakes? Yes, she knows she has. I still don’t think those sins were of the magnitude that justified a person flying off the handle and lashing into her. She doesn’t want to step down because she wants to make the school a better place. She wants to develop and leave a detailed binder with timelines, checklists, rules, etc. to make it easier for the next person since all good organizations should have a manual to refer to so that it isn’t like reinventing the wheel every time.