Recently, I was scrolling through Facebook when a post popped out at me.
Jane, a Florida mom, said her daughter was visibly upset when she picked her up from middle school that day. She wrote:
“I’m so furious right now, I’m trembling. My daughter has pretty severe social anxiety. It’s something we have been actively working on. Today, one of her teachers asked her to read out loud; then decided she wasn’t reading loud enough. She had her read it over again, and still wasn’t satisfied. This turned into almost a dozen times my daughter had to read it with the teacher and the entire class needling and berating her. When my daughter finally shut down and stopped reading the teacher snatched the book from her and told her to put her head down on her desk for the rest of class. Guess who will be making a visit to the school tomorrow?”
As both a mom and an educator, I had conflicting feelings. Teachers are fiercely loyal to each other. We have a really tough job and are all too often undervalued and unappreciated, so we’re quick to have each other’s backs.
But as a mom, I felt for Jane and knew I’d be upset if my daughter came home crying because of a teacher. So I reached out to Jane and invited her to sit down and tell me the whole story.
We met a few days after the incident. Jane went to the school first thing the next morning. She spoke to the principal and then to the teacher. The teacher was adamant Jane’s daughter was deliberately reading quietly to defy her. The teacher said if students are unable to audibly read out loud, they should be in a lower level class.
My daughter also struggles with social anxiety and there are days reading out loud in front of the whole class would be nearly impossible for her. Reading anxiety doesn’t mean a student is lacking skills or is being uncooperative.
Melissa Kruse, a middle school reading and writing coach and founder of Reading and Writing Haven, privately asked her students about their comfort level with reading out loud through a writer questionnaire at the beginning of the school year.
Students have the option to mark “Please don’t call on me.” They can also indicate they love reading and would be happy to be called on at any time, or a few options in between the two extremes.
Kruse suggests alternatives to putting students on the spot, such as assigning passages in advance with time to practice, partnering up to read, reading in small groups or allowing students to record themselves reading passages alone. These accommodations help students develop confidence and conquer their reading anxiety.
Jane’s daughter’s teacher instilled shame, which just makes the anxiety bigger for the child.
The principal heard Jane’s concerns that her daughter no longer feels safe in that particular classroom environment. The principal offered Jane’s daughter her choice of three schedule changes.
While Jane appreciated the principal’s willingness to immediately remove her daughter from that teacher’s class, she decided to continue up the chain of command to the district level. “I’m not done with this,” Jane says. “I want to make sure this teacher understands what she did is harmful, and that she won’t continue shaming other kids.”
As a parent, I think Jane did a great job of addressing a situation that caused her daughter great embarrassment and stress.
As a teacher, I appreciate her keeping her cool—even after she and the teacher didn’t see eye to eye. She kept it classy on Facebook and never revealed the teacher’s name or the school her daughter attends. She also took a few days to cool off before going to the school district about the incident.
Yes, teachers are human too. Sometimes they do things that make us shake our heads, and that often causes internal conflict in other teachers. As teachers, we want to defend our colleagues and often feel guilty if we disagree with them.
However, our first priority is to our students. We aren’t traitors for standing up for what’s best for them.
We all have off days. Sometimes, it goes deeper than that. Just like in any field, teachers don’t all enjoy the job and we’re not all good at it.
However, we can still learn from the missteps of others and vow to do better ourselves.
These situations provide us with opportunities to think about what we’d do differently, so we can hopefully keep our cool when we’re having a bad day.
Image courtesy of iStock.
