The summer is in full swing here in Vancouver, but already the fall clothes are in the stores and soon it will be ‘back to school’ time.
Most students will be going to a new class with a new, perhaps unfamiliar, teacher. Your child may be anxious about this, not sure how he will get on with the new teacher or concerned about the work he will be expected to do. Children have good reasons to be concerned. Working with a new teacher in an unfamiliar setting has its challenges. Sometimes these challenges can overwhelm a child and prevent them learning.
So just what are the challenges that your child will face? And how can you help?
First, the new teacher may have very different expectations from the old one. And you and your child will not know what they are until the first few critical days have passed. For instance…
The new teacher may expect different types of behavior in class. In my classroom children had to learn that they could not use an eraser (I had very good educational reasons for this rule) and that I would never tolerate a child who was aggressive to another child. Also I never let them wear baseball caps in class, but that was just my British heritage showing!
Now I know that these expectations were different from those of their teacher in the regular classroom, and sometimes students found it hard to work with them- especially the one about no erasers! But I had the advantage of working with children from many different classes and the word soon got out about what Miss Porter would and would not allow.
Older students are ever ready to tell horror stories about teachers to younger students and your child may have heard some rumors that make him anxious about what he will be expected to do in his new class.
How do you handle this? How do you try to reassure your child that everything will be O.K.?
First, you must let him know that the new teacher will want to do things differently, that the way he did things in his last class may not work in his new class. You can explain that no two people do things the same way, perhaps you can use your family members as an example of this – mum washes up differently from dad. But in the end the dishes get done no matter who cleans them.
You can talk about the fact that he is growing up and part of growing up is having to deal with new expectations about levels of work and types of behavior. After all you would not expect a baby to do the same things as a teenager.
You can explain that the teacher will show him what to do and if he is not sure he should ask. You might want to practice a sentence he can use to give him the confidence to do this. A sentence such as, ” Excuse me *** but I am not sure what I am expected to do just now”, might be all that is required.
Most of all you can let your child know that, whatever the new teacher expects him to do, you will be there to support him, and that you will be there to help him achieve what is expected of him.
In that way your child can become excited about the new school year rather than dreading it.
