NEA Proposal Deserves Attention: Giving Kids A Jump Start

Lots of elementary school children are lost from the first day of school. They file into a strange classroom with a bunch of strange kids. At the head of the class is an adult they may never have seen before and certainly never spoken to - the teacher. Kids who are good at playing the school game get used to this routine. Kids who are not are likely to be frightened and intimidated - a good number of them will tune out the first day or the first week. And the teacher can lose the chance to reach them before even learning their names.

The proposal made by Keith Geiger, president of the National Education Association (NEA), at the union's recent convention would give kids like these what he calls a "jump start." Elementary school children who need extra help -- approximately one-third of the youngsters in our schools, according to NEA estimates -- would come to school two weeks early. With classes of no more than 15 kids, students and teachers could get to know each other. The children would be less likely to see the teacher as a distant and frightening authority figure; teachers would have a chance to find out about the strengths and weaknesses of each child and plan strategies for dealing with them. And they'd be able to contact the parents of each child as well. This plan would start teachers and children off on the right foot, and it would help establish a positive relationship between parents and teachers.

People talk a lot about parents' participating in their children's education, but they don't talk much about one of the factors that often limits this participation -- the frequently strained relationship between parents and their child's teacher. Seymour Samson in his wonderful book, Caring and Compassion in Clinical Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), makes some perceptive suggestions about the cause and the cure of this problem that fit right in with the NEA proposal.

In most clinical professions -- and Samson includes law and teaching along with medicine and psychology -- practitioners need to deal with a much broader range of issues than the ones their clients come to them about. For instance, a doctor discussing treatment with a patient who has mild hypertension ought to take up lifestyle issues like exercise, diet, smoking and alcohol consumption. But many physicians are uncomfortable dealing with matters like these so they take care of the immediate problem with some pills and ignore the related issues.

Teachers, too, know they need to look at more than a child's reading readiness or difficulties with learning long division. Understanding a child's family and home are essential if the teacher is really to understand why a child is having trouble in school. But teachers are often reluctant to approach the parents -- and the problem is not, Samson believes, simply one of time.

Samson puts the reluctance in the form of a question: "Why do most teachers find talking to parents difficult, unsatisfactory, anxiety arousing, a situation they would dearly love to avoid, and one that not infrequently becomes conflictful?" And he goes on to suggest that parents share these negative feelings and the responsibility for the difficult relationship: "Why do so many parents approach a meeting with their child's teacher with trepidation, the sense of inequality, and concern about what to say and what not to say or reveal?"

The answer, Samson says, is that teachers and parents are strangers to each other. They probably never meet, except on "ritual" occasions like Parents' Nights, until there is a serious problem and the teacher invites the parents in for a conference. This sets up a situation that is bound to be difficult. Parents are likely to feel called on to defend their child (and perhaps a little on the defensive themselves). And they wonder how open they can be with the teacher. The teacher may also feel on the spot to justify the way the problem has been handled thus far and may find the parents "subjective, overemotional, and uncomprehending." It's small wonder that both parties often feel extremely uncomfortable and that the aim of the meeting -- giving and getting information that will help the child -- can be hard to achieve.

But what if parents and teachers were to meet and establish a relationship before any problems arose? The obvious time for this, as Samson says, is before the school year begins: "The teacher could say: 'You know your child better than I do ... You know the kinds of things and situations that turn your child on or off You know your child's weak and strong points. What you know and can tell me is crucial to me as your child's teacher. Similarly, what I observe and learn about your child in my classroom will be important to you ... we need each other in the best interests of your child." Early parent-teacher meetings of this kind would help teachers foresee and prevent problems later. They would allow parents to make a big contribution to their children's success in school.

So NEA' s Jump Start program for students should be supported. It could provide a jump start for parents and teachers, too, and the start of a productive relationship that would last throughout the school year.