Wesupportgifted, I hope my reply doesn't sound like I'm arguing with you - that's not my intent, just trying to offer up a different point of view.
With regard to hot housing, helicopter parenting, there is a trend (?) that we have noticed in elementary school that might be worth sharing, in case it is happening elsewhere. There are some families (too many as far as we are concerned) that have the (female) parent working everyday in some capacity at the same school and in the same building as one or more of their children's classes. We were very surprised (we are not in the education field and we are not experts in human development), because we thought separation (parent from child) was healthy and necessary and, also, because neither of us ever had our parents at our schools.
I have quite a few friends who are teachers in our local school district. It's *not* unusual for perfectly normal, non-hot-housing, everyday parents to arrange to have their child in the school they teach in or to request to teach in their children's school and for the teachers I know it's no indication at all of being overly involved or invested in their children's lives. The people I know who do this do it for one very simple convenient reason - they avoid having to use before and after school child care.
A secondary reason (not as frequent, but happens) is that the school they teach at is thought to be a better school than their neighborhood school. While this may seem a bit like helicoptering, the intent is really not that different from parents who choose to enroll their children in charter schools or lottery schools or magnet programs etc - they are simply trying to find the best-fit school for their child, same as most of us here on this forum have tried.
We are at a private school, and several of the employees have their children enrolled at the school - again, it's convenient in terms of saving child care $ and time, and in the case of private school, tuition is sometimes discounted for employee's children.
Sometimes things that are different from what we expect and seem "creepy" actually have very reasonable explanations.
Children talk and turns out, in one instance, one of these students knew which teacher they were going to have in advance (three months in advance), when no one else had teacher information. We have never tried to pick our student's teacher and / or classmates (i.e., insisting that (best) friends have to be together in the same room always).
A couple of thoughts here - first, yes, children talk and occasionally... children talk about things they imagine or hope to be true rather than what's really true. I never automatically assume that something my elementary-school aged kids heard from another child about things that adults knew or said that sounded off was true until I'd had it verified through an adult source.
Second thought - this employee, if they did indeed actually request a certain teacher, most likely isn't the only parent who did. At the elementary schools we went to and others I know of in our area, there was one school that let parents request teachers for the next school years and parents *loved* having that option. At other schools, even though the school policy said you couldn't request teachers, many parents did anyway, and in some schools principals tried to help parents get the teacher they requested. I'm not sure this is helicoptering as much as it is human nature - to hope to get your child in the classroom you think will work out best for them.
Last thought - the employee probably did know before others knew. That's one thing that happens when you work at a school - you get to know the other employees, and sometimes you find out information ahead of when the non-employees find it out. That's doesn't mean that because you know the info ahead of time you were somehow doing something odd or underhanded going on.
Fingers-crossed, this will not happen going forward, it's creepy and not at all preparing the children for the real world that we are used to which is based on standing on your own merit.
Standing on your own merit is something I value highly and something I've done my best to pass on to my kids, but the reality is it's not everything that it takes to get ahead in the real world (and especially in the corporate world). Connections with other people matter, how you treat other people matter, networking matters. This really isn't a bad thing - it's part of being human.
polarbear
