Miss Educated

Parent’s Evenings for this term are pretty much over and done with now, although I do still have one parent to see this week, and one who hasn’t been at all.  It was actually very nice to be able to talk to the parents and report to them some real progress because I didn’t feel at the last one that I had a lot of positive things to say, I had spent so much time just coping with behaviour that most of what I talked about was exactly that.  This time though, I could really talk to them about where there child was at, and how much they had come on since September.  It sort of brought it home to me really that these children actually are making progress and that I must be doing something right in there every day.  It gave me an excuse to look back through their books and really sort of scrutinise what exactly they have achieved since the start of the year.  I opened all of my meetings with the same question: “How do you think he/she is doing?” and the feedback I’ve got from all but one parent so far is that they really feel their child is doing well.  The one parent who said different felt like their child was really struggling and was really pleased when I went through the books with them and could show them solid evidence that their child was making progress and constantly getting better.  It was lovely to hear from most parents that their child is happy at school and enjoys coming in every morning.  The impression I got from a lot was that this is very different from last year, and that it was lovely for them to see their child coming home happy and enthusiastic every day.  One parent has been astounded by the improvement in her child’s confidence as the year has progressed, and to be honest so am I.  On the first day he wouldn’t even say his own name in front of the children he’s been in a class with since nursery and put his head in his hands and cried.  Three or four weeks ago he stood up in assembly and read in front of the school, staff and parents.  It has been an amazing transformation.

One child cries about school every day though, and I’m finding that hard to cope with.  I know exactly why he hates is though - he is a very irritating child with no regard for others, and as a result of that isn’t well liked.  Even so, I feel bad that he is having such a bad time at school that he really doesn’t want to come.  I have tried talking to him about his behaviour and how he can change the way he behaves so that people won’t get cross with him so often, I have talked to the other children on his table and asked them to be a little more sympathetic and patient with him.  That’s a lot to ask of seven and eight year olds though, and I have yet to see an improvement.  I really don’t know what else to do.  His best friend works in a different group to him (to the benefit of both of their work academically) but this seems to be the major problem.  His mum wants me to sit him back with his friend, his friend’s mum wants them kept apart.  In reality they are better apart, however if they sat back together this boy’s problems at school would be solved and I wouldn’t have an unhappy child in my class.  It’s so hard to know the right thing to do.