My son is three. Keep this in mind.
So I walk into his pre-school classroom last week, right? This room has two teachers: Mr. Rogers* and his assistant—let’s call her Vladmilla. Mr. Rogers is a young guy. Professional, mindful of the children as human beings with feelings… yes, even at the tender age of three. Vladmilla is much, much older. Not that age really makes much difference, because younger teachers, too, can develop the nasty, rude, emotionally abusive trait of loudly listing (usually to the parent, but not always) everything a given child is doing wrong that particular week while the child is still within earshot. But I mention it here as a factor, because parents of young children might be more hesitant to confront an older, “more experienced” teacher than they would a younger teacher. And this is a bad, bad move.
That particular week my three year old son was not tracing his I’s properly. Which is to say, the class was practicing printing. They are given morning worksheets. Each sheet (they do one a day) has a letter on it, and five dotted-line examples of it below. You trace the dotted lines. There are helpful arrows to show you how to do this. With a little bit of expert pre-school coaching, it should be a snap.
My son did his tracing with a green marker. Perhaps this violated some sort of pencil-only norm the preschool’s founders had established in its charter (its charter was signed in 1969—Vladmilla may or may not have been present at this event), and this triggered the initial stages of her wrath. We’ll never know.
The point is that his worksheet looked less like five neatly traced I’s and more like The Blob rolling and squishing its way over a hapless, medium-sized Midwestern town. This is what Vladmilla wanted me to understand. I am deaf. I lip read at about 2% accuracy (more on that in a moment). While I’m fairly sure she wasn’t actually screeching about blobs rolling over medium-sized Midwestern towns, I did lip read enough to catch her calling my son “sloppy.” (Yes, the 2% actually kicks in on some words. Had she instead said “Your son expresses an aptitude for creativity that we encourage, however, in regards to his spatial-linguistic capabilities, we feel that accuracy is of greater importance,” I might have replied, “Huh?”)
When Vladmilla stated, loudly, with my son easily within earshot, with the entire class listening, that my son was “sloppy,” I quickly glanced at him. He looked… well, not scared, but somewhat gravely concerned (I say “somewhat” because, while he may not have understood all of the words being used, he certainly recognized the tone of seriousness). Thankfully, his classmates didn’t look mortified—they were more focused on getting to the toys they wanted to play with. But by the 1st or 2nd grade the mortification would certainly be there. Everyone loves to pick on the kid the teacher singles out. After all, adults are role models, right? And kids learn what adults teach, even when adults are ignorant of the terrible lessons they are teaching.
I held up an “Okay, I get it” hand so Vladmilla would stop talking. Then I went over to my son, put a comforting hand on his back, looked pointedly at his worksheet, and said “But wow, what pretty green coloring! I really like this!” Then I gave him a quick kiss, said goodbye, and turned back to Vladmilla.
I asked her to come with me into the hallway. I did this without the emotion you would expect to be present in a 225lb father about to have words with someone who has just succeeded in making his three year old look (somewhat) gravely concerned. This is because, as a general rule, your first confrontation with someone should be calm, constructive, and done with dignity. Dignity means privacy. And if you display the emotions you would expect a father to be feeling in these types of situations, not only will there be no calm… you also won’t get them out into the hallway.
I came right to the point. “Please do not talk about my son, especially if you are saying something that could be interpreted as negative or critical, if my son is right there,” I said. “I realize that you are trying to give me feedback on his progress, and I appreciate that, and I’ll work with him and you. But if you have any feedback of this type in the future, tell me privately. Or even write it down for me. Then you can be sure it was communicated to me. Okay? But not in front of my son. Not when he’s right there.”
Vladmilla started to say something. I held up a hand.
“My deafness is going to interfere too much with this conversation. If you’d like to email me, please do so. Or I’d be happy to email you. But for now, if you don’t mind, I’d just like for you to nod ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this one question: Have I made my concerns clear to you? I don’t want you to criticize my son or his work right in front of him. But you can say or write anything you’d like to me privately. Do you understand what I’ve said?”
Taken aback by the intensity of the moment, she nodded her head ‘Yes.’
I immediately thanked her, and indicated that I’d like for her to step back into the room. When she did, I left.
Bear with me now. There’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Rule #1: The self-esteem of a child is a living, growing, fragile thing. They don’t come with some sort of programmed knowledge that they’re good and worthy and that their attempts to learn, even if those attempts look like big green blobs, are also good and worthy. You know that saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?” That’s total horseshit. Words can cut you wide open. As an adult you should know this very well. So imagine what it must feel like when you’re a kid. Your number one job as a parent is to form a protective shield between your child and people who do not know how to control their words and actions… until your child is mature enough to do this for him or herself.
Rule #2: The world is filled with people who don’t care that this is your job, and a great many of them work in the field of Education. Discount this truth at your own peril.
Rule #3: People who cannot control their words and actions that also happen to work in the field of Education instinctively fear written documentation of any sort. They do. Yes, tenure and seniority protect them. Yes, they have friends higher up who protect them, or witless, spineless incompetents higher up who won’t do anything about them, or corrupt, evil, miscreants who actively delight in helping them spread their misery through the world. AND they hate documentation. Documentation doesn’t go away as easily as words. So that “private” little confrontation I had with her? Not so private, because in essence I was asking her to email me (a document) and opening the door for myself to email her (another document). Get it? The shock of the encounter has something to do with it. The shock of my size, the tone of my voice, the fact that she’s being confronted THIS QUICKLY, THE FIRST TIME, also has something to do with it. But learn to work documentation into everything you do. Do it, imply it, chortle over it while you elbow the person’s colleagues in the coffee room. But be conscious of it. Documentation is powerful. Use all aspects of that power—many of which stretch far beyond the actual, physical documentation itself.
Rule #4: Be specific with these people. They don’t understand subtleties.
Rule #5: When you’ve communicated what you need to communicate, thank them for their time and get away from them. This lessens the chance that resentment—and therefore more hostility—will fester. If you can achieve shock and awe, leave them in shock and awe. If they’re that much less certain of what to make of you, they’ll be that much less certain it’s okay to be mean to your child.
And finally—I’m not going to make this an official rule but I am going to repeat what I said earlier just in case anyone has forgotten— remember that this isn’t an age thing. Last year my wife and I had to confront a much younger teacher who threw a fit because my then-two-year-old son apparently didn’t know how to unzip his lunch bag. She didn’t know if this was because his father was deaf or what, but his listening skills obviously weren’t up to par, because she explained to him several times how to unzip his lunch bag…
…Did you see it? Kudos to you if you caught that little underhand slap, most likely brought on by the stress of having to run a classroom of eight kids without a break for several hours straight. But I remind all of you overworked teachers out there… you did choose this job. Don’t take your stress out on my child, please. That teacher got a nice long email, and we followed up with her supervisor, and that was the last time we had any problems with her whatsoever (she actually turned out to be a pretty good teacher and our son liked her a lot).
Vladmilla, for her part, didn’t get an email. This was only because my wife and I searched in vain for her email address and came to suspect that she didn’t have one. We did, however, send a letter to Mr. Rogers, and I had a follow-up private meeting with him, in which I pointedly asked him to keep an eye on both her and my son. If anything remotely like this happens again, back to the school supervisor I will go, armed with copies of the ‘summation of our meeting’ follow-up email I’ll be sending to him next week.
If anything should be Rule #6, that should be it: While you should strive to make your first confrontation dignified through apparent privacy, don’t trust that privacy. You’re under no obligation to keep the screw-ups of your child’s teacher under wraps. At the very least, share your concerns with their colleagues. Go to their supervisors right away if you feel such an action is warranted.
And after you go, apply Rule #3. You don’t want to learn Rule #2 the hard way.
[Author’s Note: Names and certain details in this story have been changed. If you didn’t spot that immediately from the use of “Mr. Rogers,” —as in Fred from the Neighborhood—there's something you should also know: That story that Fred is an ex-Navy SEAL with tattoos from his neck to his wrists (which is why he wears the sweaters) and has over seventy registered kills? Complete urban legend.]
[Just a heads up.]
