Answers From The Teacher
Darra Wheeler Happ

Kindergarten screening takes place next month. What should we expect? Is there anything that I should be doing to prepare my daughter for the screening?

A typical kindergarten screening in-cludes brief interviews of your child by teachers and school counselors. Your daughter may also be asked to count and say her alphabet. The screening may also include a brief assessment of physical fitness. She may meet some specialists who will be working with her, perhaps the physical education teacher, the principal, and the school nurse.

There’s no need to prepare your daughter for the screening other than letting her know what she might ex-pect to happen. You can call the school principal for more specific information to help prepare. Knowing how the time will be spent may ease any un-certainties that your daughter may have.

You may be able to stay with your daughter, but you won’t be able to assist her in answering questions or performing the simple tasks she will be asked to perform. The assessment team wants to know what your daughter can do on her own. Before you go, simply encourage her to do her best and to listen to the adults. If you’ve been reading to her often and exposing her to other learning experiences from the time she was born, she’s prepared for kindergarten screening. Now it’s time to let her show what she can do. There is no need to polish up any of her skills for the purpose of ex-celling at the screening.

I was not that pleased with my son’s teacher this year. I’d like to make sure that he gets a strong teacher next year who will both encourage his strengths and address his weaknesses. How do I go about accomplishing this? I’m not comfortable going into the principal and complaining about this year’s teach-er. I just want to be sure he gets someone good for next year.

You need to find out from your school principal the proper protocol for requesting a specific teacher for the following year. If you have other child-ren who have had good teachers along the way and you’d like to request one of those, feel free to express your thought to the principal. Some districts allow parental requests and others don’t. Some districts ask that you des-cribe your child’s learning style and then allow them to use the information to make a good match. If you have strong feelings about whom you want for your son’s teacher next year, then you need to let your request be known sooner, rather than later. Because making class lists can be very complicated, some school districts begin in the spring and don’t finalize the lists until summer. Complete the paperwork if there is any, and then hope that your request can be honored.

Also, I really don’t feel there’s anything wrong with discussing a teacher’s performance if it’s not about personalities and if you are sincerely concern-ed with what is going on in the classroom. There needn’t be a confrontation and you shouldn’t feel you’re "telling on" the teacher. As a parent, you have a right to know what’s happening in the classroom and why. You still may not be happy, and you can’t dictate policy to your liking, but you must see to it that your son receives the best education possible.

Send questions to: Answers from the Teacher, P.O. Box 54, South Egre-mont, MA 01258. Questions may also be emailed to ateacher@bcn.net.

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