Addressing conflict with schools and teachers: Part 2: Arbitrary policies, rules before exceptions, presuming good faith, and stylistic differences.
Schools or teachers may have policies we dislike, or don't prefer, but that are not wrong. Discerning the difference preserves our credibility for more serious problems.
In the first part of this series, I wrote about some ways you could possibly head off conflict from the beginning, ways to pre-empt problems by building a relationship–or at least an alliance–with your child’s teacher.
Why do I have to be the one to do all this stuff?
Whenever I make the point that it might be wise to do this and to build some emotional credits with the teacher in advance, people push back. “Why do I have to be the one to do this?”
I hope what I wrote last time helped explain that a little bit. And, to be clear, you don’t have to do any of this.
I think it’s a good idea, though, for a few reasons. First, because it’s your child and you want what is best for them. Seeking our child’s best interest is our primary job as a parent.
The second reason to be thoughtful about this is more pragmatic. There’s something important to understand: in a sense, schools were designed not to be all that responsive to parents.
Schools are not generally set up to be immediately responsive to every concern we might have
That sounds harsh, and frustrating, but if you really think about it, that’s sort of the way it has to be. There’s no realistic way a school–public or private–could be run if everyone was able to call the shots or put in lots of requests.
Before waving that aside, sit with it and really try to imagine how it would be if a school with hundreds or thousands of students took lots of requests–especially since doing something for one parent would require giving the same concessions for all.
There would be no consistency and no stability. So some degree of insulation is built into the system.
Also, schools are pretty unique places. They all have their own cultures and their own rules, written and unwritten. They are not comparable to businesses or other entities, and it’s good to keep that in mind and try to learn the way they work.
Now, sometimes, all of this means schools are not responsive to legitimate concerns and that is so incredibly frustrating. My wife and I lived in a school district once that was not only non-responsive to parents, it was almost anti-responsive to parents. The principal ran that place with an iron fist and did not want to see or hear from parents. We have locked horns with bureaucrats and we have seen things happen we felt were unfair for our kids.
But again, I come back to what schools are, what their parameters, missions, and limitations are.
It takes a huge amount of ongoing effort, lots of daily work, just to keep a school moving day to day. There is always something to do, something routine, but then there is also almost always something non-routine, some minor or major emergency, some fire to put out.
So, with that understanding, there are times when there is simply not any bandwidth for a school to do something new and different.
The simple reality, good or bad, fair or unfair, right or wrong, is that a school, administrator, or teacher will almost always have more power over a situation than we, the parents, will. That requires us to be thoughtful and maximize our influence.
Vinegar and honey redux
This is why I go back to the vinegar and honey analogy.
I have seen people over the years make demands and often these demands go nowhere. Then having made the demand, there’s nowhere to go, no options left to pursue.
The steps I am going to talk about are the best way I know how to maximize the chances of getting what you want, whether that’s solving a problem or getting something more positive.
I can’t promise these approaches or techniques will get you what you want every time, but this is what I do when my kids have had problems, and this is what I have seen get results from other people over the years.
So you don’t have to do any of this. I think it will be worthwhile to try, however.
Revisiting the idea of alliances
From last time, I want to be clear that when I talk about a good working relationship or being allies with a teacher, I am not talking about some kind of forced friendship. That’s why I like the term “ally” or “alliance.” It doesn’t require close friendship. It just requires conscious awareness of shared interests and some pragmatic awareness of how to treat someone.
I have had really good alliances with parents I am quite sure did not really like me.
I am kind of…a lot. I have a big personality. I teach subjects that a lot of kids love, but where a lot of parents don’t have a great deal of personal experience. Beyond that, I am often unlike anything people have experienced.
But we both had a common interest: their child. And these parents were wise enough to be able to say, “Well, he’s kind of intense and weird, but my kid likes plays and he’s consistent and clear so I’ll just go along.”
These parents were able to treat me with respect even if they didn’t like me all that much, personally. And, over time, I came to respect them as well and we developed solid relationships that we all about our common interest: their child.
Sometimes a problem with a teacher or school develops over time, in response to a situation that happens. We will get to those later.
A lot of problems, however, develop not over problems, but over basic things like policies, rules, and procedures. So let’s start there.
Two cheers for arbitrary policies
A frequent complaint I hear and see is that a policy or rule or procedure is arbitrary.
That is often true, but being arbitrary doesn’t mean being wrong.
People in authority have to make clear, simple, enforceable rules and any time a human has to make a policy, it will, by definition, be arbitrary at some point.
For example, is there anything magic about speed limits that end with a 5 or 0? Is 55 really that different from 56 or 57? What about 54 or 53?
I assume that a traffic engineer or local municipality studied conditions on a road–the curves, the number of cars that drive, whether there is a dense population nearby, etc. They then figure what a safe speed would be. And, I assume, they then come up with a nice clean number that is easy to remember and is consistent.
That is the way it has to be, and it’s one of the requirements if we want to live in an orderly society.
Teachers and schools have to do the same thing–create policies and procedures that will help the school’s work be clear, consistent, and predictable.
This is especially true in the classroom where there is an almost endless number of variables that come up on minute-by-minute basis.
Because of the variables, it’s critical to structure what can be controlled.
That is, every class is going to have things that go wrong. There's going to be challenges with tech, or there's going to be a problem with a student, or any number of things.
A teacher has to control carefully all that they can control if they are going to be able to attend carefully to all of the variables that come up.
So, they have to develop policies that work for this purpose–that makes sense to them.
I cannot set policies and procedures that don't work for me but work really well for a parent, for example, since I'm the one who has to do the work. That is really important to understand. Whenever someone is in the position of being able to set a policy, say, a teacher, a boss, parents, or whomever, it is because they have ultimate responsibility and accountability for outcomes. Therefore, it is only fair to give them wide latitude when it comes to setting up the policies.
So, different teachers will have different policies because they have different personalities, different strengths, and they also teach different subjects.
An English teacher, for example, has a lot of work that cannot really be automated or farmed out. They have to read and respond to student writing. And at the end of the day, there's just sort of no way to do that quickly and easily. Therefore, they might have a policy that's very strict about late work.
I had a friend once who taught English and actually had a very generous policy towards late work, but it was absolute. There was no wiggle room.
So, for example, work had be in 48 hours before the end of the grading period. This was because my friend needed adequate time to be able to thoughtfully read and respond and grade.
Yet when my friend stuck to this people pushed back hard and that card and accused my friend of just being tyrannical and a control freak, period.
Now, I'm not saying that every policy every teacher institutes is wise or thoughtful. I acknowledge they are not, and I have had frustrating encounters with rules and policies with my own children. But before you start to go complain about them, try to understand the reason for something. Remember the old adage that before you try to tear down a fence, you need to understand what that fence was put there for.
Teachers and schools are very much the same.
Note to teachers:
Teachers reading this: it helps enormously if we are doing our part as well. One of the best ways to help parents trust us is to be as consistent, transparent, and professional as possible. We won’t always get it right, but we can really try.
Rules before exceptions
Parents, here’s a big one I’d really encourage. Before you start requesting exceptions or making requests, I would suggest you try living with things as they are. Try working with the system as set up. Learn and live the rules before you ask for an exception. That will enhance your credibility immensely.
Good faith and not escalating small differences
Parents and teachers, I have found it is always best to start with the presumption of good faith.
There are very few bad people I have run into in my daily work. Most teachers, most parents, are good, sincere people trying to do the best they can. If you can start there, that is a big deal.
In our larger society we have become accustomed to taking small differences and making these huge, disqualifying, major problems. Everything has become so polarized and contentious that we have unlearned some basic truths and habits.
Disagreement ≠ bad
Differing views ≠ bad
Conflict ≠ bad
Full agreement ≠ good
We can have honest differences of opinion without it becoming personal. We might not get all we want, and that can be frustrating and disappointing, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t continue a working relationship.
Likewise, we need to acknowledge that we can agree on a lot of things and that this is good, as opposed to seeing a few places of disagreement as being disqualifying.
Remember back in school, if you missed a few problems on a test, you got an A- or a B+, not an F.
And yet, we often mentally fail people if there are even a few honest disagreements. It easily becomes personal if someone doesn’t agree with us.
Start with that in mind: we will never get all we want. Schools, administrators, teachers will not ever be 100% aligned with what we want.
That’s actually for the best, because life will not give us or our children all we want. School is a good place to experience that and learn to work with it.
When you have a difference of opinion, when something is frustrating, annoying, upsetting, start by presuming good faith.
There will always be policies or rules or cultural aspects we don’t like. Before we start pushing back on stuff like this, it’s always good to ask if it really matters.
It’s also important not to confuse stylistic and personal differences in approach and tone as a problem.
You might be surprised if you heard the number of complaints teachers and administrators get that fundamentally come down to the idea that someone would prefer something to be different.
But keep in mind that different does not equal bad, and the fact that a parent or student would prefer some other approach or policy or tone is not necessarily going to be sufficient grounds for making a change.
Before you push on with something, just ask yourself if this is really significant or if it is simply a matter of preference.
Why this matters
The reason this matters is because the more often you complain about something, the less likely your complaints will get the attention and focus you might hope for.
Learning to let some things go, especially things that don’t really matter, will preserve your credibility and help you be more likely to get a response to more important problems later.
More on navigating conflicts later. Until then, happy parenting! You’ve got this.
Best,
Braden