Every Child Can Succeed by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

Author:Cynthia Ulrich Tobias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 0000000000000
Publisher: Focus on the Family
Published: 2012-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Plan of Action

Using a separate sheet of paper for each of your children, write down what you see as his/her greatest success in school. Why do you think he/she is experiencing this success? Write down what you see as his/her greatest challenge in school. Why is this challenging? Talk with your child about what you wrote, emphasizing his/her strengths and how they can be used to meet challenges and overcome limitations.

Chapter Eight

Making Teachers Your Allies

By now you should be convinced that your child is a wonderfully complex and capable individual, possessing many strengths and abilities that may never be recognized or appreciated in school. Uh-oh—school. Your children must spend several years of their lives in a place that’s not exactly known for being flexible and understanding when it comes to students who don’t conform to the system. What can you do to make sure each of your children will be valued and nurtured? How can you effectively communicate your child’s strengths to each teacher? What if your child’s teacher truly doesn’t care?

Many parents feel they have little control over the system that has been established to offer their children a formal education. The fact is, parents do have a great deal of control—but we need to use it wisely and approach our task positively.

After one of my parent seminars recently, one enthusiastic mother was eager to have me autograph a book for someone else. “I’m giving this book to my son’s teacher,” she explained. “I’m going to tell her she needs to read this!”

I winced. “Please,” I said, “don’t approach his teacher that way. She may never read the book!”

I’ve been a teacher in the public schools, and over the past several years, I’ve taught and worked with teachers and administrators in both the public and private sectors. As a result of what I’ve discovered in person as well as from the resources and contacts available to me, I want to assure you that most teachers care very much about their students. They are, by and large, a dedicated group of professionals who are willing to help parents in their efforts to motivate their children to succeed. But teachers have a difficult job description, complicated by the fact that most of them must deal with 20–160 students every day. Understanding learning styles does, in both the short and the long run, make a teacher’s job easier. It is possible for a teacher to integrate many learning style approaches into the same classroom in practical and effective ways. Included in the bibliography at the end of this book are several resources specifically geared toward helping teachers adapt to various student learning styles.

But what happens if your child has a teacher who either doesn’t know about or doesn’t teach to the different learning styles? How can you tell teachers about this approach without putting them on the defensive or seeming like a know-it-all, interfering parent? I gathered dozens of trusted colleagues in the education field and posed this very question. I asked

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.