Today I am sitting here for the first long afternoon of three, every afternoon we have the parents coming from 13:30 till 17:30. This is a fairly long time and three days back to back is also fairly exhaustive. All schools do it differently and I have yet to see the staff not find fault with what ever the school is doing, and I usually would be among the staff to wish it was done a different way. But today I am sitting here with minimal bookings for the three days, while the rest of the Maths department is full with no free appointments. So while they are discussing kids, I am marking, making activities and actually writing this blog. It got me thinking as to why the parents are not banging down my door to meet me, I am the new member of staff, surely they are curious! And then it hit me, currently I am teaching all of the 'bottom sets', mainly as I hate that term, I hate setting and I am trying hard to change the mind set that these kids are just not good at Maths and never will be. A big obstacle, is the parents believe this too and possibly unintentionally keep the myth alive. A few teaching parents said to me today that there was no point in seeing the Maths teacher as they were rubbish in Maths so it is kind of to be expected that their children are. I had to quickly tell them that this is not true and in fact they are not rubbish in Maths at all! They just had the wrong teachers, were placed in bottom sets, possibly their parents said the same thing to them or a million and one other reasons, but that they are not born without a Maths brain or whatever else they have thought over the years, the fact is we all were.
So my newest goal is to have a full schedule next year in the Spring, when they realise how fabulous their kids are at Maths and to hear about the amazing progress they have made.
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