Tag Archives: attention

The School Stool

Picture 1By Travis

A few weeks ago, Tom had a post that spoke to me, We Can’t Do This Alone. In this post, he states how parent involvement is key to a student’s success, but somehow it seems that the focus becomes teacher quality. The idea of a shared responsibility for a student’s education, struck me as important since it has come up a few times at Stories for School. It came up again. Last week. During my parent conferences.

Each teacher had a table around the perimeter of the gym with two chairs in front for the parents and student. Parents visited any of the teachers with which they wish to have a conversation.

To my left was a senior math teacher. To my right, a sophomore technology teacher. Me … I am a freshman English teacher. I had a variety of conversations that night with parents about family responsibility. I was getting worn out having the same conversation with parents about what they can do to keep their student on track and I started to listen to the conversations on my left and right, it was clear my conversations were not unique. Many families are not ready for how school is done.

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