We had my DS6's 1st grade parent teacher conference yesterday. I had been reading and planning for it for weeks to make sure we had the greatest possibility of creating a good plan for my DS. However, and I can't believe this, I made his teacher cry! I feel absolutely awful. I never ever intended to make her feel bad!
A little background... His teacher is in her 4th year of teaching and was forced to move schools (due to budget cuts) and to teach a 1st/2nd grade blend two-way immersion class. She has admitted to me also that her class is the most challenging group of kids she has yet (plus she is teaching it all in Spanish - not her native language!). In spite of all of this, she has done a fabulous job. We are absolutely thrilled with her and have complimented many times. I also volunteer in the classroom once a week and we've helped out at the field trip and fundraisers.
So now what happened yesterday... We let her share all the information she wanted/needed to share with DS about his progress. We were fine with everything she said and all was going well. Then she asked if there was anything we wanted to discuss. I requested some subject acceleration for DS, in particular math and reading. Because the school has yet to test DS, I shared with her results I got regarding his approximate grade level using the Lets Go Learn website assessments (with the caveat that this wasn't a professional test). On that test, my DS is at 3rd grade level for math in two areas, and 7th grade level for reading comprehension, among other things. I offered that perhaps DS could get onto an online math course (that we would pay for) during math time. At this point, her face was quite red. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Then she started crying saying that she is doing the best she can but there are so many different levels of ability in the class and she doesn't want DS to miss anything because the math teaching "spirals."
I immediately backed up and told her that I should have started off by saying how wonderful of a teacher we thought she was and that we didn't expect that she could meet all of the children's needs. We heaped on the praise very heavy (all well-deserved praise).
She did recover and came up with some good suggestions about some ways she can accelerate DS in math. But we obviously did not come anywhere close to a plan, as I hoped.
Sorry for the long story, but I'm still wondering how it all went so wrong. Any thoughts? Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
Oh, it feels like such a long road ahead of us in advocating for DS...
