I wonder if parents ever ponder why teachers make the decisions they do.  I know they question their child’s teacher’s decisions all the time, but I wonder if they ever stop to ask why the teacher made a certain decision.  Few, if any people know a child the way a parent or guardian knows that child – as a child.  However, only teachers know children as students in a classroom.

I’m a parent myself and I face this all of the time.  A teacher decides to move my child away from the front or refuses to let my child re-take a test.  Why should my child be moved?  Why can’t she re-take the test?  The way I want it to happen is what’s in my child’s best interest…and I should know.  I’m her mother.  As a teacher, however, I realize that the classroom is full of variables that I have no way of seeing, and one of those variables is how my child responds to those variables on a day to day basis.

Parental involvement is the absolute best way to make sure students do well in school.  With a partnership between parents and teachers there are few ways that students can fail, but this needs to be a partnership.  Yes, parents know their children best, but teachers know their students best.