3 Ways Parents & Teachers Are Disempowering Students

🚀 3 Simple Ways to Help Your Students Thrive (By Doing Less!)

In this episode, I reflect on an "Open Letter to Parents from Your Child's Teacher" that I wrote for ThriveGlobal.com back in 2019.  I take another look into three game-changing habits that can transform your classroom dynamics and help your students develop crucial life skills.

📌 Key Takeaways:

1. 🎭 Let natural consequences be the teacher
2. 🧠 Foster persistence in problem-solving
3. 🤝 Empower students to navigate social interactions

Discover how these strategies not only benefit your students but also lighten your load as an educator. It's time to break free from the "do-everything" mindset and empower our students to thrive! 💪

🎙️ Episode Highlights:

• The timeless nature of classroom challenges (hint: it's not all COVID's fault!)
• How over-helping can hinder student independence and confidence
• Practical tips for implementing these strategies in your classroom
• Real-life examples of how these habits play out (and why they're so tempting!)
• The importance of social-emotional learning in conflict resolution

💡 Actionable Tips:

• Establish clear homework policies and stick to them
• Use prompting questions to guide students instead of providing answers
• Implement a structured approach for resolving playground conflicts

Remember, it's not about doing more – it's about doing the right things that truly matter for your students' growth and success. 🌱

🔗 Related Resources:

• Episode 61: Back to School 2024, Part Two - Positive Teacher-Parent Partnerships
• The original letter from Thrive Global 
• https://community.thriveglobal.com/3-simple-ways-to-help-your-child-thrive-in-school-by-doing-less/

Ready to transform your teaching approach and empower your students? 

Tune in now and learn how do

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Transcript

Welcome back, teacher friends. Okay. This week, something different. We like to mix it all up. This week I'm gonna read to you, I know that sounds really boring, it's very short, I promise you. But I'm gonna read to you an article that I wrote for Thrive Global, which is an online magazine. I wrote it in 2019, and it was an open letter to.

Parents. Okay, and the reason I want to read it to you is, is twofold. One, because I think we're caught up in this narrative that like, since COVID, everything has changed, and it's worse than ever, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so in one way, it was kind of just a little refreshing for me to look back at this thing I'd written five years ago and be like, yeah, it's still the same issues.

They were always there. They may have got it. Amplified recently, but they were always there. And then the other thing is because I always found it I wrote about things that I was working out for myself. And these are three habits that I'm cautioning parents against that honestly, sometimes I was guilty of.

in the classroom with the kids. So anyway, we will get right to it. I think keep an open mind. I said the letters just like literally a four minute read, but the concepts are important. And again, the mindset that these issues have always been there, I think you will find ultimately empowering. And that's what I'm all about.

So I will see you on the inside. Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries. and achieving better work life balance.  If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe.

I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show. Okay, 

so here we go. First of all, what is Thrive Global? If you haven't heard of them, they are they're a real, they're a physical company but they. Also have an online blog, and so I have been a freelance writer for quite some time when I was teaching and so I did a guest blog post for them, but their mission is to redefine productivity through well being, right?

So Their tagline is improving the world's health and productivity through science backed behavior change. So there is a natural physical component to the company. It is it was actually founded by Arianna Huffington in 2007 and she and her company, they go into, they work with different And companies, they go in and, and help them with science based habits to improve everybody's productivity.

But online I was guest writing as talking about teachers. So it was, this was the title. I'm going to read you the letter. It is short. But the reason I'm thinking about it today is, again, you know, if, if you ever do any writing of your own, you know, that's how we figure out a lot of things. And for myself, a lot of my writing, what I write about, even though it is nonfiction and it's not a memoir, but it is me one way or another, you know, trying to put structure and figure out things that are relevant.

I am struggling with. And these were areas that with my own children  that I had, and then I saw I had some  kind of bad habits in the classroom too, that I was falling into these three categories. So I'll read it to you first, and then we will talk about it. It is called, what was it called? Three simple ways to help your child thrive in school by doing the right thing.

Less, and it was positioned as an open letter to parents from a concerned school teacher, and that was me. R. A. was posted in their community department of their online magazine, and so here it is. Dear parents, I see you. I see how hard you work, how busy you are, and how much you worry for the future of your beautiful children. 

Know that what you want for your child, I want too. Our mutual goal is for your child to be successful in school and to develop into a well adjusted, productive member of society. With this end in mind, I respectfully ask you this. Please stop doing so much for your child.  I'm not here to pass judgment and throw out labels such as helicopter or lawnmower parenting.

I will call it as it is. And as I see it, loving behavior of a parent who wants the best for their child. You see, I'm a parent too.  I get it. You want the best for your child. You believe your job is to make sure their childhood is a cherished time with minimal hardships. But doing too much for your children can be detrimental.

It can hinder their independence. It can rob them of the confidence that comes from solving  their own problems.  There is a fine line between doing enough for your children and doing too much. Here are three simple ways you can do less and help your child develop the skills they need to thrive in life.

In school and life.  Let your child experience natural consequences.  Actions have consequences. As with many things, children learn best through experience. If a child breaks rules at school that result in a consequence, loss of recess, detention, not being allowed on a field trip, most parents know well enough to back the teacher up. 

Few teachers enjoy giving consequences. Trust me. It involves paperwork, and we do so as a last resort, not as a whim.  Allowing your child to take responsibility and learn about consequences to their actions is an important lesson.  But what about natural consequences?  When your child leaves their lunch, homework, instrument, or sports equipment at home, do you make an extra trip to school to bring it to them? 

If your child breaks a school dress code rule and the school calls home, do Do you bring them a change of clothes or shoes?  These actions fall into the doing too much category. Powerful lessons can be learned through natural consequences. If your child has to sit on the bench during a sports game or find appropriate clothes to wear in the lost and found bin, they will be less likely to make the same mistake twice. 

Help your child foster persistence in problem solving.  No one likes to see their child struggle. Homework time can cause stress in the house. Many students have a busy after school schedule and parents are rushing to get dinner on the table, younger siblings bathed and in bed. It can be tempting to give your child the answers, design the project or just do their homework for them. 

Doing this may be a short term win. But at what cost? Teachers shouldn't be assigning homework your child is incapable of doing independently. While encouraging children who have trouble staying on task and holding them accountable is an important parental role, being overly involved in their homework denies them the opportunity to learn the value in working on a problem.

Perseverance, resilience, and grit Cannot be learned from a book or offered or ordered off the internet. Your child needs to learn this through experience. They need to learn the value of, I don't have this yet, but I'll keep working on it.  I cringe when I see homework that has obviously been completed by a parent.

Worse yet, a note asking that their child is excused from last night's homework because their sport practice went until late. That parent just robbed their child of an opportunity to learn about time management and setting appropriate priorities.  Help your child negotiate positive social relations. 

Parents should advocate for their children. If a child is a victim of bullying and has not been successful in resolving the issue through their teacher, then parents must get involved to ensure their child's physical and emotional safety. Bullying is a terrible thing. It involves a repeated and deliberate Misuse of power to intimidate, shame, or hurt someone. 

That's a very different situation from two children being mean to each other and not getting along.  Learning to negotiate social situations on the yard and work with students who aren't afraid to be mean.  Excuse me.  Let me do that again. Learning to negotiate social situations on the yard and work with students who aren't their friends are important lessons for students to learn.

I mean, do you like all the people you have to collaborate with at work? If you ask a teacher for a meeting to resolve minor social disagreements or make a request that your child move seats and not engage with a child they don't like, you are denying your child the opportunity to practice and learn these skills.

They will also not gain self confidence that they need that they can handle their own social situations.  Parents, thank you for all you do. I love spending my day with your children. I know we both want the best for them. If you skip to the end of this letter, let me summarize and lovingly tell you the things that you can stop doing for your children. 

Not doing these things will help them be more successful in the long run.  Stop running them their forget, forgotten items to school. Stop doing their homework. Please drop the excuse notes. Finally, stop fighting their battles for them. Remember, it's not your job to fix all your children's problems, but to teach them the skills and confidence to fix them by themselves.

Together we can do this. Warm regards, your child's teacher.  Okay. That's what I wrote. Hey, did not get a lot of pushback on that. So that's good.  I think none of you would disagree with any of those points, right? Those are things that we want to tell parents in a diplomatic way. Stop running them their stuff.

You look ridiculous when you do their homework, right? Not every time when your kid comes home and they fell out with a friend, it doesn't necessarily mean they have been bullied, right? That's like a word that kids have used To throw out there because it gets everybody mobilized, right? It's a hot word.

Everybody's going to mobilize. Ooh, people get involved and get excited if you use the word bullying. And bullying is a terrible thing. I, my word, I experienced it as a child. It was awful. My daughter in school was bullied. I'm not a bully to the point of beyond abuse. I can't even tell you. So I will always take bullying seriously, but you know that there are kids who just fall out with their friends and then throw that bullying word around and then the parents all getting involved and not bothered and the parents calling other parents and calling meetings and just causing a lot of drama.

So.  All right, I think we will agree that all of those things are legitimate, what I said. Okay, so here's what I want to say. First off, again, I found it a little refreshing, right? Because we had this narrative. Remember if you're familiar with my ECHO, Framework of Educator Empowerment,  the O in ECHO is ECHO.

Other people's experience doesn't need to be your experience, right? We get to create our own experience. And a part of that is we got to stop the storytelling, right? A lot of the work that I do in my community with the teachers that I coach is what we call reframing, limiting beliefs. Like, what do you think about teaching?

You're automatically buying into this collective narrative that it's terrible. Teachers get picked on, underpaid, overworked. I mean, a lot of those things are true. But we do not need to be in victim mode. Right?  And so one of the narratives going around is, Oh my gosh, everything has changed since COVID.

It, you know, these kids are just, you know, the kids and the parents are unrealistic, they're out of touch, they're out of control.  I wrote that letter before COVID and it's still the same issues. Now we have other issues. I did not address what a parent should do. And how to back up the teacher and the school if their child is really, really struggling with behavior in school and is being unsafe for other students.

That's a big issue right now. Okay. That's going to take more than like a little love letter to Thrive Global to fix. But I think in my own mind, it helped me see, Hey,  what story was I telling myself when I went back to school? After distance teaching. Oh my gosh, these kids have changed, all these new issues.

Eh, a lot of the issues were the same. Okay, so that's number one. But number two is, and I'm going to be real vulnerable here. Oh, I said when I write, it's a lot of times I'm trying to add structure and clarify for myself things that I am working on. I wouldn't write about stuff I don't know about. I'm not going to write about golfing.

I don't know how to golf. I won't write about the challenges that nurses face.  I'm not a nurse. I can assume I've been in the hospital. They look more overworked than teachers, to be honest. So, but I'm only going to write about the things I know. So I'm not going to write about things we struggle with unless I've struggled with them.

So I have struggled with each of these three things. Yes, I'm embarrassed to say inside the classroom and how does it play out? So let's look at it. So the three things that I talked about were one, not allowing students to experience natural consequences.  Two, over helping with their work  and three, not allowing them to resolve their own social interactions and conflicts. 

Now, in your soul of teacher souls, ask yourself, has that ever been you?  Has that ever been you? Now, it has been me. And the reason it's been me is probably the same reason that leads a parent to do it. Listen, I've been a parent and I've done those things for my kids, even when I knew better. Oh my gosh.

How many P excuse notes I wrote for my son who just, he,  I'm just embarrassed to say it, it was just beyond embarrassing, but anyway, but the reason we do it is it's just easier. It's just easier to write the note. It is just easier to do the, to help them with the project and to deal with it and go on Google and start looking for YouTube and all those things, right?

So I get it, but here's how it plays out in the classroom. And just something to think about. All right. So let's look at natural consequences, right? In the letter, my example was when the parent suddenly runs to school, Oh, my child forgot their water bottle, right? And they bring, you know, a gallon of, of cold water with requests that I keep it in the fridge for them for it to stay cold.

No,  no people. I promise your child will not die of heat exhaustion on my watch. Okay. But if they are going to have to drink out the water faucet for the day the water fountain, then they're going to remember their water bottle. Okay. But in the classroom, have I ever been guilty of net letting students experience natural consequences?

Yes. And let me tell you how by accepting late homework,  by accepting late projects. 

I'll have a a a policy and then I'll feel sorry for the kid. I mean, and that's like the calm, consistent consequences. I know I preach that all the time, right? But if you repeatedly let kids make up their work with no penalty, right? I used to, even when the kids were little, I did a better job in first grade.

If they didn't have their work, I made them miss out on Friday Fun Club. They had to go to Friday Finish Up. That was in somebody else's room. They had to do their little homework packet before they could have any fun.  But once I started teaching older grade kids, yeah, I, I was not. As firm as I should have been on my late homework policy, right?

They just sent the message that deadlines didn't matter. Right. And I'm cheating, you know, the students, I'm, I'm cheating them out of this opportunity to learn time management. Okay. It would be better to work with a student to figure out now. Why is it that you couldn't get this done? Well, because my sister had practice.

Okay. Well, how could you, how can we work this out? Right.  Try and problem solve with them. Okay. Right, but not just to let them know that, you know, deadlines don't matter. Okay. So that's how I've been guilty of that. I'm sure there are other.  But that came to mind. Now, number two, over helping students with their work.

Now, of course, I never did my kids homework for them and handed it in ever. And in class, it's not like I'm going to take your test for you and I'm not going to write your paper for you. However.  You know what, you're in small group and you're struggling and it's so busy in class and I have to move on and there's so much to do.

I might be real tempted to say, look, this is how we do it. Remember, it's like this. It's like that. Okay. Instead of doing all the things that we know we should do, right? Providing scaffolding, using prompting questions to guide students to think critically, right? Like what have you tried so far? You know, what do you think would happen if we tried this approach?

Does anybody else have any ideas, right? If I'm just really  in a bind, there's a lot of kids, and there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of things going on, that kid who finished early and is really bored of doing his, you know, Khan Academy mappers by himself independently, because he's three grades ahead of everybody else in math, I might ask him, hey, help your buddy do this.

Okay, and I know full well, stepping away. that that child is not trained enough to, and neither should they be, to say, what have you tried so far? What do you think would happen if we tried this approach? They're just going to say, no, we do it like this, right? And he's,  they're probably going to help him do it a little bit more than they should.

Okay. So that's how that has shown up in the classroom for me. And obviously,  If you're training a child to be super dependent on your help, you are doing them no favors. I have had this issue before with students who have had special supports and structures through different programs. And literally, you know, the teacher will say, well, this is what they're doing in the room with me.

This is what they're capable of. And then independently, They can do none of it. Have we really done them any favours if all we've trained them to do is become super dependent on the teacher's help or the aide's help? Okay, so that's how that plays out in class. Again, I'm saying not just the parents. Okay, number three, not allowing students to resolve their own social interactions and conflicts.

Oh my goodness,  when do the conflicts happen? The conflicts happen when we are not around. Okay. Now I always used to say to kids, like they would, this, this is what always used to get me right. And you know, this scenario, you open the door after lunch or after recess, and you've got to spend the first 10 minutes playing, you know, CSI, right, crime scenes investigators.

What happened? You got to unravel all the drama. Right. And I, kids would know after the first few weeks of school, what My standard response to them would be, what did the yard duty say when you told them about it?  And then of course they would say, well, I didn't tell the yard duty. And there were times where I would have to bite my lips and say, if you didn't tell the yard duty, then it didn't happen.

I mean, honestly, that's what we had to get. We have to train the kids. I understand why sometimes we're just like, here, resolve it. Shake hands. Come on. Like you're friends. Let's get over it. Right. And we kind of robbed them of that opportunity to kind of talk it out and feel it out and what What were your feelings and how did you make him feel?

And, and all those things. Okay. And it comes down to training. We don't have time to do it. When recess was over, you know, our schedule and my particular school, like recess was over at 10 20 and then rotation started at 10 20. Well, the kids were supposed to magically get off the yard and be in their group rotations with zero transition time.

Right. So we were already behind on that. Even if the kids lined up straight away and came in and sat down and pulled out their books and were sitting in the right seats with the right supplies. Okay. That's a lot of ifs, right? I didn't have time to be unraveling playground drama. Right. So, it's a function of time.

However, the years that I invested more time up front in helping kids gain these skills and taking when we had more quiet time in the afternoon to throw in some social, emotional lessons, to really delve into the difference between what is tackling, what is responsible reporting, what is falling out with your friend.

What is bullying,  right? Unless your friend is bigger than you, meaner than you, repeatedly threatening you, there's a power differential you know, you, you've fallen out. You're not getting along.  And we got to learn to resolve those conflicts and teach kids those skills, how to do them. Not in the moment, but preemptively.

Okay. So go Google, find some social emotional lessons. There's plenty of good stuff out there  on how to help students resolve conflicts for themselves. It is a lifelong skill. You know what? Some kids have terrible role models on how to resolve conflict. Okay. And so we got to teach them. We can't assume.

They know. We can't assume that they know the difference between what real bullying is and just falling out with your friend or your friend saying a comment you don't like. You know, I always used to tell kids, Oh, he said he didn't love my shoes. Do you like your shoes? Yeah. And that's all that matters.

And I would give them this example. That's as if I said, I don't like your purple hair.  And then they'd say, but. But Mrs. I don't have purple hair. Exactly. Like there was no,  there's no kind of emotion behind that. You know, it's not true. So if your friend says you're stupid and you're no good at football, like if you know, that's not true, you're not stupid and you are good at football, then why would you take that personally?

You're going to think my friend's having a bad day. You're going to, you know, Hey, dude, you okay? What's up? Why are you being mean to me? Let's play with someone else for a while. Regroup tomorrow, right? Give them some skills, some strategies. I understand why it is so easy and so tempting to dive right in there and fix it for them.

Okay. But then again, you are leading to those. Kids being dependent on you. Students suddenly become overly reliant on adults to resolve their their interpersonal  issues, right? It doesn't serve them well in the long run, okay? So set up some kind of structure, some kind of procedure for discussing issues.

You know, if you have older kids, I always had like a little desk where if there was some kind of playground drama, you needed to go write your statement.  Go write your statement of exactly what happened and then you know, I would look at the statement and I would say, and when I ask your friend or the other person, is their statement going to say the same thing?

Is it going to be the same story? Do I need to find some witnesses? A lot of times you'll find that if some kid had to sit down and articulate it and spend five minutes doing it, they're like, ah, forget it. It's not that important. Okay. But have some kind of structure for it.  some way that students can express their feelings and work towards a resolution, right?

With minimal adult intervention. Okay, so just some things to think about. The things that we want to tell parents, what are you doing? You're not helping the situation. Sometimes, If we look into our teacher souls, we can see that maybe we're doing, to a lesser extent, maybe we're guilty of the same things.

The big takeaway from this is, what I try to reiterate in that letter is, I see you. Parents work hard. They're overwhelmed. Maybe they didn't have good role models for parenting. And they want the best for their kids. And so do we, we are all on the same team. I had the episode about how to make deposits in parents emotional bank accounts before you start making withdrawals.

That is a very good place to start. That was episode 61. It was in my back to school series. It was called back to school 2024, part two, positive.  Teacher parent partnerships. And I talked about all about how you set yourself off to have this positive experience with parents and how it begins with making deposits in their emotional bank account before you have to make withdrawals.

So if you feel that that's an area.  That you would like some more suggestions with. I gave a lot of practical suggestions there in that episode. Okay, we have got this. I hope,  I hope with your own children, hopefully that didn't give you too many pangs. I think I was I was, you know, I was vulnerable there.

I've done these things with my, with my own kids. They are grown and flown now and none the worse for it. But if you're a parent too, you know how easy it is to fall into these traps. Okay. Thanks for listening. If you want to share this episode with a friend or a parent, just saying, but until next time, create your own path and bring your own sunshine.