A fed-up teacher has revealed why they don’t have time for your child’s ‘unique learning needs’

One frustrated high school teacher says students need to ‘turn up, shut up and listen’, and parents should stop going on about the ‘unique learning needs’ of their children.

This extract from an online forum written by an Australian secondary school teacher is reproduced with permission.

Most teachers are kind, caring, intelligent, professional and just want to teach. These teachers know from vast experience what does and doesn’t work. In very little time they can recognise gaps and determine what students need to do to achieve success.

Some students come to school with a desire to learn. But many do not. Many are not prepared for learning. They do not bring the correct materials (if any) to class.

They do not know how to sit still and listen to teacher instruction. They do not know how to sit with something they don’t understand immediately, without interrupting their class and teacher.

And so there is currently a crisis borne of unrealistic expectations (parents), unprepared and unmotivated students, and teachers who are hamstrung by crammed curriculum, overly onerous administration and an expectation to somehow manage high levels of student absenteeism, wellbeing/ mental health issues and other issues far outside our training, expertise and pay grade.

The idea that we have to change education for the changing world is well and good - but where is the evidence that how people learn has changed?

The whole concept of ‘learning styles’ has been mostly unhelpful. Teachers can present material in 50 unique ways, but a student determined not to learn, won’t. Instead they will disrupt their class, their peers, and inevitably mum will write an email asking we try a 51st method that we know will also fail.

Here’s the thing (and it’s quite straightforward), students need to turn up, shut up, and listen to their teacher. They need to bring their class materials, follow instruction and then have a go of understanding.

Quite often, they need to be uncomfortable at first, because they won’t initially grasp a concept. Teachers love to answer questions and they love to help … but part of helping is giving a child time to struggle and time to absorb new ideas. If your child’s ’learning style’ involves their teacher immediately revealing a solution, your child is never going to learn anything.

One fed-up teacher has revealed that students need to turn up, shut up, and listen to their educators. Picture: File

Which brings me to parents. You are the parents. We are the teachers. If you must teach, feel free to teach your child how to listen, how to behave, how to be respectful, how to deal with disappointment. If you outsource these to teachers at school, they may not share your exact philosophy or method. Prepare your child to be a willing and active learner in the classroom. Help them to understand that teachers are different. Teaching styles are different and that just like other aspects of real life, young people can adapt to this. And it’s essential that they do.

Please spare us the details on little Johnny’s unique learning needs unless these are absolutely essential.

The reality is, part of Johnny’s learning is to be resilient and to adapt. He will not have the world bend to him and nor can teachers. We may have 100 students in our own classes at any time. Far easier for your child to adapt to 6-8 teachers than for us to somehow tailor our lessons to 100 students. Not to mention, you can do the math and see it doesn’t compute. Even if 5% of students a day required something unique with a net time of 20 mins per child spent by the teacher, that is an additional two hours of work a day. On top of our normal planning.

Parents need to let their kids try (and sometimes fail). Picture: File

Planning is on top of time student facing. On top of marking and so on.

Parents, your demands are unrealistic, unhelpful and undermining our professional practice. Your emails and phone calls are adding enormous stress with your passive aggressive and aggressive- aggressive instructions to us.

Most of all you are not helping your child! We see the line from their behaviour to your parenting. We meet you and we think ‘yup, that makes sense’. We get that you love your kid but yes, they lie.

We get it’s important to support and believe them, but yes, they exaggerate. The more attention you are willing to give - the more (in many cases) they will work to obtain it. Call their bluff! Make it clear that you trust and believe their teacher, and that their teacher has their best interests at heart. See what happens when your child understands you are partnering with us rather than going into bat against us.

Education is mostly cooked - but it needn’t be. Parents need to get back in their lane. They need to let their kids try (and sometimes fail). They need to foster independence (by high school your kid can deal with pretty much anything in terms of school correspondence).

They need to love their kids but also recognise they can be silly at school - no teacher makes stuff up about that because it takes far too much effort and time to lie about. Seriously.

Lastly, if you don’t think you can maintain a healthy boundary with your kids’ school and you don’t trust us to do our jobs, then do it yourself! Schools are institutions. By their very nature they don’t cater to individuals (that’s marketing). We will always do our best by your child so stop treating us like the enemy and let us get on with it.

Or keep doing what you’re doing … and excellent teachers will keep leaving the profession.

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Originally published as A fed-up teacher has revealed why they don’t have time for your child’s ‘unique learning needs’