Teaching Parents to be Good Teachers: First do No Harm
First do No Harm
by
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The tiny blonde child sat at the desk in a classroom full of thirty-two other children. She stared at the thin blue and white book which the teacher, Mrs. Cannon, had just handed out to everyone and pushed her little hand through the curls which covered her head. She hated the new book; she hadn't even opened its pages yet, but she hated it anyway. This class time which Mrs. Cannon called reading made the child sick to her stomach. The knot in her midsection tightened even more now as she prepared to open the cover. It really was a pretty blue, like the sky on a clear day. But today was a dark day. The clouds were nearly purple and hung low in the sky outside the windows of the classroom. The classroom was cold. The little girl could feel the chill on her bare legs and tugged at the little cotton dress. How was she to even think of this new book when she was so cold? "All right, children, you may open the book to the first page," ordered Mrs. Cannon. The little girl turned the cover over to reveal the printed page with the publisher's date of copyright and the city where it was produced. She didn't know those words. "The new word for today is s-n-o-w...," was spelled out on the chalk board, "...snow." stated the teacher. The child looked at the board, then down to the page. There was no s-n-o-w on that page! Oh dear, did she have the wrong book? The knot tightened. What else did the teacher just say? The little girl didn't hear, so upset was she about not finding the s-n-o-w word.
. . . What does it take for a child to learn to comprehend? Teachers can and do give knowledge, but what about understanding that knowledge? What does it mean "to know"? What does it mean "to understand"? Knowledge and comprehension are the two lowest thinking skills in the ranks of higher order thinking skills, or H.O.T.S. as educators are fond of calling the Bloom Taxonomy. Parents and students rarely hear about these terms, and yet, they are expected "to know" and "to understand".
Let me give you a little secret here. Few teachers know how to apply higher order thinking skills logically in the classroom so that students know higher order thinking skills are being learned. I know, because I have actually taught teachers how to do this! But the more terrible secret is comparable to the little story presented to you at the beginning of this book: Most teachers do not know which students are not learning, on a daily basis, the information presented on that day. And neither do the parents. But the child knows!
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About the Book
Parents will discover the basic knowledge of teachers applied to assisting parents into being "good" teachers as parents. Knowledge utilized every day by teachers is transformed into a parenting tool that is essential and wonderfully easy to acquire. Parents will finally have the basic understanding to assist them in teaching their own children and the vocabulary necessary to discuss with teachers their child's needs. Written by a teacher who is also a business woman, Teaching Parents... stretches into real world lessons and life skills adults may not have acquired in school. It is formal cognitive thinking at the highest level.