Parents: 19 Meaningful Questions You Should Ask Your Child’s Teacher
Stock photo courtesy of iStock.com/Steve Debenport
Back-to-school content is typically geared toward teachers and students, which makes sense given the fact that these two groups will be responsible for the majority of the workload.
The ultimate support system for students, on the other hand, is not an expert teacher, but rather an informed and supportive family. Formal education in the United States faces several significant challenges, one of which is the chasm that exists between schools and their surrounding communities. Informed families are more likely to connect seamlessly to a wide range of other educational structures, from extracurricular activities and tutoring to reading programs and school-related events, and the more informed they are, the more seamless their connections will be.
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While schools (hopefully) work to modernize themselves and how students learn within them, many parents are forced to make do with what they have at their disposal. Aside from in-depth content such as the guides on Edutopia’s website, much of the “parent stuff” you’ll find through Googling is decent enough, but it can be superficial or otherwise completely unrelated to the process of learning. Here are a few common examples:
“Inquire as to what they did today.”
“Assist them with their homework.”
“Assist them in dealing with separation anxiety.”
“Speak with them about their difficulties.”
“Appoint a tutor for them.”
However, these types of topical interactions are not always sufficient, and they do little to nothing to promote transparency between schools and their surrounding communities.
As a result, in the pursuit of greater transparency, the following questions will help you better understand what is going on in the classroom and then help you decide what kinds of non-superficial actions you can take at home to truly support your child’s learning. Please read them carefully. Many of the questions may appear to be a little direct, but I’m not aware of any teachers who would take offense at them if they were. The kind of increased capacity that questions like these could provide would be welcomed by the majority of my colleagues. In most cases, many of these questions are never brought up during parent-teacher conferences, but that is kind of the point.
Just make sure not to ask them all at the same time. You might want to choose two and hope for the best.
19 QUESTIONS YOUR CHILD’S TEACHER WOULD (PROBABLY) LOVE TO ANSWER
What academic standards do you adhere to, and what information do I need to be aware of to comply?
What will you do if or when my child has a difficult time in the classroom?
What are the most important and complex (content-related) concepts that my child should be able to comprehend by the end of the school year?
Do you place more emphasis on your strengths or your weaknesses?
In your classroom, how do you incorporate creativity and innovative thinking into your daily routine?
In what ways does critical thinking come into play daily in your classroom?
What strategies are used to ensure that assessments promote learning rather than simply measuring performance?
Can you tell me what I can do to encourage literacy in my home?
What kinds of questions do you recommend I ask my children about your class daily, and how do I go about doing so?
What exactly is the process by which learning is personalized in your classroom? Is it at the school?
What criteria do you use to evaluate academic progress?
The most common instructional or literacy strategies that you will employ this year are as follows:
What learning models do you employ (e.g., project-based learning, mobile learning, game-based learning, and so on), and what do you believe are the most significant advantages of taking this approach, are you willing to share them?
Was wondering if you could tell me about the best school or district resources that we should consider using as a family to help our child succeed in the classroom.
Is there any technology that you would recommend to assist my child in his or her self-directed learning efforts?
What are the most common roadblocks you see in your students’ academic progress while they are in your classroom?
What changes are taking place in education?
What do you think the teacher’s role is in the learning process is, and how do you feel about it?
What questions am I not asking that I should be?
Please share any interesting or surprising responses to these questions in the comments section below if you receive them. Thanks for participating!