here is the story... it's about Tim's French teacher.
She is a difficult teacher. Tim took a test on Friday, the class average was 48%, Tim's result was slightly above (that in itself does not bother us, he is an "average" student)
The problem is, his teacher is not French - she is Luxembourgish. Again, not a problem. Except that DH is French. And when he read over the test last night he went BALLISTIC - because it was a REAlly, REALLY bad test.
Seriously.
Many, and I mean MANY faults - she could not construct proper French grammar, her questions, many could not be completed properly.
Bertrand was beyond shocked at how bad that test was.
And at the moment he is pretty darn furious.
He scanned the test into the PC to keep and is sitting on it thinking about what to do.
Normally, he is EXTREMELY respectful about teachers. The teachers are right. Whenever a teacher comes with a problem, we nearly always side with the teacher and take the teachers lead and continues that into the household with our dealing with the issue. Both his parents were career educators.
But this time, it feels like we should do something - but what? tell the teacher they are crap? tell the school principal that she is crap?
to what level do we complain, without causing problems for Tim down the road.... and we certainly don't want it to appear as though we are complain because Tim's result was crappy (well, ALL the kids results were crappy...)
Oh, and another thing - low grades in high school her are the "norm" the grading scale is out of 60 points per test. a "very good" result is 50-60 (us equiv A). A "good result is 40-50 (us equiv B). and an average, still passing result is 30-40 (us equiv C). it seems as though the system is made so that there is a real bell type curve. tests are often very long too long to totally complete. it's tough, real tough.
wow, megan, that is crazy. i honestly think this may be a situation where talking to the teacher first may be a bad move. i would set up a meeting with the principal about it. i would also ask to remain anonymous because i think if the teacher knows who talked, there could be repercussions. if the teacher really is crap, why wouldn't you want to tell the principal about it? you definitely don't want crappy teachers teaching your kids. does the teacher teach other subjects? maybe french is not their main subject to teach? i could see that sliding a little bit, but if that is her main area of focus then it is unacceptable.
i think i have to agree with crystal here, assuming a few things...
it's definitely a teacher-made test and not something copied out of a teacher's textbook, right?
also, before you head to a meeting, does tim have other handouts you could look over to see if the errors seem consistent or if it was just a bad test? i make my students carry binders, so if tim has something similar, it should be filled with handouts from the teacher (unless she's just giving them book work, but if she's making up her own test, then she's probably making up her own handouts too). a "bad test" is certainly not ok, but then you know if you're dealing with a bad test or a bad teacher, kwim?
there's no good way to meet with a teacher and tell her that you think her skills are poor.
if bert truly believes that her subject matter knowledge is that poor, i would set up a meeting with an administrator at the school.
he could even approach it from the angle of, "this test really seems to have an unreasonable number of errors on it. here's what i see: examples x, y & z. i'm assuming this is just a fluke, but i would really like to make sure that this is a one time deal and that all of the assignments do not reflect the same kinds of errors."
also, do you know if there are other french teachers in his school or is she the only one? we only have 1 at my school, but if you had 2, the school would have a 2nd "expert" outside of bert to validate the mistakes on the test, kwim?
Mike and I were discussing and at first he said, "they should go to the teacher first" and let her explain herself. but then we read April's response and that all makes sense.
I do agree that looking at her previous work may help. Maybe she just grabbed this test off the internet (not a good thing but maybe there were other curcumstances?).
Tough situation. You don't want to call negative attention to Tim. It's so early in the year and if there are no other options for him, what do you do.
I think April has very good points. I too would head to the administration with this one. If the teacher doesn't speak/write French properly, then anyone might as well teach it.
ITA with everything April said. Assuming this is not a fluke it is completely ridiculous that she should be teaching these children flawed French. Ridiculous! This is definitely a matter for administration to deal with. And I think you totally have the right perspective. Let us know how it goes! What a nightmare.
In general, I like to approach a teacher first, but in this case, I think following April's advice is best. It does sound like in the past you have talked with this teacher, so it's not like there has not been any parent-teacher communication. I hope it all works out.
Ya know, world language is the one subject where unless you have admin that know the language there is very little observation over the class. Most parents here do not know the language well enough to catch grammar, etc.
I would totally go to the admin/principal. I guess I would want to know how the students are placing outside of the school. Not sure how it works there. How are the students testing? Do they do national tests?
The unfortunate side to world language is a lot of times it is not caught till a class leaves and they are not performing to standards of the level they were placed. We actually are having a problem because our Chinese students in our middle school compete against HS levels and when they leave our school and go on the HS the teachers are not able to handle them. They actually let go of the chinese teacher at the public HS for the very reason you are posting. She was not chinese and was not correctly teaching the language. You sometimes get a language teacher who knows how to teach, but does not know the language well enough or you get someone who knows the language, but cannot teach. It is tricky.
I would review past tests, etc and go in with documents to show them. I mean you could confront the teacher by saying you are concerned when you reviewed the homework, but what can she do? I mean the only way that would work is if you wanted to give her a heads up before you went to the principal.
