Episode 157: It takes a village - Exploring the blurry line between teacher and parent responsibilities

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Robin Potter

Hi, I'm Robin Potter.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is the School of School Podcast.

Welcome to the School of School podcast.

Welcome back, everyone, to another super exciting episode of the award-winning, well, not award-winning, just top ranked. Let's not get carried away. Top ranked podcast for teachers to listen to. We're here with Adam Gifford and Robin Potter, the two most clever people in the room, or at least the rooms they're in.

Adam Gifford

It's true.

Andy Psarianos

We're here to talk about it takes a village, and it takes a village to raise a child. There's lots of different angles we can take on this one, but what I'm interested in hearing about from you guys is the responsibilities that we put on teachers for what many would consider sort of parental responsibilities? And is that right? And should we also be looking at the parents to do some of the teaching for us? And that's kind of a blurry line. Where does what responsibility lie and how much should everybody be willing to take on? What do you guys think about that? Robin, why don't you kick of because you've been so quiet recently and sort of reluctant to introduce podcasts and stuff so maybe you could get started.

Robin Potter

Okay. That's an inside joke for anyone listening. Just saying.

Andy Psarianos

If the school says to you, "You should do this at home with your child," let's say it's like help them with something and you're not comfortable. I'm not talking about reading to your young children. Let's say your daughter's struggling with her pre-calculus course in secondary school. "Can you help her?" And you're like, "Pre-calculus."

Robin Potter

Yeah. And if they're giving me the steps for action, like what the action plan is, and I'm to do it, sure, of course I want to help, but do I feel that's my role to take on? Yeah, not particularly. I mean, if I really think I could help and add value and sit with my daughter and go through it with her and help her to understand, sure. And if that's a small portion of what's happening with the teacher and then me and whatever other help she's getting, I'm happy to be a part of it. But I don't know if I think it's my obligation to do that. It's do I want to help my child? Absolutely, and if that's what it takes and I can do that, then sure. But do all parents have the motivation, the time, or the interest in doing that with their children? Probably not.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. Well, let's make it a little bit more real because I asked kind of an obscure and unlikely question, but let's just say that you talk to your daughter's teacher. We both have teenage daughters. We have in secondary school, but our kids have been younger as well. So let's just say you get feedback from the school and they say, "Okay, your child is not handing in their homework. They're not doing the work. We need you to help." Do you feel like that's your responsibility or is that the school's responsibility to govern that?

Robin Potter

It's tough because I'm the one who's at home, who can do the check at home. "Do you have homework? Are you doing it? When is it due?" So I could be the reminder. I mean, the school can only do so much. The teachers can only do so much. They're there for a class with the student. So if they're reaching out to ask for the help of the parent, then absolutely it would be, again, I don't feel that I have to.

Andy Psarianos

Okay.

Robin Potter

Yes?

Andy Psarianos

So let me push my point even further. What happens when the school is basically saying to you, "Your child is failing," and they're effectively saying, "They're failing because they're not doing what we're asking them to do," and they're implying it's kind of your fault because you're not making them do what they're supposed to do. Do you think that's a fair thing for a school to imply?

Robin Potter

Well, I don't know how happy I'd be if I felt they were implying that I was the problem. I think there'd have to be more discussion than just throwing the blame on the parent.

Andy Psarianos

In essence, I guess what I'm trying to get to is does the school have the right to even make or think that way? Or should they be thinking that it's their responsibility to make sure that this child is educated? Where does that boundary lie? So Adam, let's get you to jump in. I know I'm asking some really tough questions here, Adam, but let's get you to jump in, but flip it on its head for a second and look at it from the school's perspectives.

Adam Gifford

My head is going in so many different directions here. So here's the deal, is that the school's going to have expectations, and different school will have different expectations. At one extreme end, you could say that schools should just focus on the core subjects that are publicly tested, or not should actually, but there's a heavy bias towards that because that's the public face of things and all that sort of stuff. And then you've got the reasonable argument, which is children come to school to develop as humans, and because they're in our care, the schools care, for a chunk of the time, then I think that it's right and proper that there are expectations for those children and we know that in order to make that work best, we need the support as much as possible from the school community, whether that's parents, family, caregivers, doesn't matter, that the more supportive that's there, the more likely it is that we can meet the expectations that the school hopefully make as clear as possible around learning and behaviour and just generally good human development.

But I think what the difficulty is, and where things start to fall apart in my experience, is where those expectations become unrealistic. So I'll give you an example. You could just have a set expectation. Everyone comes to school at 9:00 in the morning, they've got to be at school at 9:00 in the morning, and it's just simple. Everyone get your kid to school at 9:00 in the morning. Done. And if they don't, there will end up being consequences and they will be increasingly greater and greater and greater to the point where there might be some serious sanctions if that doesn't happen, agency involvement and all that sort of stuff. I think what we have to accept is for some families, getting a child to school at 9:00 o'clock is incredibly difficult. And for some families that's just like breathing. It's just what you do and it's just what anyone does. So I always think to myself that if the end result is getting a child to school at 9:00, you've got to do what you need to do and understand each individual situation so the child's there at 9:00.

So forgetting the fact that I might think it ridiculous you can't get a child to school at 9:00. Everyone's been doing that for ages and most of the time that works. That I also have to accept for some families, and they might be really chaotic in nature, that doing that is going to require something else, and it's going to require something different than me shaking my finger at them and saying it's not good enough.

So I think that there are so many complexities to it, but it's getting that balance because there are times where it's just like, "Just do it. Just do it." And that is reasonable and it's making those decisions with limited information. But I think Robin, your point is you need to converse more because you need to know what's going on. And the last thing I'll say to this is what tends to happen in those types of situations, is the person that loses the most is the child. They're either embarrassed, they're whatever it is, because they want to be like their mates. They want to be doing like their mates, they want to be succeeding, they want everyone to be happy with them. I've never met a child that doesn't want that somewhere, just something where they're not part of that other conversation. It's hard.

Andy Psarianos

Let's just twist this a little bit. Imagine, we've all visited schools. It's part of what we do. And every once in a while you walk into a school and you go, "Wow," because, and what usually hits me is when I walk into a school and I see a school, and I know because when you go to a school, you go through the neighbourhood first. You have to go through the neighbourhood to get to the school. So you already have a sense of what you're going to be seeing when you get into school because you've seen the neighbourhood, you know the community that they're serving. And you can't judge a community just by walking through it but you can tell a lot just by walking through it.

So now you walk into a school and you know, everything tells you, the odds are not in their favour. Everything's telling you the odds are not in their favour. And you walk into the school and you go, "This is one of the best schools I've ever seen." So despite what happens at home, because you know home's a challenging place for a lot of the kids in that school, not everyone, but you know for a lot of kids in that school that home is a challenging place. And you walk into the school and you go, "This school is so amazing." And I think we've all been in schools like that. What do you think they're doing? You know they're not getting support from all the parents yet they're doing a tremendously good job. What makes those schools different?

Adam Gifford

I'd pick you up on the support, but I think the one thing that I would say for all of those schools, the schools that jump to mind like that, the ones like you're talking about, and I don't know, you just know, there's lots of probably indicators we could talk about. But I think that even if, depending on what we think about say as traditional support, like maybe doing homework or getting the children to school on time or making sure they've got the right uniform and all that sort of stuff, feeding them, all that sort of stuff. The one thing that I would say exists within those schools, even if some of those bits are missing, is the community trusts the school.

And I think that's the one thing that all of the schools that I've been to that have that, it's that the community trusts them. So they'll know they should have done a bit better or they know they should have done this or whatever else, but they'll listen to the school and they will endeavour to do that because they trust them. And that's not always the case, not because there's not necessarily a mistrust, but there might just be a lack of engagement. Whereas when I go into these schools, and I'm sure we've all got schools in our minds, it strikes me, the school's at the heart of the community, there's trust there, and that's been well established and worked on over time.

Robin Potter

And yeah, it's been worked on. But, again, how is it that it's so successful? I mean, even the trust part of it, how did these schools gain that trust from the community is my question?

Andy Psarianos

That's a great question. That is the essence of what it takes to be a successful school, I think. That, at the heart, is the question, and I read a book, it's not the best written book, but it was written about the best, the most amazing person I've ever heard of, which is a guy called Bill Campbell from Silicon Valley. He's been referred to as the Trillion Dollar Coach. This guy started his career as an American football college coach and ended up in business, first working for Kodak. So for all you young people who don't know who Kodak is, once upon a time, Kodak was a great company in photography. They don't exist anymore. And ended up working in Silicon Valley. And he coached, they called him The Coach. And this is the most bizarre thing. He sat on the board of Google and Apple at the same time, while they were fierce enemies, because of the smartphone. But both companies, loved him so much that they couldn't imagine getting rid of him, even though he was basically a spy.

Robin Potter

For each.

Andy Psarianos

If you want to think of it that way, although I don't think he was like that. I don't think he ever shared secrets. But he was working on the board of both of these companies who were fierce competitors. Anyway, so he ended up, if you look at who he's mentored and worked with, you're talking about Eric Schmidt from Google, Larry Page, and Ser Gabran and Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos and all the biggest names you've ever heard of in tech. He was their personal coach.

So this guy obviously had an impact on the world. They called him the Trillion Dollar Coach. The thing that he said, which really resonated with me, and I think every school could pick up, is first fix the team. It's really simplistic. First, fix the team. And then worry about the problems. The problems will get solved if you can fix the team. Focus on the people and getting them to work together. Forget about what the problems are, just fix the team. Make the team a team. And the team is the parents and the school, the teachers, the head teachers. That's a team. Fix the team. Just put all your emphasis on the team. All the other problems will resolve themselves.

And that to me is really, really profound. And I think that that's often, we don't do that. We say, or we start to think, we start to believe, this would be a lot easier if that other person, or well, if that other person's finding it hard, then you find a way to support them, because you're working as a team. So fix the team. I thought that was really profound, so I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you asked that, Robin. Because I think that that's super important. When you look at those schools that do really, really well, regardless of what the community looks like, they're in the community. They're part of the community. The community is not the enemy.

Robin Potter

No, not at all.

Andy Psarianos

The minute you start thinking that community is the enemy, it falls apart.

Robin Potter

Yeah. And you really see that, I mean, or you feel it. You go into these schools and the teachers seem to gel, and there's often high parent involvement, and so it's all of them together, but to be current, it's just a vibe. It seems to be given off and it's permeating throughout.

Andy Psarianos

There's also an element of sometimes there are people in the community that you can't work with because the parents are hugely problematic but they don't see that as a reason or an excuse not to do what has to be done. They find a way to make the team work. And the team is everybody in the team. So if one person's not present, the team still has to operate. And they don't shun the responsibility.

Where am I going with this? This goes back to something I mentioned in another podcast. I heard a parent saying, "It broke my heart that they said that your son can't come on the field trip because he's too disruptive." And I can't get that out of my head. Adam, I know you've had a lot of experience, and I know how that can happen in a school, but to me, that's an indication that there's just a major failure because what she deep down inside felt was that, she didn't say this to me, the parent, but I could feel it.

She was like, "I'm a single mom. I have a very difficult demanding job that doesn't pay a lot of money. I'm on my own here and I'm doing the best I can and I know that my son is not perfect. I know that. But you can't just dump it all on me. I need your support at the school to help my son get out of the thing, because I'm doing what I can." And the school almost, they're kind of like, from her, I'm not saying this is actually what happened. I'm saying this is how she sees it, their Draconian sort of military thinking of wanting to protect the school environment by keeping those problematic people out? It just seems like it's so cold-hearted. It's like, "I know my son's a problem. I know he's very disruptive. Can you please work with me and with him with what I can do? How can we work together?" And she doesn't feel that way. She just feels abandoned by the school, and that's just the community is not there to support.

Adam Gifford

Well, I think in that situation, that's where it's really, really difficult because I think the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with in a school is where you're coming to the parents, because I always used to say to all of my teachers, anyone who's ever worked with me, I always used to say, "Never surprise parents." So don't build up all of this stuff and then say to them at once, whether it's during your parent meetings or whatever else, and "Oh and by the way, your child." And I said, the biggest thing for that, is the reason why I said that, is because you've not given them a chance to support their child. So as soon as you have one thing, you need to engage in that conversation because parents at the very least give them a chance to support their child.

Now, the most difficult thing that I think a school will deal with is if you've got, let's just take this case of disruptive behaviour. And the parents turn around to you and say, "That disruptive behaviour doesn't exist. There isn't a problem." You go, "Okay, well, I'd like to work with you because we believe it is and this is how it's manifesting itself in our school and these are the issues, but I want to work with you with that, whatever that looks like, and the first part of that's accepting it." So I think that when you've got people, like the person that you're talking about, Andy, that says, "I want to work with you, but I don't have the skillset," that is normal. To me, that's normal.

I had to accept, and in my position, I had to accept I couldn't help my daughter with mathematics. I didn't know another better qualified parent in the school that she was going to. But the reality was is that the dynamic between me and her when she got home from school was one in which I had to say to the school, "I need your support with this. In terms of skillset, I'm entirely capable of helping her with her maths, but in terms of just a relationship and dynamic, I need your support with that because I am not going to get into a screaming match every night."

So I needed that and I couldn't create that. But I think coming back to the example that you gave, I think when we have to accept that parenting doesn't come with a manual, we don't know the dynamics, we've got individuals in our schools, and the way we can manage it best is when everyone's going in the same direction, which is, "I want the best for your child. You want the best for your child. And let's just see what we can do between us." And there may be deficits, and we might have to ask for help somewhere else, but I think that conversation has to take place because it's all too easy in schools. It is easy to do this, just to close the gate and say, "Well, you guys aren't coming in. Simple as that. In the morning, you drop your children off at the gate, you're not coming in."

Okay. It's easy. You can do that. Yeah, we'll let you talk to the teachers once. And this point, that's not hard, but what you will find is that things start to fall apart in the school because you're not getting the information that you need to do your job well. And I think that's the other part that I used to say to teachers all the time. Yeah, sometimes it's really hard talking to parents, and it should be because emotionally there's nothing that's more important. And sometimes that emotion and love that people have for their children comes out as anger. They might be really cross with you because they love their kid and they want the best for them. You've just got to accept they're doing it because they care. And so if they're fronting up, you got to get to that conversation and say, "All right, I get it." But to get what happens underneath because you need that information to do a good job.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Thank you for joining us on the School of School Podcast.