Interview of Parents

The final group of people we interviewed as a class were some parents of students. The first question asked dealt with how parents knew when to get involved with teachers. Steve said that part of education is the kids learning how to deal with situations on their own. He said that the only time he's been involved as a parent was when bad grades were involved. I think that as a teacher I would want my students' parents to be aware and updated in their education, but not overly protective to the point where the kids can't handle any teacher conflict themselves. Rebecca stated that creative, dynamic, informed, and active teachers help out a lot in motivating the kids. Mary Kay stated that she really appriciates teachers who would really try to help kids learn and suceed no matter what. As usual the No Child Left Behind Act was mentioned, but this time I found the responses to be more negative. Rebecca spoke first of how frustrating student teacher conferences have become since teachers have begun using graphs and data to explain how their children are doing. She said that assessment is good for schools, but if it was more individually focused it would be of more value. Steve went on so much as to say that the conferences are useless and he does not attend them any longer. He agrees that the data is just too much and confusing and it's just not working. Mary Kay thinks that the NCLB Act has good intentions, but it's just not working. I think that this is a problem that I never even realized before we interviewed these parents. Since we can not change the act, we need to educate the parents about what the data and graphs mean and make sure that during conferences the teacher still discusses the individual student, not just statistics. Many other topics were discussed during the interview, but the part that stuck with me towards the end was that although teacher salaries aren't ideal, the retirement is excellent for teachers. Overall I found that hearing the parents perspective on some of these issues helped me realize some other sides to the issues we have been discussing in these class interviews.