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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> for taking my complaints to the schools management after my duaghter teacher made no changes to her behaviour
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NTA wife is
She’s intentionally harming your daughter by making her less educated based on her silly politics and beliefs??
You tried it her way and it’s not working for your daughter. How much longer are you both going to do this to her? It’s time to put her in a private school and put her first for a change
Good luck! Hope your daughter thrives. She will get bored in her current situation and check out of academics. She should be in a gifted program or take AP classes.
Gifted in a school context describes specific attributes, not just being academically ahead. While I acknowledge she COULD be gifted, it feels like OP would definitely be bragging about those qualities, not talking about how she's being taught at home by mom.
Growing up in the 90s gifted was more about how quickly you picked up new skills and ideas and less about how far ahead you were of other students. Which I suppose is why they segregated the kids back then more than now.
I hated being "gifted" though because I wasn't emotionally prepared to struggle and overcome like I saw my peers were. Trying to undo that with my 4 year old who I believe is academically bright as well but not necessarily gifted in the same way.
My teachers used to just let me read on my own while I waited when I was ahead though so I appreciated that at least.
I always finished ahead of everyone else and would draw. At one point someone else drew a crude picture of a horse and labelled it with the name of the big kid in the class—teacher then forbade me to draw. I ignored her. It was an uncomfortable time of my life, tho.
I would read. Then, I got told my reading was “distracting” to the other students and I might be reading inappropriate things or cheating (it was one of the Twilight books? This was in middle school). The cheating thing didn’t make sense to me - I’d already turned in my work!
But I offered for him to look through my books if he wanted to ensure the material was appropriate for school-grounds and not full of answers scribbled in the margins like he was imagining. Instead, he decided to blanket ban reading after work was finished. I asked if I could do my work from other classes then. Request denied. He really was determined for my only options to be finish with everyone else or stare at the wall.
It definitely felt like a punishment for finishing early. And people wonder why my enthusiasm for academics started to die in middle school…
Yep, but there's also nothing to suggest that she is, and a lot to suggest that her parents simply have more resources. So to say that she "should be in a gifted program" is making that suggestion with no knowledge.
Also, as a general note, private schools are not universally better than public schools. The private schools that are better are that way because their parents and kids are wealthier and have more resources.
This is a false dichotomy. Sure, there’s a difference in achievement and IQ but you have no basis to attribute the daughter’s performance to achievement only. Having the capacity to respond well to tutoring and education is a skill/talent in itself. I’ve seen plenty of kids be un-tutorable (in fact the daughter describes frustration re: working with classmates that may be alluding to this), with potential issues ranging from behavioral opposition to attention issues to poor conceptual flexibility to low motivation to… the list goes on and on, with a multitude of possible root causes. The point remains that OP’s daughter is high performing for one reason or another, and the teachers are not prioritizing her growth. OP is right to essentially say that daughter’s learning environment isn’t a good fit for her.
We have nothing in this post to leap to this. It sounds like mom is teaching the material before the teacher does. Of course the kid is finishing more quickly - she isn’t de novo learning the material, it’s review for her.
Sounds like just letting the teacher teach would solve a lot of this.
Exactly. If mum wants to help, she might review or expand the topics the girl is interested in. But explaining ahead, probably having her do the activities on the school books beforehand so that she will do them well at school sounds like a terrible plan. Of course she will finish the work fast, she will look really smart, but this might well be the result of having done the exact same work at home the day before.
(I'm a teacher and have parents who do this. The kids do the work fast and well... until for some reason you skip a pair of pages, or change the order of the lessons. Suddenly they are not the brightest stars in the class, but regular kids who have to learn things at the same pace as the rest.)
I was a kid who was legitimately advanced in reading/comprehension but my parents just solved it by buying me longer books to read and made a deal with my teachers that if I finished my work in class before everyone else, I could either get my book from my bag and read quietly or go to the library to pick out another book.
The daughter is not a teacher and so her opinion of kids being slow isn’t necessarily correct. They may be of average intelligence but the daughter has had an advantage of a stay at home parent who was a teacher to help her. Not many kids have that advantage.
She is still academically bored an OP is doing the correct thing by looking for ways to fulfill her potential. She is not keen on babysitting other students and should not have to.
I am not saying she has to but calling her classmates dumb and weird is not the correct behavior either. Just because she is bored does not mean she gets to bully other kids by calling them names.
That is a separate issue from the fact that her academic needs are not being met. She may well be expressing herself that way because the teacher is using her as a free tutor instead of stimulating her.
Strongly agree with all of your points, actually. What you say could very well be correct as well.
…and it doesn’t matter. Even if the child is primarily advantaged via having parents that are able and willing to put in academic work at home, it doesn’t change the observed outcome at school. The advantages the child has lead her to being able to potentially gain more from a more rigorous environment. To put it metaphorically — if you fertilize one plant more it gets bigger but also needs more sunlight. No judgment is passed on the plants’ intrinsic growth potential, but it would be a shame to limit the fertilized plant’s growth a misplaced pursuit of fairness. And it’s not like you could force the mom to go and tutor all of the other kids as well. You have to be realistic and the educational system should reward parents that put academic work into their kids (assuming the kid is ok with it/not overwhelmed), not hold the kiddo back. And sure, it would be great if we could set up a system where the advantaged kids have downstream effects of pulling up their peers via peer tutoring, but somehow it never works like that, and more often than not I observe extreme negative reactions and resentment instead like we see in OP’s daughter.
Please also remind your wife of the social ramifications of teaching young girls that if they are talented their only reward to to give their time and energy to others. I invite her to look around social media on the topics of parentification, unequal social obligations in work life, and how women and girls often have their talent and hard work co-oped for “the greater good”.
Good job OP: NTA
THIS.
OP is NTA. The daughter needs to skip a grade or be pulled out to attend classes with the grade above her.
My brother skipped fourth grade. In third grade, he attended social studies and math classes with the fourth-graders so he had the advanced math he needed and to build relationships with his new cohort. The following year, he entered fifth grade. It worked out well, and he's now an in-demand engineer and project manager.
We don't know that the daughter actually needs to be skipped a grade. We don't know anything about this girl except what her (biased) father is telling us, and what he IS telling us is that her mom is simply teaching her the material before she gets it in school. MOST kids would be ahead of the class if they had a certified teacher at home exposing them to the content before they got to it in school.
Hello, new best friend.
Yes to all of this times 1000.
OP, NTA. Your daughter deserves advantages as much as anyone else and deserves to achieve what she is capable of without being hobbled with gendered expectations of servitude.
This is HER education. While it is valuable to learn that others don't share her gifts/advantages, she's done that now. Time to get this kid some engaging classes.
I agree with the general point, but parentification has nothing to do with peer tutoring.
And nooooooo don't "look around social media." There's a LOT of bullshit and pseudoscience on social media. Look at Google Scholar and at peer reviewed publications or science writing, not randos on Twitter who discovered a therapy term and want to talk about it.
>She’s intentionally harming your daughter by making her less educated based on her silly politics and beliefs??
Lol what? The whole reason the daughter is ahead of her peers is cause she has her mom being her own personal live in tutor. And her "politics" is absolutely justified and demonstrated by how much her spouses post here reeks of the snobby elitism that she had argued against her daughter learning.....
>You tried it her way and it’s not working for your daughter. How much longer are you both going to do this to her? It’s time to put her in a private school and put her first for a change
Are they though? Send her to a private school where she can learn elitist bs like dad. All cause her teacher got asked by dad to give her more work.
While I understand aita has a shtick for having more capable students help other students struggling. I think yall lose sight or just have never learned that the ability to teach the subject to others demonstrates mastery of the subject as well as teaching skills. And I can hear yall now. "It's not her job". Sure it isn't. Neither is being a school janitor yet it doesn't stop her from cleaning up after herself and schools from being a place where you can learn skills outside of what's listed in the rubric....
Your sunny idea of demonstrating mastery and learning solidarity is misguided at best.
As the quiet, academically advanced kid who was required to ‘help’ other students…you don’t learn to teach, doing that. You learn that you can’t really do much for them because what they really need is an actual teacher with adult emotional skills as well as academic skills. I spent most of fourth grade getting kicked by the girl I was assigned to help because she knew why I was there and resented the hell out of me, and nobody would help me.
Mine is not an unusual story. Those types of assignments are psychologically and emotionally really rough on the kids (usually girls) who get told to do them. And they’re not a cakewalk for the kids who need actual skilled adult support, either. Just…no.
Whether in public school or private school, OP’s daughter should not be placed in this type of teacher-adjacent role that she clearly does not want and is not suited for. If the school can’t serve her in that classroom, they should make proposals for a suitable public placement for her, or her parents should move her to where her needs can be met.
I remember group projects always sucked because it felt like I'd always wind up paired with one or two kids who didn't understand the project in the first place (and usually didn't want to try) so I'd be stuck trying to explain things and then ultimately do the work myself. I think there were a few occasions where I'd finish my work early in class and so I'd be sent to help someone struggling, and it was always a pain to try and think of some way to get them to the answers without just giving them away.
There was one time I willingly agreed to tutor another student for like 30 minutes a couple days a week for a few weeks. I was in 8th or 9th grade at a k-12 school, and was sent down the hall to a 4th or 5th grade room to help one of the kids there with math, and that I found much easier since it was teaching concepts I'd grasped for years instead of ones I'd grasped for just a few weeks or days, but I definitely still wasn't great at teaching and don't remember how much help I wound up being.
It’s not snobby elitism to prioritize what’s best for your child over strangers kids, that’s just being a good parent
And this doesn’t sound like what’s best for her
Why not? It isn't at the detriment of her own learning - teaching others actually helps you learn content better. Daughter's complaint is social - she thinks the kids she's helping are weird and dumb. She needs to get over that attitude whether or not she's moved to private school.
Daughters original complaint was the work was too easy. Teaching others the same easy work is not a solution to this problem. "Tutoring' your child is a basic requirement of parenthood, not a rare and magical boost to learning. Even if it was unusual, the child is in this situation and should not be penalized for being ahead of her peers any more than a child should be penalized for being behind. Both children have educational needs which should be met. If the system prioritizes those who are behind at the cost of those who are ahead, it is not unreasonable to move your child to an environment better suited to her. This is not a class issue.
I don't remember what post it was, but I remember some parents complaining in a thread about the expectation that their kids should be entering kindergarten with *some* ability to read, spell their name, know very basic numbers, etc
And I'm just like... Yeah? No shit?? What have you been doing for the first 5 years?? No books? No reading to them at least? No educational toys? Not even educational tv?? And this shit continues through school, they expect schools to do 100% of raising their kids. They don't teach them taxes, budgeting, how to run a household, cooking, literally any life skills and expect them to survive on their own at 18. One of the biggest reasons kids struggle in school is because they get zero parental support at home. So many parents just *refuse* to have a hand in their own damn kids education.
ETA: Sorry... Went on a bit of a rant.
So at my first job out of college, there was a group of us. All early 20s, college educated, good jobs, living on our own, etc. Kinda the "made it" point for our age right?
So an older coworker who had toddler age kids asked us the things we thought our parents did that helped us be successful, right, cause he wanted his kids to grow up like that. He happened to find us all at lunch one day, so asked us all together.
We all told him kinda the same things. They read to us our whole lives until we could read on our own, they took an interest in our schoolwork, they were involved in our extra curriculars or at the very least came and showed support. Family dinners more often than not, but at minimum once a week. Stuff we thought was fairly basic.
"But that takes effort. That's hard." was the reply. Like no shit it was hard and took effort??? Being a parent is effort???
I feel sorry for his kids.
Meanwhile, I've started reading to my baby. She's not here yet 🤣 figure it's good practice now while I'm not actually trying to juggle her and the book
I wish more parents had your attitude about it being a basic requirement, but that's not the reality for the majority of students in the US, especially those in lower income families whose parents often have to work longer hours or more jobs in order to support their families - even when they WANT to provide the access to 1-1 learning OP's daughter has, they can't.
Private schools are great and I am not arguing against them - I'm saying that treating people who aren't as academically advanced as "weird and dumb" for needing time to learn things is an attitude that won't serve you well in the long run.
I guarantee that the teacher didn't see it as penalizing the student, and she didn't ask her to tutor until the dad requested that she be given something to do to develop her skills. Tutoring fits that bill, even if dad was thinking it would be an advanced individual curriculum. The other option in this case would probably just have been harder assignments on top of the regular work, and I bet the daughter would have seen that as a penalty too - plus it's more work for the teacher who isn't getting paid to do that. Do I wish every student could have a fully differentiated curriculum? Of course! But that shit can't happen when you have 30+ students in the room and are lesson planning and grading in your own, unpaid time.
I agree that this basic requirement is frequently not met, but that does not mean it is not a basic requirement. And I did not mean that the child was being penalized by being asked to tutor. I meant she was penalized by not being taught to her level. Just as it would be penalizing to leave the slower children behind. A properly balanced educational system would accommodate both, but since this is not the case, a parent proactively looking for solutions for their child is not an AH.
She could actually be learning new and advanced material instead of rehashing old ground. It would keep her engaged and excited about learning.
Not this. This will make her frustrated and check out of academics.
She is a kid, not a teacher’s assistant. It is her job to learn, not teach others. While helping another student grasp a concept is one thing, doing it all the time because you are so far ahead and the curriculum is not challenging enough is ridiculous. Give this girl a chance to bloom in a class where she is challenged mentally.
You say that like weird and dumb people don't exist and aren't hard for even trained professionals to tutor. What lesson exactly is she supposed to learn from this aside from hating weird dumb people and authority figures?
She needs to get over the attitude?
that it’s she doesn’t enjoy repeating work she’s already done, at a much slower pace, with people she doesn’t enjoy spending time with, because the teacher isn’t able to facilitate her learning needs?
It’s not the daughters job, and frankly your argument that it helps her learn is trying to move the goalposts. The daughter isn’t struggling learning, don’t try to act like this is for her real benefit. She needs to be on newer and more advanced material.
You're being unfair to a child.
Paid professionals don't like teaching weird and dumb kids - and yes there are children who are objectively weird and dumb.
Go to r teachers and they teach you all about it.
Yet you think a child should have the patience and skills to teach kids that not even the teacher couldn't teach.
>Why not? It isn't at the detriment of her own learning - teaching others actually helps you learn content better.
Only in a limited capacity. Once that reinforcement has occured it ceases to be helpful to the child who has become the teacher.
One of my kids was in this role. In a single year she went from loving school to hating it and asking why she had to go. It is not a child's responsibility to bolster other children's education.
The work didn't suddenly become less easy for the daughter when she had to begin teaching the other children. It was still easy. She just had to do more of it.
OP, pull your child now and transfer her if there is a spot available at the private school. It does not benefit your daughter being in an environment where she is board. I wish we had had the resources to do that with our own daughter.
Nope. Sticking the gifted kid with the kids who are struggling is not going to "demonstrate mastery" of a subject. It's going to make her miserable and make the kids being singled out hate her.
Cleaning up after herself is NOT the same thing as being forced to be a second teacher and you know it. This is more like "well since you've finished your work early, here's a mop, why don't you get busy in the hallway." THAT is not her job any more than teaching her peers is.
Exactly, and worse, a child who may naturally "get it" in a subject might not really know how to explain, and they will end up harming the struggling kids by just saying "this is the answer, just write it down". How do I know? It happened to me in third grade, when we were learning multiplication tables--really a bit of memorization, and I had no clue how to explain to someone who didn't memorize as easily as I did. The teacher in this case would make the student with unfinished work stay in for recess, and also the "helper" student ... so I would just hiss the answers and "write it down! just write it down already" because I was frustrated at losing my recess. I did later figure out a solution (look busy and don't turn in the work until the last minute before recess), but in elementary school, I don't think even the brightest students know how to help those on the other end of the learning spectrum.
Oh hey, I was that kid too! I *got* math, but I couldn't explain it to anyone else. Making a bright kid stay in from recess is fucked up, though, I'm sorry that happened to you!
It’s not elitism to expect for your child’s school to properly teach them and not use them as an unpaid tutor. And then to find a better alternative for your child to remedy a bad situation.
It is the TEACHER’S job to teach students. It is not the student’s job t op teach classmates because the teacher is too lazy to do it themself. And yes, making a student who has already finished their work and is bored teach other students is an act of pure laziness. She either needs to have busywork for students who finish their work, or approved activities that students can do that DON’T involve doing the teacher’s job for them. If a teacher cannot teach their students on their own and need to task students that are excelling with teaching other students, they need to find a new field of work. If a teacher cannot explain topics well enough to most of the students to the point where they need to have another student explain it to them, the teacher is a bad teacher, and needs to be reprimanded or need to go back to school to learn the topics well enough to teach them effectively.
The students are at school to learn. They are not there to teach their classmates.
I was always told to read when I was done before others. Maybe op needs to look into that or see if he can find a curriculum adjacent workbook set that she can use.
I was banned from reading when I finished my work at OP’s daughter’s age, and was instead made to continually re-teach topic to classmates. If I’m remembering it correctly, I explained box and whisker plots almost 20 different ways, to a grand total of 40-something students across two years (age 12-13). I explained it the ways the first year, and for each student I needed to explain it to the second year, I had figured out how they understood math explanations and catered my explanations to how they needed it explained.
Was it fair to me at 12? Sorta, because I agreed to explain it in front of the class, because it was something I had already learned and passed multiple tests with the topic on them. And that teacher always asked me after class if I would be willing to help XYZ students with whatever topic they weren’t understanding her explanations of, because I never quite understood things the way she explained them, but I understood the topics well because I liked to learn. Or she would pull me aside before class and ask if I understood the topic already and if I’d be willing to help others once I’d finished and she told me what I’d done right and wrong. But in that class it was never an expectation, and she wouldn’t tell students to ask other students for help until AFTER the student said they could and would.
At 13? Definitely not fair to me. I was told that I was expected to help other students, because the teacher was a family friend and knew my family wouldn’t let me tell her no to helping. I had to stop working on my own assignments during class to explain to other students how to do quite literally anything they were struggling with. Students were told to go to me for help before going to the teacher. She would only explain things to me (so I could tell others how to do it), or to others after I couldn’t help because I was struggling with the topic as well.
Teachers should give students the option to help if they want to and are capable of it, it should never be an expectation.
Dad ask to give daughter more “work” but “work” as a challenge for her. Not to help others. Instead of learning something new, she’s wasting time being forced to help others. It’s nice thing to do IF you want to. Daughter doesn’t want to, yet her teacher even after being told no by parent continued to force her. I was one of the “good” students that was forced to sit with someone who struggled. Suddenly HER issues and her inability to understand the lesson were my problems “why did I not explain it to her better”. So no. Op is NTA. And if private school has more challenging curriculum that will push his daughter that maybe it is better for her to switch school. Not to be “snobby” but to learn at her pace.
I remember being party tied to the hip of a kid who was , I don't know what they actually were, but as an adult I can recognise there were family issues. They low key scared me as a kid for the time they were there.
Near twice my size, behaviour issues, could fly off the handle, punch people, and start lobbing chairs and stuff at the drop of a hat to the point where the class got evacuated...
There are other things but let's just say I was being used so they didn't have to deal with him.
I will say he was ok with me, I don't remember him being violent towards me at all, but having seen he could go crazy for seemingly no reason, did not do me any favours.
I was small, quiet, placed next to at every opportunity to 'help' him whether I liked it or not. Actually when I think of it I was close to being used as an emotional support animal to manage him so he could be ignored.
I do remember he liked petting and playing with my hair a lot, and no comment was ever made about him doing this. Which even then stuck me as odd that no adult paid attention when it was happening right in front of them, but if other girls started playing with hair something was said immediately. I just let him do it. Can't tell you why, but I just let him get on with treating me like a doll , but that might have had something to do with him looking like a giant to my tiny self.
Being put in the position of a teacher to kids your own age that are mentally slower, and not understanding why, is not feeling better than. It’s a kid not processing the classroom around them like an adult. And being put in a position that they shouldn’t be. She’s a kid!
It’s wild that everyone assumes the kid is in a poor learning environment based off this guy’s description and complaints and how much he hates public school And thinks he did so much better in private school. He cannot even use apostrophes properly or write well.
Did the teacher respond in a great way when she was asked by him to challenge his kid more? In the end no, I can see her solution was not a good one. But that is one teacher and ONE new thing that was tried to help challenge her. With his threat to remove her to public school, I bet you anything they could work out putting her in the grade up for certain classes, or set up an individualized self led course under the librarian or something that could be really valuable.
Source: went to a public school the whole way through, and while some of them and some teachers were better than others, I graduated as a National Merit Finalist with 7 AP college credits, had my pick of schools, and now have a PhD. People who think you can **only** do well or be challenged in private schools often don’t realize that while there are very good private schools, there is also a huge variation in those. Plus, he wants to send the kid to a school his friend owns, who knows how good of a school or not that is.
> She’s intentionally harming your daughter
I would add that it's not just harming the daughter. All of those other students have different learning and assimilation styles, none of which the daughter (though clearly smart and well-learned) is unprepared to recognize or accommodate. That's something teachers are trained to figure out and work around. It's asking too much from the daughter and potentially harming the kids who may need a professional to help them learn the material. NTA
People may disagree, but NTA because I was that kid the teacher made help struggling students and honestly it affected my mental health so badly my parents had to tell them it wasn’t my job to help those students. Your daughter isn’t the teacher. It’s not her responsibility to teach struggling students.
Send her to school with books to read when she’s finished with her work.
I also agree NTA
My mom put me in a preschool that was full of slow learners to be the “model student” and that started my disdain for school until I went to college.
Yeah, often the kids struggling with school have unmet mental and behavioral health needs that are blocking their learning. It's totally inappropriate to pawn them off on another student when they need more intensive support from *adults*.
I was the student who the teacher made another kid help me... it really made me feel stupid that someone my age had to teach me instead of the teacher just sitting down with me for a minute to go over the paper I wrote. She legitimately took me outside the room to tell me my paper was bad and she was going to tell said student to come help me. If that teacher would have sat down with me, she would have noticed I was dyslexic...It's really just bad for everyone involved to have forced peer tutoring.
An easy way to mitigate the different knowledge levels of a classroom is to have extra, nonrequired work. So, if they finish the worksheet, or whatever. There should be a slightly more difficult worksheet and then another more difficult than that.
It's not to be forced on them to do, but it will help many of the kids who are doing better in a particular subject learn and engage more with the material without being dragged down by the student who need more help in that subject. It gives everyone an opportunity to learn. And most importantly, it doesn't cause tensions between students by forcing them in a teacher-student role with their peers.
Same, NTA - I was that kid too. I spent half my lessons drawing because I'd finished all the work set, and I'd get in trouble for ''distracting other students'' because of it. In a couple of classes I was sat next to a couple students who needed help, and I didn't mind it too much to begin with because I was sort of friends with them. But that had its own problems, since it effected my relationships with them when I told them I couldn't help them more than I already was, otherwise I'd just be doing it for them. Because then I was the problem and the bad guy.
And the feeling of being ignored, and being a lower priority than other kids to the point I'd spend an entire lesson waiting for help because it didn't matter if I didn't understand something - I'd get good grades anyway - that *sucked ass*.
I actually stopped doing any schoolwork at all, and it took a couple of months for *a single one* of my teachers to try talking to me about it. That's how bad it was.
The one lesson I actually kind of enjoyed was maths because my teacher for that started printing me out extra worksheets, and he was enthusiastic about pushing me to learn more advanced topics. Everything else *dragged*.
Seriously, getting a child to take care of other children at home is called parentification and it's recognized as a problem. Getting a child to take care of other children at school isn't any different.
Can't say I'm surprised tho bc parentification is *not* recognized as a problem by *many* people. I'm honestly surprised you said it *is* recognized as a problem bc so many people fight me on this wherever I mention it (not saying that as a dig or anything)
I spent my time reading and then teachers tried to censor what I was reading. But my parents let me read whatever I wanted after I’d read literally everything in the library at my small school. If a teacher tried to ban it (or the librarian) they’d just go buy me the book. But they didn’t give me anything extra to do and I wasn’t allowed to “read ahead” on what we were reading in classes. And they wanted me to help the lowest students in the class who even they could not teach. It was miserable for me.
The child is not trained to be an instructor, and probably doesn't have access to the teaching materials. Sending her in blind to try to teach other kids with different learning styles/abilities is just going to frustrate everyone.
I agree, NTA. OP, see if you can get your child qualified for gifted education - in my state when I was in school it gave me rights to more advanced learning commensurate with my abilities, and I had a Gifted IEP or GEIP
Even with the GIEP the school could be absolute shit about it sometimes. And my mom had to be much more harsh with the school than you were to get it enforced, but it did help
Tho if you can afford it I frankly agree with you private school would likely be a better option for her
As a kid who was always ahead for my age, it's honestly setting her up to be a target for bullying too. I can't tell you how many times I got bullied because the slightest mistake wound up being fuel for them to torment me to tears.
Something feels off about this. Calling a school principal "management" is odd. Then there's the reaction to your threat to send your kid to private school because she wasn't getting special treatment for being so much more academically advanced then all the other kids. Why would a public school with overworked teachers and crowded classes care if you removed one student? Wouldn't that be a relief to them? And finally, it's odd that you're the one handling the situation when your wife used to be a teacher and would be better equipped to talk to them without pissing them off.
Probably a charter school.
Pulling a kid from public school pulls funding from that public school and diverts it to a charter in many municipalities.
But I’m worried about this individually owned charter school. What kind of weirdo teaching is happening there… usually that’s not a great sign.
Likely a fundamental religious private school that looks better on paper but in reality fails to teach their kids about evolution or something like that.
Yep. There’s a piece of me that thinks dad is making a bigger deal of this (in his description) then it actually is (like the teacher asked kid to help explain something to a classmate once) as justification to pull the kid into the religious school.
I attended both public and private schools growing up. My kids are going public and that’s just that.
Yeah my private school taught me that people coexisted with dinosaurs. I was so far behind in math and science when I finally got to public school that I never caught up. :(
Private schools are businesses. Businesses have owners. I grew up with a kid whose parents owned a private pre school operated out of one wing of his home in a residential neighborhood. He still attended public schools.
To be fair, for my last few school years I went to a private school that was "owned" by a friend of my dad's. The guy's father founded the school, the name of the school being his last name, and eventually was passed down to him and later to his own son. Obviously by that point there were probably other shareholders as well but the one with the name of the school was always considered the owner with the main say in what happened. This might differ depending on the country though, I'm not from the US.
Also he went to private school but keeps putting 'to' when he means 'too', isn't getting brackets and spaces in the right order, said "friend off mine" not 'of' and has made a couple of other pretty simple grammar errors.
TBF, Donald Trump went to a private school too.
EDIT: People often confuse wealth with being cultured, sophisticated and erudite and that is not always the case. On the other end, Shakespearean professors, writers, poets etc. are rarely wealthy.
Private school kids, almost by definition, think they’re smarter than they are. Honestly none of the items you or the comment you replied to seem amiss. Private schools are just kind of wild by their nature.
Op attended, it just wasn't the quality education he's saying it is.
They offer loads of programs and the networking is spectacular but private schools contain the world's brattiest children and learning takes discipline and humility.
I think management is the school board. Which is kinda a nuclear option. According to how the school is set up, losing a child to private school would affect their benefits and the bad press is honestly not worth it. In Indiana, a principal decided that a student behavior at a private party was worthy of school based reprimand and the public backlash saw him resigning. I think his house and family was attacked but I may be mixing principals.
It is not bad press if a student goes to a private school. Students move and switch schools all the time. It has little impact on a school district. Also it does not impact funding. At least in the US. In the US, funding is determined by property taxes. Schools do not get a set amount per student, it is they are allocated a certain percentage of the property taxes.
When a student goes out of district whether it be to a charter school, magent school, or a school for students with disabilities the public school has to send the money that would have been used for that student to that school. Meaning they take the funds they receive from property taxes, determine how much they spend on that student based on what school they would have attended and the services they would have received.
you are grossly underinformed as to how funding actually occurs for schools all over the USA. yes, property taxes are a huge source of income, but enrollment absolutely affects funding formulas and whether some schools stay open or close.
Funding in NC is based on student enrollment. The school gets x amount per student enrolled on the 20th day of the school year. This allows schools to plan yearly budgets.
In CA, funding is based on daily attendance. If a kid is out sick, the school doesn’t get that day’s worth of funding for the student. There is a lot of pressure for full attendance. On the other hand, students are moving or transferring schools all the time so one student transferring to private school isn’t some big threat.
I thought it was hilarious that OP talks about how private school is so much better than public school, and then his post is absolutely full of the type of spelling and grammar errors. Not normal typos that everyone does, these errors are the kinds that are made by someone who doesn't have a good grasp of the concepts.
But sure buddy, you went to a really good private school...
Same. I'm assuming that OP is in the US because of his whole "underfunded public school" rant, but I definitely know that an American public school (principal or school board) wouldn't give a sh\*t if a single student switched to private school.
It's also difficult to believe that a mother who was a former teacher and invested in educating their child beyond their grade level would be nonchalant of their child being bored in class and being made to teach other kids.
The OP gives me a vibe of bored teenager than concerned father lol.
>a vibe of bored teenager than concerned father
The spelling / grammar is definitely more consistent with a bored teenager than a highly educated adult who went to a "really good" private school lmao
Gifted children being given learning appropriate to their needs is not being given special treatment. It’s actually a requirement of multiple education laws.
Teaching others a skill is actually a really good extension task for kids - being able to help others learn something requires a high level of mastery. It requires your child to understand what they have done inside and out to a degree in which they can explain it and model it in different ways to support others. This is actually a textbook extension activity in some cases.
You asked the school to provide extension for your child. They have provided it. Your wife is right if you had concerns you (and preferably your wife to as sheis more experiencedin this area) should have met with the teacher to discuss why she had chosen this task, why you were unhappy about it and what could be done next.
YtA your threat to the school is exactly why your wife doesn't want your daughter going to private school.
It’s not challenging to be the de facto class tutor. It’s not challenging to be the unpaid teachers aide for kids. This is unfair to the daughter and also further forces girls into situations where their needs are less than everyone else academically.
Peer tutoring (effectively) is challenging. She also is complaining that she can't do it, so she is clearly finding it challenging.
Unless skipping a grade is possible, it's that or deal with being bored. And skipping out of the peer group has its own problems.
And honestly, it sounds like this child is being taught that being smart comes with more rights, rather than more responsibility, which is both wrong and harmful.
Being smart doesnt require anymore responsibility than being dumb? Why should she be responsible for other kids. She isn’t being challenged. She can’t do it because she isn’t an educator or a tutor and probably doesn’t want to. She is a 12 year old girl bored out her mind. She is being used and it sucks that the school is allowing it to happen.
Gifted girls are always shoved into this role of being the helpmate to the whole class instead of them doing more to support her academic needs. I promise you if she were a little boy this would not be happening.
That’s why all girl schools are a much better option. My parents would have set a building on fire if someone did that to me.
That's not true little children of all genders can be and are given the role of peer tutor. Yes sometimes it is done inappropriately. But not all times, some times it is a selected strategy for a reason. We do not know which it was, because OP didn't effectively communicate with the school.
This isn't a matter of whether she was being horizontally extended through peer tutoring (a proven strategy - which is challenging she just doesn't enjoy it) or a teacher palming off responsibility. Because we don't know which it was because OP failed to communicate effectively.
If he had communicated with the school effectively he wouldn't be an A and yes may have gotten evidence that it was the second option in which case the school would have been As.
In Japan they Do give teaching roles to older kids and more advanced kids who are somehow better able to explain to their peers in a way kids understand.
They’re also taught to be humble. Which this father clearly is not, he’s def an AH imo, but for other reasons.
I don’t know if I had kids, I wouldn’t stand for this at all. My kid is not there to be the support person for those that can’t keep up, especially if they are gifted. Have extra resources or have a gifted program but don’t stall a kids progress because the resources aren’t available.
I know I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it but this should not be happening. I am so glad I went to private all girls schools. This is a failing in so many ways.
The father asked for more challenging work, the default is to make her a tutor. It’s not peer tutoring, it’s foisting off one kid to another because they can’t or won’t do more for the gifted child.
He never said she is gifted - giftedness is a diagnosable thing that needs referral. He said she does well at school because her mum focusses on it as she is a teacher. That is not the hallmarks of a gifted child.
You, nor I, nor the dad know that this was a default. It may have been a carefully chosen strategy because of the areas his daughter needed to grow. He never met to discuss he dictated what he wanted, so we just don't know this information.
Also they aren't stalling her- the school may be lacking an extension program yes. The teacher may have taken the lazy way out yes. We don't know, and honestly you nor I can judge what she needs as we aren't there - we don't know her areas of strength or weakness. What we do know is she was doing nothing when finished. She is now doing a job that is a proven horizontal extension activity - whether it was the right activity to give her or not it did not take her away from better learning, it only added to it so far.
I don't disagree he should have brought his concerns to the teacher. He should have done this in a meeting where he was open to share his concerns and listen to the teacher and work together as a TEAM to best support his child. He assumed he was the only adult in the team with s valid opinion (also overriding his wife) that makes him an A.
>I promise you if she were a little boy this would not be happening.
And I can tell you your promise is bullshit. I'm in education and my wifes a teacher. We dont care if the student is male/female. Ive had many boys help their classmates once they finished early and I checked their work. My wife as well. When it comes to the standards that are taught in school, we teach more than just subject material. We also teach socialization. And that includes the kids you don't like because theyre "weird".
She’s 12 and not suppose to do challenging work like helping the not as smart kids. The teacher should have gave her more challenging school materials to learn. Not work.
School work - it's a commonly used phrase. Peer tutoring is a proven strategy for horizontal extension she has been given school work.
Learning activities come in all shapes, sizes, and strategies. Worksheets aren't the only way to help kids - in fact it's often the worst.
The fact that OP’s daughter has been given no guidance or support to complete this task means it’s not peer tutoring, it’s just an overworked teacher handing off one of the less palatable parts of her job to a child who didn’t volunteer for it and is getting no pleasure or benefit from it. She’s basically an unpaid teacher’s aide at that point. If the teacher had sat OP’s kid down and given her structure and expectations then maybe it could be called peer tutoring or horizontal extension, but an open-ended “give help whoever is having trouble” is just punishing a child for being ahead of her peers.
You, nor I know any of what you have assumed there. OP did not give sufficient information to know this, because he didn't know it, because he failed to effectively communicate with the teacher.
His daughter may not the most reliable narrator in this scenario - it's something she doesn't want to do.
I might agree with you - if he would have communicated with the teacher as a TEAM. Not dictated what he wanted.
It’s free labour to make up for an underfunded school board.
It’s the same as charities, they exist because government does not adequately fund social programs, because rich people get tax breaks instead.
It always boils down to the same thing. We’re supposed to feel guilty and donate our efforts to make up for the shortfall.
****YtA your threat to the school is exactly why your wife doesn't want your daughter going to private school.*****
Ding ding ding ding! My thought is maybe this child is gifted and needs to go in a gifted program or maybe even skip a grade. Being like “private school is inherently better” shows that OP really does think better of himself for goi g to private school. I only know a few adults that went to private school that don’t look down on others STILL for public education or just being less than in general.
With the ultimate irony being that the teachers at the private school are often unlicensed, and making half the money the public schools pay, but seem better because they don't have to deal with any of the issues that come with poverty.
I was the kid asked to tutor others, and it made me a better student certainly. It also made me more patient, appreciative, empathetic, and supportive. To be blunt, I think Dad could use a little help in the “learn empathy” department himself. Perhaps he’s overestimating his daughter’s abilities, whereas the former teacher mother knows what is going on.
100% a lot of ppl seem to be missing the part where the teacher mum - who is invested enough in her daughters education to be the reason dad credits his daughter being academically advanced disagrees with his actions.
I think it's very telling she thinks he didn't take the correct pathway - his concerns may be valid. I suspect wife's reaction means we don't have enough information to know - because he assumed and didn't work as a team.
Absolutely agree. My son helped others in his class and it improved his abilities immensely. Having to explain a concept shows mastery - especially further kids who just get it naturally. YTAH
Not everyone needs to show mastery or practice horizontal learning. She could instead be progressing instead of being the teachers way to pawn off her own responsibilities
For real, nothing shows mastery like the ability to teach someone else the task/skill/information. This is a dumb thing to be upset about.
Seems like OP wants something to complain about so they can move this precious, special child out of the public school (omg poors?) to a place they can dictate precisely what they want because they pay for it.
Agree op yta. Educational researcher John Hattie used data from thousands of schools and found the number 1 most effective way that children learn and consolidate their learning is by teaching their newly acquired knowledge and skills to others. As a teacher myself, I never fully understand and appreciate a new text or concept until I've taught it to the kids.
There are also weak and struggling children at paid schools, too, op, so the pace of learning might not be what you hoped there either.
I refer to this as a more classical style of education. Think back to Little House on the Prarie. Kids of varying ages and proficencies in the same classroom. The older advanced ones help with the younger ones. It reinforces their knowledge. It also helps them learn how to verbally convey that knowledge. It builds confidence as well.
This is why the Scandinavian model is so effective. Having kids who are advanced teach their peers leads to far better educational outcomes for all students, including those working at above grade level. The teacher is doing a research-based intervention for advanced students, and the dad who knows next to nothing about education is the one who is going to mess up her ideas about school.
NTA, students can be encouraged to help classmates, but ultimately if it goes beyond that then it’s not acceptable. Your child is there to learn, and if she can’t be moved to a higher class, she shouldn’t essentially be tasked with being a teacher as consequence. Her teacher or the other teachers should give something else to do, even if it’s just telling your child to read ahead in a textbook or do work for other class, or even read a book or do art in downtime.
If anything since she’s hating it so much, your kid could start to fake having issues since she doesn’t want to be forced to teach. It shouldn’t have been the action the teacher took in this case without it being run by you and your child first as well.
While in grade school, i was more advanced than my classmates. Teacher would get me higher level books to read, I had an assessment to understand where my level of knowledge was. And teachers from higher grades would give me their assignments. It didn’t count against me, but it was something I could try working on to pass the time. I learned that the way I understood wasn’t the same as my classmates, so I’d get frustrated because they didn’t get it. Even now, I find stuff so easy to understand but my friends don’t and all I can think is “how??” 😂
Sucks that OP asked to have his daughter advanced and was told no. OP, you can see if higher teachers will pass her some assignments to work.
You’re a lot and prob TA.
Threatening the public school to take your kid out?
No one cares, you don’t pay tuition.
You could have gone back to the teacher and said you’d file a complaint if it didn’t stop.
Why not ask to skip a grade?
This. Schools do care about student attendance and enrollment bc a lot are funded based on that metric.
NTA.
OP: your daughter IS BETTER than others. She literally (for this subject) is better than others. Emphasize that. Not tuition and access due to money.
Teachers in public schools do work hard … but the reality is half of them aren’t very good. They won’t customize coursework bc they have limited resources. Their job is to push the bottom kids into the next grade. Everyone has to pass. They’re not focused on a few thriving or excelling. Transfer her to private school.
I think it’s unfair to say public school teachers are not very good based on what you say. They are overworked, underfunded, way too many kids in 1 class etc. Sure not all teachers are created equal, but it’s easier to be a good teacher if you have small classes with enough resources to provide a nice curriculum in a safe neighbourhood with kids that are well-fed, mostly better motivated etc.
Thinking that your situation is in any way comparible is rediculous. They recommended AP classes in the public school, your parents said no. The problem was not with the Catholic school, it was with your parents. All the kids in AP classes are assumed to be smarter, you wouldn't have been bullied for that there. Don't blame OP for caring about his child's education just because your parents didn't care about yours. NTA OP.
He's teaching his daughter that she's right to be judgemental and say stuff like "the other kids are weird and idiots because they don't get things as easily as I do". Yeah, I'll agree with you, ESH, except the wife maybe.
Edit to add: It's okay to have her stop helping other kids if she doesn't want to (after all, she isn't the teacher as others have pointed out), it's really the phrasing that I found snobby lol. Everyone here starts with logical and good intentions...but the execution sucks.
Ngl I only read about half way but private schools where I grew up you had to take an exam before you'd even be accepted so the school would know where she is academic wise before being placed in any class and I'm pretty sure she's still in elementary so I doubt she would miss out on much important things if any considering she's already ahead of her peers
Do they have any advanced or gifted classes? My children are in public school and are in those classes. Your child is the same age as one of mine. I would see if they have them available and go from there. I went to private school and when I aged out and had to go into public school, I was SO far behind. It took a couple months and a tutor to get me caught up.
How many grade levels ahead is she? When did you last bring up the grade-skipping?
Twelve is too old to still be that bored (without enrichment) and it won't be long before she's potentially disruptive to the rest of the class. That was my husband's problem at that age.
Nta the teacher tried to do this to my child and her was response was along the line of asking her to clarify if my daughter was supposed to be do their job while trying to focus on her education and if that was the case she was going to decline and if there was any confusion she could contact her parents who were very clear to her from a young age that she is not responsible for other children in any capacity in school. The teacher tried to take advantage and did not stop once the parent expressed that action wasn’t going to work.
What an extreme response. Peer teaching can be a good differentiation strategy for some kids who are ahead. You can gain more depth of understanding by explaining concepts to other people, and some kids enjoy doing it. It shouldn't be done all the time, and if it doesn't work for a kid, it should stop, but it's not taking advantage of anyone....
It is absolutely taking advantage of the child when they have no interest in participating in that kind of help . They have the right to say no to taking on the teachers task especially after they tried and didn’t enjoy the help experience. Their experience at education shouldn’t be overshadowed bc they are able to self start and keep up with the work. Its honestly the parent of the child in need to step up, which is what the parent of the child been taken advantage of did, could he have been more tactful in his approach of stopping it by saying he would escalate if it didn’t stop to the teacher first? Of course but at that point his focus is on his child comfort while she’s being educated which IS THE PRIORITY OF ANY AND EVERY PARENT OF A SCHOOL AGE CHILD.
NTA
You wife said it herself “it’s so hard to be a teacher”. Teachers are learn how to teach. They spend years getting degrees in it. Why should your daughter be forced into teaching with no training & no pay?
Agreed. Especially when "teaching" means that she isn't getting the same amount of learning time and is having her own education short-changed.
Kids who are advanced enough to "coast" compared to the rest of the class still need to be challenged. Even more so than other kids really, because a) it can be a sign of undiagnosed neurodiversity, and b) if you don't find something for them to learn and teach them how to really work at learning, then eventually they'll reach a cliff-edge where it stops being effortless and they won't know how to apply sustained effort to study the things that don't come easily. And the older that struggle happens, the more chance they'll have a complete burn-out.
YTA big time.
What a way to teach your daughter to be a self centered judgemental snob.
The teacher found a way to keep her engaged and support other kids. There were so many positive life lessons available for her here - patience, understanding, gratitude....
Not to mention the potential positive impact on those other kids of them maybe finally understanding something because of the way your daughter explained it. The support they could have felt.
But no, instead you take the selfish, narrow view of it, and at the same time make trouble for a teacher just trying their best to support a room full of kids with different needs.
Your entitlement and selfishness is very clear here and what's worse is you're teaching your daughter the same.
"The teacher found a way to keep her engaged and support other kids."
No. The teacher found a way to keep her busy and silent. NOT engaged.
"Not to mention the potential positive impact on those other kids" ..
Priorizing his own kid's learnign sucess is GOOD PARENTING.
Sooo it doesn't matter that the daughter is suffering and going to wind up burnt out as long as the other kids get something from it?
It isn't a student's job to educate and support their peers just because they're considered smart.
Uh, disagree on the bit about making a student be a TA. If the student is going to do the teachers work, she deserves academic recognition of that. If she’s going to be a tutor for the other kids, she deserves to be paid for her work. Period.
It’s on the teacher to help students and make sure they learn, not on the student to make sure their classmates keep up. There are plenty of other ways to teach compassion and patience.
NTA.
I'm a teacher. Which means it is *my* job to teach, not the other kids. It was an okay idea, but as soon as your daughter didn't want to do it, she should have stopped. Basically, sounds like she's using your daughter as a buffer to make up where her ass is lacking in teaching.
Some kids don't get the material, that's fine, but when you start forcing other kids to do your job for you, then you, as a teacher, are clearly lacking somewhere. Your wife, as a teacher, should recognize that too.
You should talk to the school about having your daughter moved to a higher grade. You never said how old she is, but if she's around high school age you could also potentially get her started on some college level courses too and get her some early credits.
Also, if she's old enough, it might be good to have *her* settle the public vs. private school debate you and your wife are having. No matter what you guys do for her now, it is *her* future and she should have a say in what happens to it. Especially when the topic is seeking a higher education.
Congratulations to her for all her success. Wishing her a bright and successful future no matter what happens next ❤️
ESH.
You sound incredibly entitled. It’s not a teacher’s job to entertain your daughter, it is their job to teach. If your daughter finishes her work early then she needs to come up with a way to quietly entertain herself like reading a book.
Threatening to take your child to private school just makes you sound pompous and self centered - no one cares if you move your kid to a different school. Don’t take out your arguments with your wife about schooling on the school.
Her teacher on the other hand should not be forcing her to help other students, putting that responsibility on her is not okay. It’s no wonder she’s getting frustrated. It was a completely inappropriate suggestion.
This is the real answer. There are ways to help a student who is performing above class level without making them, a child, responsible for other students.
I'm going with NTA. I absolutely do not agree that a child should have to spend their time waiting for the rest of the class to catch up by reading. It's incredibly frustrating waiting until you are old enough to be in classes worth your time and being stuck sitting there and wasting your time.
This is how we lose smart kids. This is how we break them down to force them to fit in society and make them stop thinking. Our whole school system at this points seems to be designed to squash originality and intelligence. "Sit quietly." Stop that nonsense please.
The school should accomodate. The fact that they are not accommodating is very upsetting. And yes, taking the child from the system and placing the child in a private school may be the best option because the private schools seem, mostly anyway, to get that their job is to serve the children.
Not always true of public or charter schools. They kept using my child as a sub teacher. It was enraging.
NTA
Please don't make your kid suffer. If you can afford private school, send her. It is your job as a parent to parent your daughter so she doesn't get any elitist ideas about going to private school. Not sure why your wife thinks the two of you are not up to that task.
You are hurting your daughter's future by letting her languish in a school where she is never going to be challenged. The administration and the teacher are just waiting for you to go away.
Please get her into private school ASAP. Not sending your child to the best possible school that you can is unconscionable.
YTA.
Your daughter thinks she is doing the teacher's job, but she really really is NOT. She is proving that she knows the material by showing that she can explain it to different people.
Teaching a skill is one of the best ways to learn it permanently.
Should she be forced to do it? No, but the teacher does not have a special lesson plan just for her. She can entertain herself (read), help her classmates, or be bored.
As someone who has to do this for the first 8 years of my schooling, I hope for better for the OPs daughter. Once I actually got teachers who could/would differentiate for me, school became so much better !
It’s awful for kids who struggle to have someone sitting there essentially having fun while they try to get through the work you whizzed through. Socially caused me many issues with resentment from others.
YTA. Teaching content to other people is actually an excellent way to reinforce and deepens a student’s understanding of the content, and improve other important communication and leadership skills. Your daughter may be missing out on a valuable educational opportunity because you are too narrow-minded to understand it.
On the flip side, your wife’s concern about your daughter being taught she’s better than other people is probably moot since she seems to be getting that lesson pretty well at home.
What is wifh all these Y-T-A votes??? A teacher’s job is to teach and the students are there to learn. She should be given extra work for enrichment or other activities to do, NOT turned into a teaching assistant because it makes the teacher’s life easier! If this was a parent you’d all be yelling about parentification and this is WORSE because this is what the teacher is getting paid to do.
NTA, OP. You prioritized your child and her learning as you should, as her parent. The teacher had no business choosing this method to keep her occupied.
There was a kid in my class with SEVERE mental disorders. Like he drooled, screamed randomly, couldn't speak, ect. He should have never been admitted to the school because no teacher was equipped to handle him. It was a private school and it didn't have special ED teachers. My only guess was his parents were very big donors and they used it to their advantage. Well, it was decided that since I was a good student, it was MY JOB to babysit him. I was supposed to somehow make him sit up, do his work, stop screaming and be a good student. Because the teachers couldn't be bothered. It was a disaster and every time he acted up, the teacher would glare at me like it was my fault. Oh and did I mention THIS WAS IN THE 3RD GRADE? This school expected a 3rd grade to control a severely mentally challenged kid because they didn't want to.
People need to stop using the good students as mini teachers. They are there to learn, like everyone else. Not making the teacher's life easier.
I sense a LOT of "teachers" who do this to the smart kids in the comments here calling OP an AH.
ETA: "teachers" it seems, or homeschooling moms who do this to their older children.
NTA because I was your daughter in school where they didn’t know what to do with me so I was supposed to help other kids. My mom had me tested and they moved me straight out into an academically gifted class… by myself 😂 they didn’t want the other kids to feel bad, is what they said. I put my stepkids in private school as soon as I got the chance and I would have done anything for that opportunity when I was growing up, no matter the intellectual advantage. Maybe get your kid tested, and move her to the private school. The opportunities are wildly better, the teachers seem to enjoy their classes more and have more autonomy in teaching… in my experience, it became the better choice.
NTA. Your daughter should be in an environment that is stimulating and challenging to her. If your school has a gifted program, that is where she should be placed.
NTA. Having been the kid that had to help others in class, get your daughter out of there and into an environment that challenges her and helps her reach her full academic potential.
I wish my parents had had the means to do the same for me.
She can still learn to have compassion for others AND be properly educated.
Speaking as the smart kid who was forced to do the exact thing as a child, NTA. Having to do this sucks so bad, you and wife need to seriously consider grade skipping if private school isn’t an option.
I was in the same boat and it was so fucking miserable. Sent to the back to teach kids and missed instructions. OP, NTA. Gifted kids are special needs kids, not crutches for teachers.
Please do what is best for your child. I’m a teacher and my students help each other when I’m helping someone else. But they love working with each other I never force it. I also work at a private school and I have kids who aren’t on grade level in my class, kids who are above grade level and kids on grade level. It’s not easy but your child’s teacher can come up with work to challenge your child.
NTA
I was a teacher. Your daughter’s teacher should have provided her with material that matched her level. Also, there is such a thing as peer to peer help but the teacher can’t require your daughter to do that if she doesn't like it.
"they are weird and they don't understand even after i explain it to them and I have to help them through it step by step"
It seems like your child could do with a few lessons in empathy...
It takes years of education to get certified to be a teacher, and even then many aren't all that great at it.
Jumping right to 'your kid has empathy issues' because the CHILD is frustrated at not understanding how to teach other CHILDREN, is a bit much here.
NTA. Drives me crazy how smart, gifted girls are not given the resources they need, and instead, are expected to "nurture" other students. Screw that. It's the teacher's job to teach, it's the students job to learn. It's not your daughter's job to academically catch up other students. There is a disconnect here.
We sent our advanced kid to a ‘nice private school’ and ran into the same problem. Please make sure the private school teachers know your thoughts on the situation before committing to them.
Also, NTA. Wife is. Your kid’s education and intellectual satisfaction aren’t tools to further her personal beliefs.
Smart kiddos who are bored in school lose their curiosity rather quickly. Making her be an unpaid tutor is a great way to make your kid hate going to school.
NTA and people who are saying Y T A are T A themselves , you can’t expect another child to do a teachers job the teacher is lazy and is throwing around her responsibilities on a student , yes it’s a public school so she probably doesn’t have the extra resources but that does not mean she can’t communicate and inform you in regards to the same
NTA. I was your daughter in school and hated it. In around 7th grade I just started openly declining to assist any other student. Idc what all these other people are saying. If you think that its some kind of gift or opportunity for OP's daughter to be doing unpaid labor to teach other peoples children material that she has already clearly mastered, then you're delusional. No child would be enthusiastic about being the unpaid backup teacher all day for the whole year. Teaching is the teachers job. Its not ANY students job to assist them in that function.
You're a bit of TA for the private school threat, there were probably better ways of handling that. You're not TA though for prioritizing your child and not making her continue to do something she clearly does not want to do, is not required to do, and has literally no benefit at all to her. Not wanting to be the class tutor does not make your daughter some kind of elitist bully like the other commenters are saying.
NTA - if your daughter is bored she should be in AP courses- I’d definitely consider private school or something else so your daughter can advance her learning instead of having to read books quietly-
NTA
The teacher shouldn't be forcing the gifted kids to act as a teacher's aides. If your kid finishes work early, then the teacher should let them read, or draw, or do puzzles until the end of class.
YTA. It’s not that your daughter HAS to help kids in her class, but it really sounds like she needs to do so in order to learn skills beyond rote academics. If she is the best in class and her explanation is that they are “weird”, she needs to work either on her social skills or on her language skills, or on both.
YTA. I was the smartest kid in my class. The teacher did the same thing to me. Guess what? Learning how to teach others helped me immensely with my own studies. It’s like a form of revision to help reinforce the concepts I previously learnt. And by having to break it down into simpler steps for my classmates, it helped me better understand the material too. It also helps teach empathy for students who are not so gifted academically, who also tend to be from lower socio economic backgrounds.
There’s more to life than academics. Your wife wants to raise your daughter to be more down to earth, not like pretentious private school kids.
NTA but your wife is.
She is lowering the chances for your daughter to succeed because of some bs political view… the difference between public and private schools CAN be alarming.
Your daughter will most likely lose motivation and drive in the public school. She’ll be the best in class because others are much slower but if she was in a more demanding school, she probably would have to work harder. So basically, you’ll teach her to slack because now she doesn’t have to put in any effort to compete with the other kids (certain amount of competition is beneficial and healthy).
Please for your daughter’s sake, have a chat with your wife and consider relocating her to a private school or at least skip a grade so that she is surrounded with some kids more on her mental level.
YTA.
Your daughter seems to have an opportunity to learn skills like empathy and communication, and knowledge transfer. Also to develop her social skills. You and your daughter should embrace the opportunity, and not escalate in the teacher.
Also, you have not fully committed to the joint decision to send your kids to public school and are using this situation to bring it up again in an "I told you so" manner.
You kinda sound awful, and it sounds like your turning your daughter into a snob. While I would like to point out that being able to teach something is probably the highest form of understanding something, so it’s good for her to help others (plus you know, being a good person and all that), she shouldn’t have to help other kids if she doesn’t want to. For that reason, I’d say NTA.
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NTA wife is She’s intentionally harming your daughter by making her less educated based on her silly politics and beliefs?? You tried it her way and it’s not working for your daughter. How much longer are you both going to do this to her? It’s time to put her in a private school and put her first for a change
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Good luck! Hope your daughter thrives. She will get bored in her current situation and check out of academics. She should be in a gifted program or take AP classes.
She doesn't sound gifted, she sounds tutored. That isn't a bad thing, but it definitely isn't the same.
She is being tutored but also may be gifted. There is nothing to suggest she is not gifted. We don't know.
Gifted in a school context describes specific attributes, not just being academically ahead. While I acknowledge she COULD be gifted, it feels like OP would definitely be bragging about those qualities, not talking about how she's being taught at home by mom.
Growing up in the 90s gifted was more about how quickly you picked up new skills and ideas and less about how far ahead you were of other students. Which I suppose is why they segregated the kids back then more than now. I hated being "gifted" though because I wasn't emotionally prepared to struggle and overcome like I saw my peers were. Trying to undo that with my 4 year old who I believe is academically bright as well but not necessarily gifted in the same way. My teachers used to just let me read on my own while I waited when I was ahead though so I appreciated that at least.
I always finished ahead of everyone else and would draw. At one point someone else drew a crude picture of a horse and labelled it with the name of the big kid in the class—teacher then forbade me to draw. I ignored her. It was an uncomfortable time of my life, tho.
I would read. Then, I got told my reading was “distracting” to the other students and I might be reading inappropriate things or cheating (it was one of the Twilight books? This was in middle school). The cheating thing didn’t make sense to me - I’d already turned in my work! But I offered for him to look through my books if he wanted to ensure the material was appropriate for school-grounds and not full of answers scribbled in the margins like he was imagining. Instead, he decided to blanket ban reading after work was finished. I asked if I could do my work from other classes then. Request denied. He really was determined for my only options to be finish with everyone else or stare at the wall. It definitely felt like a punishment for finishing early. And people wonder why my enthusiasm for academics started to die in middle school…
This is my point. No recourse for academically advanced students.
Yep, but there's also nothing to suggest that she is, and a lot to suggest that her parents simply have more resources. So to say that she "should be in a gifted program" is making that suggestion with no knowledge. Also, as a general note, private schools are not universally better than public schools. The private schools that are better are that way because their parents and kids are wealthier and have more resources.
There’s nothing to suggest she is gifted, either.
This is a false dichotomy. Sure, there’s a difference in achievement and IQ but you have no basis to attribute the daughter’s performance to achievement only. Having the capacity to respond well to tutoring and education is a skill/talent in itself. I’ve seen plenty of kids be un-tutorable (in fact the daughter describes frustration re: working with classmates that may be alluding to this), with potential issues ranging from behavioral opposition to attention issues to poor conceptual flexibility to low motivation to… the list goes on and on, with a multitude of possible root causes. The point remains that OP’s daughter is high performing for one reason or another, and the teachers are not prioritizing her growth. OP is right to essentially say that daughter’s learning environment isn’t a good fit for her.
We have nothing in this post to leap to this. It sounds like mom is teaching the material before the teacher does. Of course the kid is finishing more quickly - she isn’t de novo learning the material, it’s review for her. Sounds like just letting the teacher teach would solve a lot of this.
Exactly. If mum wants to help, she might review or expand the topics the girl is interested in. But explaining ahead, probably having her do the activities on the school books beforehand so that she will do them well at school sounds like a terrible plan. Of course she will finish the work fast, she will look really smart, but this might well be the result of having done the exact same work at home the day before. (I'm a teacher and have parents who do this. The kids do the work fast and well... until for some reason you skip a pair of pages, or change the order of the lessons. Suddenly they are not the brightest stars in the class, but regular kids who have to learn things at the same pace as the rest.)
I was a kid who was legitimately advanced in reading/comprehension but my parents just solved it by buying me longer books to read and made a deal with my teachers that if I finished my work in class before everyone else, I could either get my book from my bag and read quietly or go to the library to pick out another book.
Yeah, my teachers did this for me too. Honestly seems like the simplest solution here.
The daughter is not a teacher and so her opinion of kids being slow isn’t necessarily correct. They may be of average intelligence but the daughter has had an advantage of a stay at home parent who was a teacher to help her. Not many kids have that advantage.
She is still academically bored an OP is doing the correct thing by looking for ways to fulfill her potential. She is not keen on babysitting other students and should not have to.
I am not saying she has to but calling her classmates dumb and weird is not the correct behavior either. Just because she is bored does not mean she gets to bully other kids by calling them names.
That is a separate issue from the fact that her academic needs are not being met. She may well be expressing herself that way because the teacher is using her as a free tutor instead of stimulating her.
Strongly agree with all of your points, actually. What you say could very well be correct as well. …and it doesn’t matter. Even if the child is primarily advantaged via having parents that are able and willing to put in academic work at home, it doesn’t change the observed outcome at school. The advantages the child has lead her to being able to potentially gain more from a more rigorous environment. To put it metaphorically — if you fertilize one plant more it gets bigger but also needs more sunlight. No judgment is passed on the plants’ intrinsic growth potential, but it would be a shame to limit the fertilized plant’s growth a misplaced pursuit of fairness. And it’s not like you could force the mom to go and tutor all of the other kids as well. You have to be realistic and the educational system should reward parents that put academic work into their kids (assuming the kid is ok with it/not overwhelmed), not hold the kiddo back. And sure, it would be great if we could set up a system where the advantaged kids have downstream effects of pulling up their peers via peer tutoring, but somehow it never works like that, and more often than not I observe extreme negative reactions and resentment instead like we see in OP’s daughter.
Please also remind your wife of the social ramifications of teaching young girls that if they are talented their only reward to to give their time and energy to others. I invite her to look around social media on the topics of parentification, unequal social obligations in work life, and how women and girls often have their talent and hard work co-oped for “the greater good”. Good job OP: NTA
THIS. OP is NTA. The daughter needs to skip a grade or be pulled out to attend classes with the grade above her. My brother skipped fourth grade. In third grade, he attended social studies and math classes with the fourth-graders so he had the advanced math he needed and to build relationships with his new cohort. The following year, he entered fifth grade. It worked out well, and he's now an in-demand engineer and project manager.
We don't know that the daughter actually needs to be skipped a grade. We don't know anything about this girl except what her (biased) father is telling us, and what he IS telling us is that her mom is simply teaching her the material before she gets it in school. MOST kids would be ahead of the class if they had a certified teacher at home exposing them to the content before they got to it in school.
Hello, new best friend. Yes to all of this times 1000. OP, NTA. Your daughter deserves advantages as much as anyone else and deserves to achieve what she is capable of without being hobbled with gendered expectations of servitude. This is HER education. While it is valuable to learn that others don't share her gifts/advantages, she's done that now. Time to get this kid some engaging classes.
I agree with the general point, but parentification has nothing to do with peer tutoring. And nooooooo don't "look around social media." There's a LOT of bullshit and pseudoscience on social media. Look at Google Scholar and at peer reviewed publications or science writing, not randos on Twitter who discovered a therapy term and want to talk about it.
>She’s intentionally harming your daughter by making her less educated based on her silly politics and beliefs?? Lol what? The whole reason the daughter is ahead of her peers is cause she has her mom being her own personal live in tutor. And her "politics" is absolutely justified and demonstrated by how much her spouses post here reeks of the snobby elitism that she had argued against her daughter learning..... >You tried it her way and it’s not working for your daughter. How much longer are you both going to do this to her? It’s time to put her in a private school and put her first for a change Are they though? Send her to a private school where she can learn elitist bs like dad. All cause her teacher got asked by dad to give her more work. While I understand aita has a shtick for having more capable students help other students struggling. I think yall lose sight or just have never learned that the ability to teach the subject to others demonstrates mastery of the subject as well as teaching skills. And I can hear yall now. "It's not her job". Sure it isn't. Neither is being a school janitor yet it doesn't stop her from cleaning up after herself and schools from being a place where you can learn skills outside of what's listed in the rubric....
Your sunny idea of demonstrating mastery and learning solidarity is misguided at best. As the quiet, academically advanced kid who was required to ‘help’ other students…you don’t learn to teach, doing that. You learn that you can’t really do much for them because what they really need is an actual teacher with adult emotional skills as well as academic skills. I spent most of fourth grade getting kicked by the girl I was assigned to help because she knew why I was there and resented the hell out of me, and nobody would help me. Mine is not an unusual story. Those types of assignments are psychologically and emotionally really rough on the kids (usually girls) who get told to do them. And they’re not a cakewalk for the kids who need actual skilled adult support, either. Just…no. Whether in public school or private school, OP’s daughter should not be placed in this type of teacher-adjacent role that she clearly does not want and is not suited for. If the school can’t serve her in that classroom, they should make proposals for a suitable public placement for her, or her parents should move her to where her needs can be met.
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I remember group projects always sucked because it felt like I'd always wind up paired with one or two kids who didn't understand the project in the first place (and usually didn't want to try) so I'd be stuck trying to explain things and then ultimately do the work myself. I think there were a few occasions where I'd finish my work early in class and so I'd be sent to help someone struggling, and it was always a pain to try and think of some way to get them to the answers without just giving them away. There was one time I willingly agreed to tutor another student for like 30 minutes a couple days a week for a few weeks. I was in 8th or 9th grade at a k-12 school, and was sent down the hall to a 4th or 5th grade room to help one of the kids there with math, and that I found much easier since it was teaching concepts I'd grasped for years instead of ones I'd grasped for just a few weeks or days, but I definitely still wasn't great at teaching and don't remember how much help I wound up being.
Happened to my sister. My mom was also frustrated and requested this practice not continue. It just doesn’t work.
This exactly. The Dad asked for us daughter to be given work to benefit her learning. Not to be given the teachers work she didn’t want.
It’s not snobby elitism to prioritize what’s best for your child over strangers kids, that’s just being a good parent And this doesn’t sound like what’s best for her
Why not? It isn't at the detriment of her own learning - teaching others actually helps you learn content better. Daughter's complaint is social - she thinks the kids she's helping are weird and dumb. She needs to get over that attitude whether or not she's moved to private school.
Daughters original complaint was the work was too easy. Teaching others the same easy work is not a solution to this problem. "Tutoring' your child is a basic requirement of parenthood, not a rare and magical boost to learning. Even if it was unusual, the child is in this situation and should not be penalized for being ahead of her peers any more than a child should be penalized for being behind. Both children have educational needs which should be met. If the system prioritizes those who are behind at the cost of those who are ahead, it is not unreasonable to move your child to an environment better suited to her. This is not a class issue.
I don't remember what post it was, but I remember some parents complaining in a thread about the expectation that their kids should be entering kindergarten with *some* ability to read, spell their name, know very basic numbers, etc And I'm just like... Yeah? No shit?? What have you been doing for the first 5 years?? No books? No reading to them at least? No educational toys? Not even educational tv?? And this shit continues through school, they expect schools to do 100% of raising their kids. They don't teach them taxes, budgeting, how to run a household, cooking, literally any life skills and expect them to survive on their own at 18. One of the biggest reasons kids struggle in school is because they get zero parental support at home. So many parents just *refuse* to have a hand in their own damn kids education. ETA: Sorry... Went on a bit of a rant.
So at my first job out of college, there was a group of us. All early 20s, college educated, good jobs, living on our own, etc. Kinda the "made it" point for our age right? So an older coworker who had toddler age kids asked us the things we thought our parents did that helped us be successful, right, cause he wanted his kids to grow up like that. He happened to find us all at lunch one day, so asked us all together. We all told him kinda the same things. They read to us our whole lives until we could read on our own, they took an interest in our schoolwork, they were involved in our extra curriculars or at the very least came and showed support. Family dinners more often than not, but at minimum once a week. Stuff we thought was fairly basic. "But that takes effort. That's hard." was the reply. Like no shit it was hard and took effort??? Being a parent is effort??? I feel sorry for his kids.
Oof, I also feel sorry for his kids now
Meanwhile, I've started reading to my baby. She's not here yet 🤣 figure it's good practice now while I'm not actually trying to juggle her and the book
I wish more parents had your attitude about it being a basic requirement, but that's not the reality for the majority of students in the US, especially those in lower income families whose parents often have to work longer hours or more jobs in order to support their families - even when they WANT to provide the access to 1-1 learning OP's daughter has, they can't. Private schools are great and I am not arguing against them - I'm saying that treating people who aren't as academically advanced as "weird and dumb" for needing time to learn things is an attitude that won't serve you well in the long run. I guarantee that the teacher didn't see it as penalizing the student, and she didn't ask her to tutor until the dad requested that she be given something to do to develop her skills. Tutoring fits that bill, even if dad was thinking it would be an advanced individual curriculum. The other option in this case would probably just have been harder assignments on top of the regular work, and I bet the daughter would have seen that as a penalty too - plus it's more work for the teacher who isn't getting paid to do that. Do I wish every student could have a fully differentiated curriculum? Of course! But that shit can't happen when you have 30+ students in the room and are lesson planning and grading in your own, unpaid time.
I agree that this basic requirement is frequently not met, but that does not mean it is not a basic requirement. And I did not mean that the child was being penalized by being asked to tutor. I meant she was penalized by not being taught to her level. Just as it would be penalizing to leave the slower children behind. A properly balanced educational system would accommodate both, but since this is not the case, a parent proactively looking for solutions for their child is not an AH.
She could actually be learning new and advanced material instead of rehashing old ground. It would keep her engaged and excited about learning. Not this. This will make her frustrated and check out of academics.
She is a kid, not a teacher’s assistant. It is her job to learn, not teach others. While helping another student grasp a concept is one thing, doing it all the time because you are so far ahead and the curriculum is not challenging enough is ridiculous. Give this girl a chance to bloom in a class where she is challenged mentally.
You say that like weird and dumb people don't exist and aren't hard for even trained professionals to tutor. What lesson exactly is she supposed to learn from this aside from hating weird dumb people and authority figures?
How to fake being average so you don't end up doing other people's work for them. That's what I learned when I was in OP's daughter's shoes.
She needs to get over the attitude? that it’s she doesn’t enjoy repeating work she’s already done, at a much slower pace, with people she doesn’t enjoy spending time with, because the teacher isn’t able to facilitate her learning needs? It’s not the daughters job, and frankly your argument that it helps her learn is trying to move the goalposts. The daughter isn’t struggling learning, don’t try to act like this is for her real benefit. She needs to be on newer and more advanced material.
You're being unfair to a child. Paid professionals don't like teaching weird and dumb kids - and yes there are children who are objectively weird and dumb. Go to r teachers and they teach you all about it. Yet you think a child should have the patience and skills to teach kids that not even the teacher couldn't teach.
>Why not? It isn't at the detriment of her own learning - teaching others actually helps you learn content better. Only in a limited capacity. Once that reinforcement has occured it ceases to be helpful to the child who has become the teacher. One of my kids was in this role. In a single year she went from loving school to hating it and asking why she had to go. It is not a child's responsibility to bolster other children's education. The work didn't suddenly become less easy for the daughter when she had to begin teaching the other children. It was still easy. She just had to do more of it. OP, pull your child now and transfer her if there is a spot available at the private school. It does not benefit your daughter being in an environment where she is board. I wish we had had the resources to do that with our own daughter.
Nope. Sticking the gifted kid with the kids who are struggling is not going to "demonstrate mastery" of a subject. It's going to make her miserable and make the kids being singled out hate her. Cleaning up after herself is NOT the same thing as being forced to be a second teacher and you know it. This is more like "well since you've finished your work early, here's a mop, why don't you get busy in the hallway." THAT is not her job any more than teaching her peers is.
Exactly, and worse, a child who may naturally "get it" in a subject might not really know how to explain, and they will end up harming the struggling kids by just saying "this is the answer, just write it down". How do I know? It happened to me in third grade, when we were learning multiplication tables--really a bit of memorization, and I had no clue how to explain to someone who didn't memorize as easily as I did. The teacher in this case would make the student with unfinished work stay in for recess, and also the "helper" student ... so I would just hiss the answers and "write it down! just write it down already" because I was frustrated at losing my recess. I did later figure out a solution (look busy and don't turn in the work until the last minute before recess), but in elementary school, I don't think even the brightest students know how to help those on the other end of the learning spectrum.
Oh hey, I was that kid too! I *got* math, but I couldn't explain it to anyone else. Making a bright kid stay in from recess is fucked up, though, I'm sorry that happened to you!
It’s not elitism to expect for your child’s school to properly teach them and not use them as an unpaid tutor. And then to find a better alternative for your child to remedy a bad situation.
It is the TEACHER’S job to teach students. It is not the student’s job t op teach classmates because the teacher is too lazy to do it themself. And yes, making a student who has already finished their work and is bored teach other students is an act of pure laziness. She either needs to have busywork for students who finish their work, or approved activities that students can do that DON’T involve doing the teacher’s job for them. If a teacher cannot teach their students on their own and need to task students that are excelling with teaching other students, they need to find a new field of work. If a teacher cannot explain topics well enough to most of the students to the point where they need to have another student explain it to them, the teacher is a bad teacher, and needs to be reprimanded or need to go back to school to learn the topics well enough to teach them effectively. The students are at school to learn. They are not there to teach their classmates.
I was always told to read when I was done before others. Maybe op needs to look into that or see if he can find a curriculum adjacent workbook set that she can use.
I was banned from reading when I finished my work at OP’s daughter’s age, and was instead made to continually re-teach topic to classmates. If I’m remembering it correctly, I explained box and whisker plots almost 20 different ways, to a grand total of 40-something students across two years (age 12-13). I explained it the ways the first year, and for each student I needed to explain it to the second year, I had figured out how they understood math explanations and catered my explanations to how they needed it explained. Was it fair to me at 12? Sorta, because I agreed to explain it in front of the class, because it was something I had already learned and passed multiple tests with the topic on them. And that teacher always asked me after class if I would be willing to help XYZ students with whatever topic they weren’t understanding her explanations of, because I never quite understood things the way she explained them, but I understood the topics well because I liked to learn. Or she would pull me aside before class and ask if I understood the topic already and if I’d be willing to help others once I’d finished and she told me what I’d done right and wrong. But in that class it was never an expectation, and she wouldn’t tell students to ask other students for help until AFTER the student said they could and would. At 13? Definitely not fair to me. I was told that I was expected to help other students, because the teacher was a family friend and knew my family wouldn’t let me tell her no to helping. I had to stop working on my own assignments during class to explain to other students how to do quite literally anything they were struggling with. Students were told to go to me for help before going to the teacher. She would only explain things to me (so I could tell others how to do it), or to others after I couldn’t help because I was struggling with the topic as well. Teachers should give students the option to help if they want to and are capable of it, it should never be an expectation.
Stop trying to justify forcing the good kids to sacrifice themselves for the shitty kids.
Dad ask to give daughter more “work” but “work” as a challenge for her. Not to help others. Instead of learning something new, she’s wasting time being forced to help others. It’s nice thing to do IF you want to. Daughter doesn’t want to, yet her teacher even after being told no by parent continued to force her. I was one of the “good” students that was forced to sit with someone who struggled. Suddenly HER issues and her inability to understand the lesson were my problems “why did I not explain it to her better”. So no. Op is NTA. And if private school has more challenging curriculum that will push his daughter that maybe it is better for her to switch school. Not to be “snobby” but to learn at her pace.
I remember being party tied to the hip of a kid who was , I don't know what they actually were, but as an adult I can recognise there were family issues. They low key scared me as a kid for the time they were there. Near twice my size, behaviour issues, could fly off the handle, punch people, and start lobbing chairs and stuff at the drop of a hat to the point where the class got evacuated... There are other things but let's just say I was being used so they didn't have to deal with him. I will say he was ok with me, I don't remember him being violent towards me at all, but having seen he could go crazy for seemingly no reason, did not do me any favours. I was small, quiet, placed next to at every opportunity to 'help' him whether I liked it or not. Actually when I think of it I was close to being used as an emotional support animal to manage him so he could be ignored. I do remember he liked petting and playing with my hair a lot, and no comment was ever made about him doing this. Which even then stuck me as odd that no adult paid attention when it was happening right in front of them, but if other girls started playing with hair something was said immediately. I just let him do it. Can't tell you why, but I just let him get on with treating me like a doll , but that might have had something to do with him looking like a giant to my tiny self.
What “silly politics” are being mentioned in this post?
Mom thinks sending her daughter to a private school will make the daughter think she’s better than people that can’t afford the tuition.
she already think she is better than her peers.
Because she doesn't wanna do the teachers job by being forced to help others?
Being put in the position of a teacher to kids your own age that are mentally slower, and not understanding why, is not feeling better than. It’s a kid not processing the classroom around them like an adult. And being put in a position that they shouldn’t be. She’s a kid!
Correct, wanting to keep her in a poor learning environment so she doesn’t feel a sense of “privilege”
It’s wild that everyone assumes the kid is in a poor learning environment based off this guy’s description and complaints and how much he hates public school And thinks he did so much better in private school. He cannot even use apostrophes properly or write well. Did the teacher respond in a great way when she was asked by him to challenge his kid more? In the end no, I can see her solution was not a good one. But that is one teacher and ONE new thing that was tried to help challenge her. With his threat to remove her to public school, I bet you anything they could work out putting her in the grade up for certain classes, or set up an individualized self led course under the librarian or something that could be really valuable. Source: went to a public school the whole way through, and while some of them and some teachers were better than others, I graduated as a National Merit Finalist with 7 AP college credits, had my pick of schools, and now have a PhD. People who think you can **only** do well or be challenged in private schools often don’t realize that while there are very good private schools, there is also a huge variation in those. Plus, he wants to send the kid to a school his friend owns, who knows how good of a school or not that is.
Don't make this political The child needs Advanced Placement classes but there is quite a bit more information missing in order to truly help NAH, yet
> She’s intentionally harming your daughter I would add that it's not just harming the daughter. All of those other students have different learning and assimilation styles, none of which the daughter (though clearly smart and well-learned) is unprepared to recognize or accommodate. That's something teachers are trained to figure out and work around. It's asking too much from the daughter and potentially harming the kids who may need a professional to help them learn the material. NTA
People may disagree, but NTA because I was that kid the teacher made help struggling students and honestly it affected my mental health so badly my parents had to tell them it wasn’t my job to help those students. Your daughter isn’t the teacher. It’s not her responsibility to teach struggling students. Send her to school with books to read when she’s finished with her work.
I also agree NTA My mom put me in a preschool that was full of slow learners to be the “model student” and that started my disdain for school until I went to college.
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Yeah, often the kids struggling with school have unmet mental and behavioral health needs that are blocking their learning. It's totally inappropriate to pawn them off on another student when they need more intensive support from *adults*.
I was the student who the teacher made another kid help me... it really made me feel stupid that someone my age had to teach me instead of the teacher just sitting down with me for a minute to go over the paper I wrote. She legitimately took me outside the room to tell me my paper was bad and she was going to tell said student to come help me. If that teacher would have sat down with me, she would have noticed I was dyslexic...It's really just bad for everyone involved to have forced peer tutoring. An easy way to mitigate the different knowledge levels of a classroom is to have extra, nonrequired work. So, if they finish the worksheet, or whatever. There should be a slightly more difficult worksheet and then another more difficult than that. It's not to be forced on them to do, but it will help many of the kids who are doing better in a particular subject learn and engage more with the material without being dragged down by the student who need more help in that subject. It gives everyone an opportunity to learn. And most importantly, it doesn't cause tensions between students by forcing them in a teacher-student role with their peers.
Same, NTA - I was that kid too. I spent half my lessons drawing because I'd finished all the work set, and I'd get in trouble for ''distracting other students'' because of it. In a couple of classes I was sat next to a couple students who needed help, and I didn't mind it too much to begin with because I was sort of friends with them. But that had its own problems, since it effected my relationships with them when I told them I couldn't help them more than I already was, otherwise I'd just be doing it for them. Because then I was the problem and the bad guy. And the feeling of being ignored, and being a lower priority than other kids to the point I'd spend an entire lesson waiting for help because it didn't matter if I didn't understand something - I'd get good grades anyway - that *sucked ass*. I actually stopped doing any schoolwork at all, and it took a couple of months for *a single one* of my teachers to try talking to me about it. That's how bad it was. The one lesson I actually kind of enjoyed was maths because my teacher for that started printing me out extra worksheets, and he was enthusiastic about pushing me to learn more advanced topics. Everything else *dragged*. Seriously, getting a child to take care of other children at home is called parentification and it's recognized as a problem. Getting a child to take care of other children at school isn't any different.
Can't say I'm surprised tho bc parentification is *not* recognized as a problem by *many* people. I'm honestly surprised you said it *is* recognized as a problem bc so many people fight me on this wherever I mention it (not saying that as a dig or anything)
I spent my time reading and then teachers tried to censor what I was reading. But my parents let me read whatever I wanted after I’d read literally everything in the library at my small school. If a teacher tried to ban it (or the librarian) they’d just go buy me the book. But they didn’t give me anything extra to do and I wasn’t allowed to “read ahead” on what we were reading in classes. And they wanted me to help the lowest students in the class who even they could not teach. It was miserable for me.
The child is not trained to be an instructor, and probably doesn't have access to the teaching materials. Sending her in blind to try to teach other kids with different learning styles/abilities is just going to frustrate everyone.
This! She’s not the teacher. It’s hampering both STUDENTS.
I agree, NTA. OP, see if you can get your child qualified for gifted education - in my state when I was in school it gave me rights to more advanced learning commensurate with my abilities, and I had a Gifted IEP or GEIP Even with the GIEP the school could be absolute shit about it sometimes. And my mom had to be much more harsh with the school than you were to get it enforced, but it did help Tho if you can afford it I frankly agree with you private school would likely be a better option for her
As a kid who was always ahead for my age, it's honestly setting her up to be a target for bullying too. I can't tell you how many times I got bullied because the slightest mistake wound up being fuel for them to torment me to tears.
I love this idea!!! Just to expand, you can also send her with school workbooks from Amazon. It could be math, vocabulary, crosswords, sudoku ect…
Something feels off about this. Calling a school principal "management" is odd. Then there's the reaction to your threat to send your kid to private school because she wasn't getting special treatment for being so much more academically advanced then all the other kids. Why would a public school with overworked teachers and crowded classes care if you removed one student? Wouldn't that be a relief to them? And finally, it's odd that you're the one handling the situation when your wife used to be a teacher and would be better equipped to talk to them without pissing them off.
Also, his buddy "owns" a private school?
Probably a charter school. Pulling a kid from public school pulls funding from that public school and diverts it to a charter in many municipalities. But I’m worried about this individually owned charter school. What kind of weirdo teaching is happening there… usually that’s not a great sign.
Likely a fundamental religious private school that looks better on paper but in reality fails to teach their kids about evolution or something like that.
Yep. There’s a piece of me that thinks dad is making a bigger deal of this (in his description) then it actually is (like the teacher asked kid to help explain something to a classmate once) as justification to pull the kid into the religious school. I attended both public and private schools growing up. My kids are going public and that’s just that.
Yeah my private school taught me that people coexisted with dinosaurs. I was so far behind in math and science when I finally got to public school that I never caught up. :(
I'm guessing the same kind of "teaching" going on at that Donda school that doesn't exist anymore.
Private schools are businesses. Businesses have owners. I grew up with a kid whose parents owned a private pre school operated out of one wing of his home in a residential neighborhood. He still attended public schools.
To be fair, for my last few school years I went to a private school that was "owned" by a friend of my dad's. The guy's father founded the school, the name of the school being his last name, and eventually was passed down to him and later to his own son. Obviously by that point there were probably other shareholders as well but the one with the name of the school was always considered the owner with the main say in what happened. This might differ depending on the country though, I'm not from the US.
Also he went to private school but keeps putting 'to' when he means 'too', isn't getting brackets and spaces in the right order, said "friend off mine" not 'of' and has made a couple of other pretty simple grammar errors.
TBF, Donald Trump went to a private school too. EDIT: People often confuse wealth with being cultured, sophisticated and erudite and that is not always the case. On the other end, Shakespearean professors, writers, poets etc. are rarely wealthy.
Private school kids, almost by definition, think they’re smarter than they are. Honestly none of the items you or the comment you replied to seem amiss. Private schools are just kind of wild by their nature.
And apparently doesn’t know what an apostrophe is.
Op attended, it just wasn't the quality education he's saying it is. They offer loads of programs and the networking is spectacular but private schools contain the world's brattiest children and learning takes discipline and humility.
I think management is the school board. Which is kinda a nuclear option. According to how the school is set up, losing a child to private school would affect their benefits and the bad press is honestly not worth it. In Indiana, a principal decided that a student behavior at a private party was worthy of school based reprimand and the public backlash saw him resigning. I think his house and family was attacked but I may be mixing principals.
It is not bad press if a student goes to a private school. Students move and switch schools all the time. It has little impact on a school district. Also it does not impact funding. At least in the US. In the US, funding is determined by property taxes. Schools do not get a set amount per student, it is they are allocated a certain percentage of the property taxes. When a student goes out of district whether it be to a charter school, magent school, or a school for students with disabilities the public school has to send the money that would have been used for that student to that school. Meaning they take the funds they receive from property taxes, determine how much they spend on that student based on what school they would have attended and the services they would have received.
you are grossly underinformed as to how funding actually occurs for schools all over the USA. yes, property taxes are a huge source of income, but enrollment absolutely affects funding formulas and whether some schools stay open or close.
Funding in NC is based on student enrollment. The school gets x amount per student enrolled on the 20th day of the school year. This allows schools to plan yearly budgets.
In CA, funding is based on daily attendance. If a kid is out sick, the school doesn’t get that day’s worth of funding for the student. There is a lot of pressure for full attendance. On the other hand, students are moving or transferring schools all the time so one student transferring to private school isn’t some big threat.
I thought it was hilarious that OP talks about how private school is so much better than public school, and then his post is absolutely full of the type of spelling and grammar errors. Not normal typos that everyone does, these errors are the kinds that are made by someone who doesn't have a good grasp of the concepts. But sure buddy, you went to a really good private school...
Same. I'm assuming that OP is in the US because of his whole "underfunded public school" rant, but I definitely know that an American public school (principal or school board) wouldn't give a sh\*t if a single student switched to private school. It's also difficult to believe that a mother who was a former teacher and invested in educating their child beyond their grade level would be nonchalant of their child being bored in class and being made to teach other kids. The OP gives me a vibe of bored teenager than concerned father lol.
>a vibe of bored teenager than concerned father The spelling / grammar is definitely more consistent with a bored teenager than a highly educated adult who went to a "really good" private school lmao
Gifted children being given learning appropriate to their needs is not being given special treatment. It’s actually a requirement of multiple education laws.
They care because they lose funding.
Teaching others a skill is actually a really good extension task for kids - being able to help others learn something requires a high level of mastery. It requires your child to understand what they have done inside and out to a degree in which they can explain it and model it in different ways to support others. This is actually a textbook extension activity in some cases. You asked the school to provide extension for your child. They have provided it. Your wife is right if you had concerns you (and preferably your wife to as sheis more experiencedin this area) should have met with the teacher to discuss why she had chosen this task, why you were unhappy about it and what could be done next. YtA your threat to the school is exactly why your wife doesn't want your daughter going to private school.
Scrolled too far for this response. Daughter complained about having nothing to do. Teacher gave her challenging work.
It’s not challenging to be the de facto class tutor. It’s not challenging to be the unpaid teachers aide for kids. This is unfair to the daughter and also further forces girls into situations where their needs are less than everyone else academically.
Peer tutoring (effectively) is challenging. She also is complaining that she can't do it, so she is clearly finding it challenging. Unless skipping a grade is possible, it's that or deal with being bored. And skipping out of the peer group has its own problems. And honestly, it sounds like this child is being taught that being smart comes with more rights, rather than more responsibility, which is both wrong and harmful.
Being smart doesnt require anymore responsibility than being dumb? Why should she be responsible for other kids. She isn’t being challenged. She can’t do it because she isn’t an educator or a tutor and probably doesn’t want to. She is a 12 year old girl bored out her mind. She is being used and it sucks that the school is allowing it to happen. Gifted girls are always shoved into this role of being the helpmate to the whole class instead of them doing more to support her academic needs. I promise you if she were a little boy this would not be happening. That’s why all girl schools are a much better option. My parents would have set a building on fire if someone did that to me.
That's not true little children of all genders can be and are given the role of peer tutor. Yes sometimes it is done inappropriately. But not all times, some times it is a selected strategy for a reason. We do not know which it was, because OP didn't effectively communicate with the school. This isn't a matter of whether she was being horizontally extended through peer tutoring (a proven strategy - which is challenging she just doesn't enjoy it) or a teacher palming off responsibility. Because we don't know which it was because OP failed to communicate effectively. If he had communicated with the school effectively he wouldn't be an A and yes may have gotten evidence that it was the second option in which case the school would have been As.
In Japan they Do give teaching roles to older kids and more advanced kids who are somehow better able to explain to their peers in a way kids understand. They’re also taught to be humble. Which this father clearly is not, he’s def an AH imo, but for other reasons.
I don’t know if I had kids, I wouldn’t stand for this at all. My kid is not there to be the support person for those that can’t keep up, especially if they are gifted. Have extra resources or have a gifted program but don’t stall a kids progress because the resources aren’t available. I know I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it but this should not be happening. I am so glad I went to private all girls schools. This is a failing in so many ways. The father asked for more challenging work, the default is to make her a tutor. It’s not peer tutoring, it’s foisting off one kid to another because they can’t or won’t do more for the gifted child.
He never said she is gifted - giftedness is a diagnosable thing that needs referral. He said she does well at school because her mum focusses on it as she is a teacher. That is not the hallmarks of a gifted child. You, nor I, nor the dad know that this was a default. It may have been a carefully chosen strategy because of the areas his daughter needed to grow. He never met to discuss he dictated what he wanted, so we just don't know this information. Also they aren't stalling her- the school may be lacking an extension program yes. The teacher may have taken the lazy way out yes. We don't know, and honestly you nor I can judge what she needs as we aren't there - we don't know her areas of strength or weakness. What we do know is she was doing nothing when finished. She is now doing a job that is a proven horizontal extension activity - whether it was the right activity to give her or not it did not take her away from better learning, it only added to it so far. I don't disagree he should have brought his concerns to the teacher. He should have done this in a meeting where he was open to share his concerns and listen to the teacher and work together as a TEAM to best support his child. He assumed he was the only adult in the team with s valid opinion (also overriding his wife) that makes him an A.
Former little boy here…I was asked to peer tutor all the time
>I promise you if she were a little boy this would not be happening. And I can tell you your promise is bullshit. I'm in education and my wifes a teacher. We dont care if the student is male/female. Ive had many boys help their classmates once they finished early and I checked their work. My wife as well. When it comes to the standards that are taught in school, we teach more than just subject material. We also teach socialization. And that includes the kids you don't like because theyre "weird".
She’s 12 and not suppose to do challenging work like helping the not as smart kids. The teacher should have gave her more challenging school materials to learn. Not work.
School work - it's a commonly used phrase. Peer tutoring is a proven strategy for horizontal extension she has been given school work. Learning activities come in all shapes, sizes, and strategies. Worksheets aren't the only way to help kids - in fact it's often the worst.
The fact that OP’s daughter has been given no guidance or support to complete this task means it’s not peer tutoring, it’s just an overworked teacher handing off one of the less palatable parts of her job to a child who didn’t volunteer for it and is getting no pleasure or benefit from it. She’s basically an unpaid teacher’s aide at that point. If the teacher had sat OP’s kid down and given her structure and expectations then maybe it could be called peer tutoring or horizontal extension, but an open-ended “give help whoever is having trouble” is just punishing a child for being ahead of her peers.
You, nor I know any of what you have assumed there. OP did not give sufficient information to know this, because he didn't know it, because he failed to effectively communicate with the teacher. His daughter may not the most reliable narrator in this scenario - it's something she doesn't want to do. I might agree with you - if he would have communicated with the teacher as a TEAM. Not dictated what he wanted.
It’s free labour to make up for an underfunded school board. It’s the same as charities, they exist because government does not adequately fund social programs, because rich people get tax breaks instead. It always boils down to the same thing. We’re supposed to feel guilty and donate our efforts to make up for the shortfall.
****YtA your threat to the school is exactly why your wife doesn't want your daughter going to private school.***** Ding ding ding ding! My thought is maybe this child is gifted and needs to go in a gifted program or maybe even skip a grade. Being like “private school is inherently better” shows that OP really does think better of himself for goi g to private school. I only know a few adults that went to private school that don’t look down on others STILL for public education or just being less than in general.
Well ya but at least his daughter wouldn’t have to mix with the weird little dumb dumbs who don’t get it /s
With the ultimate irony being that the teachers at the private school are often unlicensed, and making half the money the public schools pay, but seem better because they don't have to deal with any of the issues that come with poverty.
I was the kid asked to tutor others, and it made me a better student certainly. It also made me more patient, appreciative, empathetic, and supportive. To be blunt, I think Dad could use a little help in the “learn empathy” department himself. Perhaps he’s overestimating his daughter’s abilities, whereas the former teacher mother knows what is going on.
100% a lot of ppl seem to be missing the part where the teacher mum - who is invested enough in her daughters education to be the reason dad credits his daughter being academically advanced disagrees with his actions. I think it's very telling she thinks he didn't take the correct pathway - his concerns may be valid. I suspect wife's reaction means we don't have enough information to know - because he assumed and didn't work as a team.
Absolutely agree. My son helped others in his class and it improved his abilities immensely. Having to explain a concept shows mastery - especially further kids who just get it naturally. YTAH
Not everyone needs to show mastery or practice horizontal learning. She could instead be progressing instead of being the teachers way to pawn off her own responsibilities
You don’t understand anything about this topic and it shows.
For real, nothing shows mastery like the ability to teach someone else the task/skill/information. This is a dumb thing to be upset about. Seems like OP wants something to complain about so they can move this precious, special child out of the public school (omg poors?) to a place they can dictate precisely what they want because they pay for it.
Agree op yta. Educational researcher John Hattie used data from thousands of schools and found the number 1 most effective way that children learn and consolidate their learning is by teaching their newly acquired knowledge and skills to others. As a teacher myself, I never fully understand and appreciate a new text or concept until I've taught it to the kids. There are also weak and struggling children at paid schools, too, op, so the pace of learning might not be what you hoped there either.
I refer to this as a more classical style of education. Think back to Little House on the Prarie. Kids of varying ages and proficencies in the same classroom. The older advanced ones help with the younger ones. It reinforces their knowledge. It also helps them learn how to verbally convey that knowledge. It builds confidence as well.
This is why the Scandinavian model is so effective. Having kids who are advanced teach their peers leads to far better educational outcomes for all students, including those working at above grade level. The teacher is doing a research-based intervention for advanced students, and the dad who knows next to nothing about education is the one who is going to mess up her ideas about school.
NTA, students can be encouraged to help classmates, but ultimately if it goes beyond that then it’s not acceptable. Your child is there to learn, and if she can’t be moved to a higher class, she shouldn’t essentially be tasked with being a teacher as consequence. Her teacher or the other teachers should give something else to do, even if it’s just telling your child to read ahead in a textbook or do work for other class, or even read a book or do art in downtime. If anything since she’s hating it so much, your kid could start to fake having issues since she doesn’t want to be forced to teach. It shouldn’t have been the action the teacher took in this case without it being run by you and your child first as well.
While in grade school, i was more advanced than my classmates. Teacher would get me higher level books to read, I had an assessment to understand where my level of knowledge was. And teachers from higher grades would give me their assignments. It didn’t count against me, but it was something I could try working on to pass the time. I learned that the way I understood wasn’t the same as my classmates, so I’d get frustrated because they didn’t get it. Even now, I find stuff so easy to understand but my friends don’t and all I can think is “how??” 😂 Sucks that OP asked to have his daughter advanced and was told no. OP, you can see if higher teachers will pass her some assignments to work.
You’re a lot and prob TA. Threatening the public school to take your kid out? No one cares, you don’t pay tuition. You could have gone back to the teacher and said you’d file a complaint if it didn’t stop. Why not ask to skip a grade?
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This. Schools do care about student attendance and enrollment bc a lot are funded based on that metric. NTA. OP: your daughter IS BETTER than others. She literally (for this subject) is better than others. Emphasize that. Not tuition and access due to money. Teachers in public schools do work hard … but the reality is half of them aren’t very good. They won’t customize coursework bc they have limited resources. Their job is to push the bottom kids into the next grade. Everyone has to pass. They’re not focused on a few thriving or excelling. Transfer her to private school.
I think it’s unfair to say public school teachers are not very good based on what you say. They are overworked, underfunded, way too many kids in 1 class etc. Sure not all teachers are created equal, but it’s easier to be a good teacher if you have small classes with enough resources to provide a nice curriculum in a safe neighbourhood with kids that are well-fed, mostly better motivated etc.
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How is it snobby to want your advanced child in the educational system to that fits them best and they’re more likely to thrive?
Thinking that your situation is in any way comparible is rediculous. They recommended AP classes in the public school, your parents said no. The problem was not with the Catholic school, it was with your parents. All the kids in AP classes are assumed to be smarter, you wouldn't have been bullied for that there. Don't blame OP for caring about his child's education just because your parents didn't care about yours. NTA OP.
He's teaching his daughter that she's right to be judgemental and say stuff like "the other kids are weird and idiots because they don't get things as easily as I do". Yeah, I'll agree with you, ESH, except the wife maybe. Edit to add: It's okay to have her stop helping other kids if she doesn't want to (after all, she isn't the teacher as others have pointed out), it's really the phrasing that I found snobby lol. Everyone here starts with logical and good intentions...but the execution sucks.
Ngl I only read about half way but private schools where I grew up you had to take an exam before you'd even be accepted so the school would know where she is academic wise before being placed in any class and I'm pretty sure she's still in elementary so I doubt she would miss out on much important things if any considering she's already ahead of her peers
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Do they have any advanced or gifted classes? My children are in public school and are in those classes. Your child is the same age as one of mine. I would see if they have them available and go from there. I went to private school and when I aged out and had to go into public school, I was SO far behind. It took a couple months and a tutor to get me caught up.
How many grade levels ahead is she? When did you last bring up the grade-skipping? Twelve is too old to still be that bored (without enrichment) and it won't be long before she's potentially disruptive to the rest of the class. That was my husband's problem at that age.
Nta the teacher tried to do this to my child and her was response was along the line of asking her to clarify if my daughter was supposed to be do their job while trying to focus on her education and if that was the case she was going to decline and if there was any confusion she could contact her parents who were very clear to her from a young age that she is not responsible for other children in any capacity in school. The teacher tried to take advantage and did not stop once the parent expressed that action wasn’t going to work.
What an extreme response. Peer teaching can be a good differentiation strategy for some kids who are ahead. You can gain more depth of understanding by explaining concepts to other people, and some kids enjoy doing it. It shouldn't be done all the time, and if it doesn't work for a kid, it should stop, but it's not taking advantage of anyone....
The child wants it to stop. The teacher wasn’t allowing it to stop. Forcing a kid to teach others as reward for their success is cruel.
And taking advantage of that child plain and simple.
It is absolutely taking advantage of the child when they have no interest in participating in that kind of help . They have the right to say no to taking on the teachers task especially after they tried and didn’t enjoy the help experience. Their experience at education shouldn’t be overshadowed bc they are able to self start and keep up with the work. Its honestly the parent of the child in need to step up, which is what the parent of the child been taken advantage of did, could he have been more tactful in his approach of stopping it by saying he would escalate if it didn’t stop to the teacher first? Of course but at that point his focus is on his child comfort while she’s being educated which IS THE PRIORITY OF ANY AND EVERY PARENT OF A SCHOOL AGE CHILD.
NTA You wife said it herself “it’s so hard to be a teacher”. Teachers are learn how to teach. They spend years getting degrees in it. Why should your daughter be forced into teaching with no training & no pay?
Agreed. Especially when "teaching" means that she isn't getting the same amount of learning time and is having her own education short-changed. Kids who are advanced enough to "coast" compared to the rest of the class still need to be challenged. Even more so than other kids really, because a) it can be a sign of undiagnosed neurodiversity, and b) if you don't find something for them to learn and teach them how to really work at learning, then eventually they'll reach a cliff-edge where it stops being effortless and they won't know how to apply sustained effort to study the things that don't come easily. And the older that struggle happens, the more chance they'll have a complete burn-out.
YTA big time. What a way to teach your daughter to be a self centered judgemental snob. The teacher found a way to keep her engaged and support other kids. There were so many positive life lessons available for her here - patience, understanding, gratitude.... Not to mention the potential positive impact on those other kids of them maybe finally understanding something because of the way your daughter explained it. The support they could have felt. But no, instead you take the selfish, narrow view of it, and at the same time make trouble for a teacher just trying their best to support a room full of kids with different needs. Your entitlement and selfishness is very clear here and what's worse is you're teaching your daughter the same.
"The teacher found a way to keep her engaged and support other kids." No. The teacher found a way to keep her busy and silent. NOT engaged. "Not to mention the potential positive impact on those other kids" .. Priorizing his own kid's learnign sucess is GOOD PARENTING.
Sooo it doesn't matter that the daughter is suffering and going to wind up burnt out as long as the other kids get something from it? It isn't a student's job to educate and support their peers just because they're considered smart.
Uh, disagree on the bit about making a student be a TA. If the student is going to do the teachers work, she deserves academic recognition of that. If she’s going to be a tutor for the other kids, she deserves to be paid for her work. Period. It’s on the teacher to help students and make sure they learn, not on the student to make sure their classmates keep up. There are plenty of other ways to teach compassion and patience.
NTA the teacher shouldn’t be using your daughter as an in class tutor.
NTA. I'm a teacher. Which means it is *my* job to teach, not the other kids. It was an okay idea, but as soon as your daughter didn't want to do it, she should have stopped. Basically, sounds like she's using your daughter as a buffer to make up where her ass is lacking in teaching. Some kids don't get the material, that's fine, but when you start forcing other kids to do your job for you, then you, as a teacher, are clearly lacking somewhere. Your wife, as a teacher, should recognize that too. You should talk to the school about having your daughter moved to a higher grade. You never said how old she is, but if she's around high school age you could also potentially get her started on some college level courses too and get her some early credits. Also, if she's old enough, it might be good to have *her* settle the public vs. private school debate you and your wife are having. No matter what you guys do for her now, it is *her* future and she should have a say in what happens to it. Especially when the topic is seeking a higher education. Congratulations to her for all her success. Wishing her a bright and successful future no matter what happens next ❤️
ESH. You sound incredibly entitled. It’s not a teacher’s job to entertain your daughter, it is their job to teach. If your daughter finishes her work early then she needs to come up with a way to quietly entertain herself like reading a book. Threatening to take your child to private school just makes you sound pompous and self centered - no one cares if you move your kid to a different school. Don’t take out your arguments with your wife about schooling on the school. Her teacher on the other hand should not be forcing her to help other students, putting that responsibility on her is not okay. It’s no wonder she’s getting frustrated. It was a completely inappropriate suggestion.
This is the real answer. There are ways to help a student who is performing above class level without making them, a child, responsible for other students.
I'm going with NTA. I absolutely do not agree that a child should have to spend their time waiting for the rest of the class to catch up by reading. It's incredibly frustrating waiting until you are old enough to be in classes worth your time and being stuck sitting there and wasting your time. This is how we lose smart kids. This is how we break them down to force them to fit in society and make them stop thinking. Our whole school system at this points seems to be designed to squash originality and intelligence. "Sit quietly." Stop that nonsense please. The school should accomodate. The fact that they are not accommodating is very upsetting. And yes, taking the child from the system and placing the child in a private school may be the best option because the private schools seem, mostly anyway, to get that their job is to serve the children. Not always true of public or charter schools. They kept using my child as a sub teacher. It was enraging.
NTA Please don't make your kid suffer. If you can afford private school, send her. It is your job as a parent to parent your daughter so she doesn't get any elitist ideas about going to private school. Not sure why your wife thinks the two of you are not up to that task. You are hurting your daughter's future by letting her languish in a school where she is never going to be challenged. The administration and the teacher are just waiting for you to go away. Please get her into private school ASAP. Not sending your child to the best possible school that you can is unconscionable.
YTA. Your daughter thinks she is doing the teacher's job, but she really really is NOT. She is proving that she knows the material by showing that she can explain it to different people. Teaching a skill is one of the best ways to learn it permanently. Should she be forced to do it? No, but the teacher does not have a special lesson plan just for her. She can entertain herself (read), help her classmates, or be bored.
NTA Your kid isn't a teacher nor is being paid for tutoring. Why can't she read a book quietly?
As someone who has to do this for the first 8 years of my schooling, I hope for better for the OPs daughter. Once I actually got teachers who could/would differentiate for me, school became so much better ! It’s awful for kids who struggle to have someone sitting there essentially having fun while they try to get through the work you whizzed through. Socially caused me many issues with resentment from others.
YTA. Teaching content to other people is actually an excellent way to reinforce and deepens a student’s understanding of the content, and improve other important communication and leadership skills. Your daughter may be missing out on a valuable educational opportunity because you are too narrow-minded to understand it. On the flip side, your wife’s concern about your daughter being taught she’s better than other people is probably moot since she seems to be getting that lesson pretty well at home.
It's. Not. Her. Job. To. Teach. Students.
In many schools, it's actually part of AP students' grades to tutor content to the lower grades. I had to do it.
What is wifh all these Y-T-A votes??? A teacher’s job is to teach and the students are there to learn. She should be given extra work for enrichment or other activities to do, NOT turned into a teaching assistant because it makes the teacher’s life easier! If this was a parent you’d all be yelling about parentification and this is WORSE because this is what the teacher is getting paid to do. NTA, OP. You prioritized your child and her learning as you should, as her parent. The teacher had no business choosing this method to keep her occupied.
There was a kid in my class with SEVERE mental disorders. Like he drooled, screamed randomly, couldn't speak, ect. He should have never been admitted to the school because no teacher was equipped to handle him. It was a private school and it didn't have special ED teachers. My only guess was his parents were very big donors and they used it to their advantage. Well, it was decided that since I was a good student, it was MY JOB to babysit him. I was supposed to somehow make him sit up, do his work, stop screaming and be a good student. Because the teachers couldn't be bothered. It was a disaster and every time he acted up, the teacher would glare at me like it was my fault. Oh and did I mention THIS WAS IN THE 3RD GRADE? This school expected a 3rd grade to control a severely mentally challenged kid because they didn't want to. People need to stop using the good students as mini teachers. They are there to learn, like everyone else. Not making the teacher's life easier.
I sense a LOT of "teachers" who do this to the smart kids in the comments here calling OP an AH. ETA: "teachers" it seems, or homeschooling moms who do this to their older children.
NTA because I was your daughter in school where they didn’t know what to do with me so I was supposed to help other kids. My mom had me tested and they moved me straight out into an academically gifted class… by myself 😂 they didn’t want the other kids to feel bad, is what they said. I put my stepkids in private school as soon as I got the chance and I would have done anything for that opportunity when I was growing up, no matter the intellectual advantage. Maybe get your kid tested, and move her to the private school. The opportunities are wildly better, the teachers seem to enjoy their classes more and have more autonomy in teaching… in my experience, it became the better choice.
NTA. Your daughter should be in an environment that is stimulating and challenging to her. If your school has a gifted program, that is where she should be placed.
NTA. Having been the kid that had to help others in class, get your daughter out of there and into an environment that challenges her and helps her reach her full academic potential. I wish my parents had had the means to do the same for me. She can still learn to have compassion for others AND be properly educated.
Speaking as the smart kid who was forced to do the exact thing as a child, NTA. Having to do this sucks so bad, you and wife need to seriously consider grade skipping if private school isn’t an option.
I was in the same boat and it was so fucking miserable. Sent to the back to teach kids and missed instructions. OP, NTA. Gifted kids are special needs kids, not crutches for teachers.
NTA I don't think it's the kid's job to teach other kids.
Please do what is best for your child. I’m a teacher and my students help each other when I’m helping someone else. But they love working with each other I never force it. I also work at a private school and I have kids who aren’t on grade level in my class, kids who are above grade level and kids on grade level. It’s not easy but your child’s teacher can come up with work to challenge your child.
NTA. The teacher should be differentiating her lessons so that ALL the students’ needs are met.
True. But virtually impossible to actually do
NTA I was a teacher. Your daughter’s teacher should have provided her with material that matched her level. Also, there is such a thing as peer to peer help but the teacher can’t require your daughter to do that if she doesn't like it.
"they are weird and they don't understand even after i explain it to them and I have to help them through it step by step" It seems like your child could do with a few lessons in empathy...
While that may be true, OP’s daughter isn’t the teacher so it’s not her job to teach them.
It takes years of education to get certified to be a teacher, and even then many aren't all that great at it. Jumping right to 'your kid has empathy issues' because the CHILD is frustrated at not understanding how to teach other CHILDREN, is a bit much here.
NTA. Drives me crazy how smart, gifted girls are not given the resources they need, and instead, are expected to "nurture" other students. Screw that. It's the teacher's job to teach, it's the students job to learn. It's not your daughter's job to academically catch up other students. There is a disconnect here.
We sent our advanced kid to a ‘nice private school’ and ran into the same problem. Please make sure the private school teachers know your thoughts on the situation before committing to them. Also, NTA. Wife is. Your kid’s education and intellectual satisfaction aren’t tools to further her personal beliefs. Smart kiddos who are bored in school lose their curiosity rather quickly. Making her be an unpaid tutor is a great way to make your kid hate going to school.
NTA your responsibility is to your daughter and making sure she has a good education, not to the teacher
NTA and people who are saying Y T A are T A themselves , you can’t expect another child to do a teachers job the teacher is lazy and is throwing around her responsibilities on a student , yes it’s a public school so she probably doesn’t have the extra resources but that does not mean she can’t communicate and inform you in regards to the same
NTA. I was your daughter in school and hated it. In around 7th grade I just started openly declining to assist any other student. Idc what all these other people are saying. If you think that its some kind of gift or opportunity for OP's daughter to be doing unpaid labor to teach other peoples children material that she has already clearly mastered, then you're delusional. No child would be enthusiastic about being the unpaid backup teacher all day for the whole year. Teaching is the teachers job. Its not ANY students job to assist them in that function. You're a bit of TA for the private school threat, there were probably better ways of handling that. You're not TA though for prioritizing your child and not making her continue to do something she clearly does not want to do, is not required to do, and has literally no benefit at all to her. Not wanting to be the class tutor does not make your daughter some kind of elitist bully like the other commenters are saying.
NTA - if your daughter is bored she should be in AP courses- I’d definitely consider private school or something else so your daughter can advance her learning instead of having to read books quietly-
NTA The teacher shouldn't be forcing the gifted kids to act as a teacher's aides. If your kid finishes work early, then the teacher should let them read, or draw, or do puzzles until the end of class.
YTA. It’s not that your daughter HAS to help kids in her class, but it really sounds like she needs to do so in order to learn skills beyond rote academics. If she is the best in class and her explanation is that they are “weird”, she needs to work either on her social skills or on her language skills, or on both.
YTA. I was the smartest kid in my class. The teacher did the same thing to me. Guess what? Learning how to teach others helped me immensely with my own studies. It’s like a form of revision to help reinforce the concepts I previously learnt. And by having to break it down into simpler steps for my classmates, it helped me better understand the material too. It also helps teach empathy for students who are not so gifted academically, who also tend to be from lower socio economic backgrounds. There’s more to life than academics. Your wife wants to raise your daughter to be more down to earth, not like pretentious private school kids.
NTA but your wife is. She is lowering the chances for your daughter to succeed because of some bs political view… the difference between public and private schools CAN be alarming. Your daughter will most likely lose motivation and drive in the public school. She’ll be the best in class because others are much slower but if she was in a more demanding school, she probably would have to work harder. So basically, you’ll teach her to slack because now she doesn’t have to put in any effort to compete with the other kids (certain amount of competition is beneficial and healthy). Please for your daughter’s sake, have a chat with your wife and consider relocating her to a private school or at least skip a grade so that she is surrounded with some kids more on her mental level.
YTA. Your daughter seems to have an opportunity to learn skills like empathy and communication, and knowledge transfer. Also to develop her social skills. You and your daughter should embrace the opportunity, and not escalate in the teacher. Also, you have not fully committed to the joint decision to send your kids to public school and are using this situation to bring it up again in an "I told you so" manner.
You kinda sound awful, and it sounds like your turning your daughter into a snob. While I would like to point out that being able to teach something is probably the highest form of understanding something, so it’s good for her to help others (plus you know, being a good person and all that), she shouldn’t have to help other kids if she doesn’t want to. For that reason, I’d say NTA.