What are you hiding?

 What are you hiding?

 

Why don’t schools allow parents to visit in their children’s classrooms whenever they want to?   So just what are they hiding?

I mean when a loved one of mine has surgery, I can be in the operating room to watch and to make sure the surgeon is doing what she is supposed to be doing?  Isn’t that true?  Oh, it isn’t?

Well if my pharmacist is counting meds from the big bottle to the little bottle and typing the label, I can be there to make sure the count is correct and that he is accessing the correct big bottle.  Isn’t that true?  Oh, it isn’t?

Parents say they just want to see what their children are learning in school.  And that during all that virtual learning during the pandemic they got to see just what their kids were learning and who the good teachers were and who the bad teachers were.  Interestingly, no one suggested that untrained people had neither the skill set nor the background to be able to evaluate a professionally trained teacher.

And yes, it is true that parents are very invested in their child's education.  But it is very easily argued that parents are no less invested in any medical procedures for their children.  Yet there are no expectations that parents should invade these spaces nor evaluate medical professionals.

It has been suggested by advocates that the biggest barrier to having parents visit classrooms is that their child might be embarrassed.

In a few years, starting public school teachers in Maryland will be earning $60,000 right out of college.  The idea is that this kind of salary will attract the best and brightest people to be teachers.

Until teachers are given the level of respect of other professionals, we are not going to attract the best and brightest regardless of what they are paid because the best people don’t have to put up with these indignities.

The classroom is the teacher’s operating room.  The teacher may invite people in as needed and at her discretion.  Parents need to respect teachers AND their professional skill sets the way they do other professionals.  

If parents want to know what a child is learning in school, look at the homework or the classwork that is coming home.  OR even go online and check out the various curriculum guides that are posted.  

When lay people get to observe, evaluate and critique other professions, that would be a good time for lay people to start doing the same for teachers.

Until then, as an educator who is highly trained in my profession, you should know that I am not hiding anything, I just don’t need amateur invasion.