Back to School Shopping Begins

Back-to-School Shopping starts well before September. It includes much more than a new box of crayons, pristine in their packages, or Pink Pearl erasers, fresh and optomistic, having not yet had to fix any errors. For a growing number of parents, Back-to-School shopping begins in April, when they begin shopping for their child's future teacher.

This crime is committed mostly by moms. They do their research, by talking with other moms while watching their kids chase a ball around a soccer field. Some are even bold enough to have these conversations in the staff work room, while volunteering for their child's teacher. Who is the nicest? Who is the most nurturing? Who gives the least (or the most) homework? Which teacher has the highest test scores? Which teacher does the cutest Mother's Day projects?

And suddenly, as the teacher, you feel like you're back in high school, caught up in a sick popularity contest, not unlike nominations for Prom Queen.

These moms believe they're doing their child a favor in selecting the perfect teacher for their child. Soon, the children are talking amongst themselves about who they'll be getting for a teacher next year.

Our school has a policy that does not honor parent requests for specific teachers. Does that mean it doesn't happen? Of course not. Parent strategies simply move underground to covertly apply pressure to get their way. Some teachers continue to allow parents to push and pursuade them to get their way. There are parents who are very clever, like one who approached me this week.

Her son is going to be starting third grade at our school next year. She and her son came by for a tour, and visited my classroom to get a feel for what third grade will be like. We visited briefly, and I answered some of her questions about curriculum. I was polite and friendly, like any teacher would be.

The next morning, in my Inbox, I find an email from her. She tells me that she's in the process of writing a placement letter for her son, and would like to know more about my specific instructional style so that she can mention that in her letter. She would never mention specific teacher names, she writes, but she has successfully mentioned qualities of teachers in past letters to get her son in the classroom that would be best for him.

The most horrifying part of this story is that during her tour of our school, my classroom was the only one she visited! She has no idea of what other teachers she's automatically ruling out, simply because she felt a connection to me.

Let's suppose that a child ends up in a classroom that was not specifically selected by his loving mother. Could he wind up with a teacher who has a different style than he's used to? Sure. There's even a chance that the child could find a better connection with a different style. And yes, there's a chance that the teacher would be a bad match for the child. But would that be a bad thing? The child is going to have to begin to develop some strategies to work with someone who he doesn't get along with. Are those skills that will come in handy later in life?

I sure think so!

The mom who is silly enough to believe that she can foretell the future is interefering with real-life experiences that could potentially have been even more positive had she kept out of it. By running around ahead of her child, setting everything artifically in place for him, she's denying him of every opportunity to experience struggle, and to learn persistence and life-long skills that will make him a well-adjusted adult.

But maybe I'm just bitter because I wasn't Prom Queen.