Last week we talked about mean girls and how to deal with them. Sometimes those mean girls grow up and become teachers (or at least it seems like the teachers have always been mean).
Learning to deal with authority figures your daughter thinks of as mean is a critical skill as she moves into middle school and high school and even college. Gone are the elementary school days where if your child had a major personality conflict with a teacher you could just request a classroom switch. Now your daughter will have 7 or 8 different teachers each semester. She won’t click with all of them, but even if you did want to try another teacher, there may be only one option for that class for a time slot that will work. She has to learn to deal with mean teachers, and she may need a little help from you for that.
There are many similarities between dealing with a mean teacher and dealing with mean girls, so I am going to quickly run through the ones that are the same.
Side with your daughter. I understand that sometimes when your daughter feels a teacher is being mean, the reality is much more likely that the teacher is expecting a lot out of your child. Before rushing in to defend the teacher, though, your job is to listen to your daughter’s side. Find out what happened and let your daughter vent her frustration about the unfairness of the situation. Sometimes your daughter will just need to blow off some steam and then she will be ok. Other times you need to move on to step 2.
Decide not to step in unless absolutely necessary. I think this is why schools ask parents to make appointments to talk to teachers in person. If I could just text or call the teacher anytime, I would be more likely to step in to fix any and all situations my daughter finds unfair. When I have to wait, though, it gives my daughter and me time to rationally consider the problem. Many times we decide that an intervention is not even necessary, maybe more studying for the next test might be more appropriate. With that being said, though, there are times stepping in on your child’s behalf is totally necessary. Teachers have power over your child, and there are some teachers who will abuse that power. If your child has tried everything else and the problem persists, mammas, you can step in. Just remember to do it with respect and courtesy.
Create stories about the teacher. Please read this carefully—this does not mean to make up and spread lies about the teacher! The stories you and your daughter will make up are about what may have happened in the teacher’s day to cause her or him to be so mean. I remember when I was teaching I got great reviews from all of my classes except one. The students in that one class thought I was so mean, while students in other classes said I was the nicest teacher they had. What was the difference? I was the same me in all my classes, but the combination of students in that one class made it difficult for me to teach. When I was an at-risk coordinator in the school system, I would intervene between irate parents and frustrated teachers. Many times I would see teachers who were meaner than normal because they were going through a divorce or were dealing with a long-term illness of a family member. We have to help our daughters see that teachers are human too. So make up stories about what might have happened to the teacher in the minutes before your daughter came to her class.
Pray for the teacher. Once you remember that you heard someone mention that the teacher’s husband has cancer, pray for your daughter’s teacher and her husband. Pray for his healing and for her dealing with it all. Pray for their finances to cover needs. Pray for her relationship with her children. Pray for time for the teacher to plan lessons and grade papers. Pray that the teacher would enjoy her job and that parents and students would make her job easier instead of more difficult. When you cover the teacher in prayer, it is so much more difficult to stay mad at her.
Look for solutions. Sometimes after doing all the other steps, the problem remains. Your daughter may understand that the teacher yelled because she was upset at a bad teacher evaluation, but the 0 she gave the entire class for talking is still in the grade book. How can your daughter find a respectful and appropriate way to request a different outcome? You might need to role play scenarios and teach your daughter to ask for extra credit in a respectful manner. Your daughter might need to motivate her classmates to write a letter of apology to the teacher for their behavior. And if the teacher is unmovable, it might be appropriate for your daughter to request a conference with her supervisor about punishing the entire class academically for the bad behavior of a few. There are lots of different possible solutions, but your daughter won’t be able to think of any at first. This is a skill that you can help your daughter learn.
Since teachers are human, they make mistakes too. Please teach your daughter to deal with her mean teachers in a respectful and polite manner. Remember, she will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Come back next week as we look at strategies to help our daughters when life is unfair.
