Teaching tips: Dealing with difficult parents

As if our job is not made hard enough when we're given unruly students, we sometimes have to deal with difficult parents who seem to be hell-bent on making our lives more complicated. It is important to understand that these parents where once students themselves. As we all know, traditional teachers were allowed to use discipline policies which are generally frowned upon in today's modern classroom. Some traditional discipline methods included whole-class punishment, psychological abuse and, for the older parents, even corporal punishment. Of course things have now changed but it should come as no surprise that some parents regard teachers with great distrust; for them we are, and always will be, the scary dictators who ruined their childhood. You have a certain responsibility to show difficult parents that times have changed, show them that you are their friend and that you and them share a common interest: the success of the student. Showing them how concerned you are for their child's long-term well being is key for obtaining a healthy relationship with the parents. These points may help you deal effectively with difficult parents:

• When talking to them, make sure that your eyes are at the same level as theirs. Don't let them look down at you. If you are sitting down, then stand up.
  
• Listen attentively and don't interrupt. The need to justify yourself may be strong but it is important that you take your time to device a proper response.
• Be rational. Offer a reasonable solution to whatever it is that's bothering them and make sure that you both agree on the solution. It is important that you don't make compromises in order to avoid further conflicts, otherwise this may be harmful in the long run.
  
• Mind your Ps and Qs.
• Constantly be assertive, if the parent tries to verbally bully you need to show them that their behavior is unacceptable...if the parent doesn't get the gist then show them that you won't continue the discussion unless they change their attitude. This is EXTREMELY important, failing to do this might cause the situation to quickly get out of hand.
  
• If the parents try to haress you outside the school, then you have the right to call the police. Your responsibility does not extend outside your classroom.

Please feel free to share more ideas with us by leaving a comment with this post.
Take care, and as always, I'll keep you posted.

Teaching: Effective classroom management

I have already written a post about effective classroom management. This should hopefully be a more detailed and direct post tackling the subject.
As a teacher you MUST avoid:

• Over-appeasing students: some teachers will do anything to be the students' best friend. Keep in mind that before you are the students' friend, you are their teacher. If punishment is needed then use it.
• Ambiguous questions: questions need to be direct and easy to understand. A good way of overcoming this problem is to tell students who have understood a question to explain it to their peers.
• Not learning students' names: it is very difficult to conduct an effective lesson when you don't know the names of your students since directing questions to particular students or correcting student's behavior becomes overtly-complicated.
• not acting on bad behavior: verbal threats alone will not accomplish anything.
• Ignoring bad behavior: this is a definite no-no. Bad behavior will not stop simply by ignoring it. Act immediately on it. Set down some ground rules and give out punishment if students challenge these rules. Punishment may involve writing lines, take away a fun activity, whole-class punishment (use this sparingly as a last resort)
• Standing in the same area of the class during lessons: While conducting your lessons, move around the whole area of your classroom. This will discourage bad behavior.
• Silent classes: unless the students are working on a test or an individual exercise, your classroom must not be silent. It should constantly be a flurry of ideas and information.
• Being too serious: Lessons need to have some fun elements in order to make it interesting otherwise students will get bored and break your class-rules. Crack some occasional jokes and use lots of media for your lessons. On the other hand you must not over do this, otherwise students will not take you seriously.
• Overpraising students: don't praise students for doing things that they are expected to do.

That's it for today. As always, If you have any questions or ideas that you want to share with everyone, feel free to leave a comment.