The profession of a teacher demands different skills and knowledge. The teacher should always be aware of the special needs of the children, the peculiarities of their character, memory, intelligence and other physical characteristics. Besides, the factor of home education also plays a crucial role in the work with kids. There are two ways how teachers can work effectively with parents of children with special needs.
Communication is one of the basic means of working with parents and improving teachers’ productiveness and effectiveness in the process of education. Teachers should organize special discussions with the parents of the children with special needs. The discussions should contain different kinds of advices and hints about the ideas how to improve communication with a child. The hints should be made in delicate form as not to irritate the parent, who may regard the teacher’s advices as an arrogant intrusion into the family life. The teacher, however, should not hesitate providing accurate information and educate parents as well as their children. There are still the situations when the teacher misses the appropriate moment to talk to inform the parents about improper behavior or education of the child.
When a situation rises to a serious conflict and hostility from the parent’s side, the only way to settle the situation is to remain calm. In case the parents are claiming the teacher in the low level of education, the teacher should show respect to the parents and listen carefully to the parents’ comments, give proper and adequate replies to each charge. To react in the same rude or ostentatious manner means to cloud atmosphere even more, and results in further harming of the situation.
Although, if teacher puts oneself in a defensive position, which can lead to the activation of emotional responses, the parents accept it as arrogance and an attempt to provoke a serious conflict. However, a calm appearance and the readiness for serious and calm discussion may result in the simple way out of the situation. Furthermore, the teacher should develop his/her success in the calm acknowledgement and acceptance of a claimer’s anger and partially agree with the charges. Besides, the teacher should realize that spark of parent’s anger is not always sign of excessive nervousness but could point on the real mistakes in education committed by the teacher. In such case, the teacher should provide self-analyses of the lessons given to the class and discuss it with parent.
These initial steps enables to ground the disagreement on the sufficient, solid and well explained facts. The factual description of the facts of improper behavior of the child also enables the conversation to progress in the relaxing of parents hostility.
Nevertheless, it is always better to avoid the conflict than find the ways out of it. There are different suggestions how to act to avoid the conflict with parents.
First of all the teacher should analyze the situation. To take the situation under control before it turns into conflict demands good teaching and psychologist skills. The child’s attitude to the subject is that the teacher should care most of all as the pupil’s interest in study will always be half the battle in the relation with parents.
The teacher should always put oneself on the place of pupils or parents and try to evaluate situation from their point of view. It is always for good to evaluate your personal acts in the way how the others see it, which enables to notice possible merits or demerits of the teaching manner.
Additionally, it is always recommended to try your own new ideas or solution on the person whose opinion you respect and appreciate. You may get appropriate criticism, appreciation or useful hints and advices as for the possible changes in your program. The main point here is to hear and listen.
The originality of the lessons provided by teacher also evokes additional interest of the pupils. But if some of the children are not able to accept the information in a new way, the teacher makes use of calm conversation with the pupil listening to his case and providing own arguments and trying to reach a compromise.
The diversity of the families in the modern world makes Chapter 16 actual and interesting for readers. It is correctly linked with the problem of conflicts solving with people from blended families or children with disabilities. The chapter explains the methods of working with the problematic families and handicapped children. The modern world demands more and specialists who are able to work with kids with special needs, though the chapter provides the information of crucial importance.
The forum that erased the question about the ways of solving the conflicts with parents is the most appreciable as it presents the information from the specialists with different experience shared their ideas. The forum also was the most educational as it presented an amount of useful and actual information, useful hints and a beneficial assignment of the experienced teachers. Nevertheless, the deepening of the theme of work with the children with mental or speech abnormalities would be also appreciated.