Survey Time: Editing your child's school work

epiphany
Fri, 12 Jun 2015 15:51:58 +0000

Yes, I will look at my children’s work if they ask. I am a reading/ English teacher and have a lot more time to teach them than their own teachers. So giving me something to read for them means that they are responsible for all the re-writes, but I will point out and discuss errors and things that are not communicated clearly. I never would try to make a child’s work into my own or change their voice or particular point of view.

I don’t have an ethical problem with that. Since I am also a an English/reading/writing teacher, I also did have the time, opportunity, & knowledge to do that, but since their schools (elem. & high) laid a good foundation in the first place, they were gradually and progressively shaped into writers.

I guess my problem is less with situations in which the teacher is not instructing and not providing sufficient feedback for the student to learn from errors. I actually tutor such students precisely because they are getting little to no explanations for their grades, and that tutoring involves instruction, modeling, and an awful lot of dialogue. Naturally a parent might have to play a similar role if (i.m.o.) the child is being cheated. I mean, what you would think if you enrolled your son in an auto mechanics class, and the instructor saw his role as commanding the student to “fix the car” yet didn’t show how to do that?

Instead, this is a private school student, and all of the classes are small, with sufficient time for the teachers to be doing what some of you have had to do for your children. Writing is hard work, and correcting is hard work, but if you don’t want that kind of work, you shouldn’t be hired to do such a job. Again, however, the parent is not instructing but over-writing, heavily editing, etc.