November 10th Panel

I am very glad that we were able to have a panel with some parents from the Decorah community. All teachers will need to know how to work well with parents. I really like the way that one panelist put it that the teacher, the student, and the student's family are a team trying to get the student to learn.

I think that many future teachers are more nervous about dealing with parents than they should be. I know that it will be intimidating in some cases, but nearly every parent will be supportive if you seem like you truly want to help their child. I think that students going through Luther's education program shouldn't have much trouble interacting with parents because it teaches us how to become competent at our material and how to best care for and help our students.

I thought it was interesting to see the varying degrees of teacher-parent interaction among the panelists. One of the parents, while involved enough, did not crowd in on his children's school life. I think that that would work well if the children are generally high achievers and feel confident in telling their parents what's up at school. One of the other panelists was a bit more involved, but she had children who had special needs. I think that it may be necessary to be more involved in this child's school life because the teacher might not know exactly how to approach their weaknesses. Also, the child may not be as open to their parents about problems at school. As future teachers, we need to know how to work with parents to help their kids learn and feel comfortable with themselves.