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Hello and welcome to Little Learners. in today's video I'm going to be talking about how you, as a
parent or carer, can raise a concern with a teacher. Before we get started do click that subscribe
button so that you can see more videos like this and if you do find the video helpful at any point
please do click that thumbs up button as it really helps out the channel. Now as a teacher I have
dealt with many many different types of parents, different concerns and different ways that parents
have gone about raising these concerns. Your child is the most important thing to you in the entire
world and so emotions can run quite high when you're concerned about something. So maybe you're
concerned about the relationship your child has with another child or maybe you're upset about
the way a teacher dealt with something. Sometimes it feels like the only thing to do is just go in
and really tell that teacher how you feel, shout at them, get it all out because you're feeling really
emotional and you want them to know how angry you are about the situation. However this is of course
not the appropriate way to approach this and doesn't help anyone. So if you have a concern
the first thing you'll want to do is contact the teacher. Maybe you see them at pick up or drop off
or maybe you want to email them, however you might contact them tell them, "I have a concern about 'x-y-z'
that I'd really like to discuss with you, could we please have a meeting or if you
have some time after school one day could I just pop in and talk to you". it's important that
you have the space and the time to really get off your chest what you want to talk about and that
there aren't other parents and children around because it's really not appropriate for them to
be hearing what you're discussing. If you try to talk to a teacher without letting them know that
you want to talk to them they might not have the amount of time you need to discuss it and it can
leave you feeling like you're not being listened to, when actually the teacher wants you to be heard,
they just don't have the time right now. So asking to schedule a meeting can be really really helpful.
It might also be helpful to write down some points that you want to discuss if you're feeling a bit
emotional about it or if you're worried that you're going to miss something, write down what
you want to talk about. If you feel yourself getting angry during a meeting and you feel
that you're raising your voice, it's time to stop. This can be a really emotional time for you and
it's important to remember that it is not appropriate to shout at a teacher, to be offensive
or hostile towards them, they want the best for your child you want the best for your child,
and you want to be working together. Now I can see things from the teacher and the parent perspective
and so I know that not only can these meetings be very very difficult for a teacher because you
don't want to let parents down and it can be sometimes a bit frightening if a parent
is very angry and is being very hostile towards you, but I also know from a parent's perspective
how difficult it can be when you feel that your child isn't getting the best of what they deserve.
If you feel that a meeting isn't going well or you're not getting out of it what you need,
then you may want to schedule another meeting with the teacher and the head teacher to discuss your
concerns. Now keep in mind that when you have this meeting with the teacher they may be just
keeping notes of what you're saying and might not be able to have a resolution or an answer for you
straight away. So they might write notes down and say that they're going to get back to you.
If they do this, it's perfectly reasonable for you to ask when you can expect them to be getting back
to you, what kind of time frame are you looking at. Please remember that teachers do have a lot
of commitment so it may be that they need a few days or it may be that they will get back to you
next week depending on the severity of the issue. If you want to have a further meeting
with your class teacher and the head of year or head teacher then that is perfectly fine
and you can schedule one of those. You may want to write a letter and send that in to the head
teacher to explain what you want to come in and talk about so that they are prepared and
they know what you want to talk about from your perspective rather than just from the teacher's
perspective and I think it's really important to go into these meetings not feeling like you are
enemies. You need to be there to work together. Now this being said if you feel really strongly
that the school is not doing what they need to be doing for your child, if you feel that
their safety is at risk or if you feel that they are not having adequate support that they need,
if you have a really big concern and you feel like it's not being resolved then that is important to
raise. So if you have a meeting with the teacher and the headteacher for example
and you're still not happy you can write a letter to the governors and that will raise this concern.
So the governors are a body of people who oversee everything that's going on in the school, they are
usually made up of parents and professionals from the local area and they want the very best for the
school and its students. So if you write a letter to them that will really escalate things and
hopefully will help you to resolve the issue. Hopefully you don't have to go through any of
that. Hopefully you can just talk to the class teacher and get a resolution. But I want to make
it really clear that it is never appropriate to shout at a teacher or to threaten them or
to make them feel really really uncomfortable, just as it's not appropriate for them to treat
you that way. Now as a teacher I can say that I have personally experienced that and it's
horrible, it really ruins the relationship between the teacher and the family, not the teacher and the
student because we would never, you know, blame the student for something that's going on between the
teacher and parents or carers, but it really really makes things a lot more difficult. So
you have a problem that you want to resolve and now it's even harder to resolve that because
the parent or carer has been very hostile and that just makes things a lot more difficult. If you want
to write a letter or an email to a teacher about your concern my advice would be to write it first,
read through it leave it for an hour, maybe even a day and come back to it.
Read through it and see if it's really getting across what you want to get across or have you
just spilled out your emotions and actually it's not quite how you want to come across.
The letter or email that you might have written may come across really hostile
and that's not what you want at all but because you are feeling so upset and angry about this
situation it's kind of spilled onto the page so give yourself some time away from it, come back
and edit it if appropriate. I really hope that this video has been helpful, I hope that it's given you
some really useful tips on how to raise concerns with teachers. If you want to see more videos like
this please do click that subscribe button and if you did find the video helpful give it a like
as it really helps out the channel. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.
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