00:02:09.020I don't think parents and a lot of the times teachers give them enough credit for that, treat them with enough sort of intellectual respect at that age and put the same kind of expectations on them they put on some older kids.
00:02:26.980And that's where I think the big problem lies. A 12 and 13 year old kid is quite capable to do
00:02:33.060many, many, many things. I think as parents and educators, and I'm just going to talk about
00:02:38.500parents, parents need to treat them as such. So for a parent, your kid's going into grade seven
00:02:44.080and eight. First thing I do, find the emails of all of their teachers, send them a hello email.
00:02:50.880I would also always CC or include your kid in this email. I think the one thing that parents
00:03:02.540try to do and to sort of manage their kid, but not include their kid in what's going on. So a lot
00:03:11.020of parents will just contact me. And my first inclination is to pull the kid into the conversation.
00:03:16.260Sometimes there's serious conversations that a parent and a teacher need to have. That's fine.
00:03:20.700that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about just the regular setting up expectation
00:03:25.780for your child when it comes to school as it pertains to their teacher and that classroom.
00:03:32.340So getting to know the teacher is incredibly important. Asking their expectations is
00:03:36.520incredibly important, but, but, but, but, including your kid in that conversation every single step
00:03:44.180of the way. Most schools nowadays will have an online aspect, meaning parents will be able to go
00:03:52.980check what their kids, like what's expected in their course, what's coming up, what their marks
00:04:00.560are, all of those kinds of things. So as a parent, for the most part, if you gain access to that,
00:04:07.240which you should from any one of your schools, you can check that regularly. Again, let me be clear
00:04:12.940with 7 and 8s, do it with your kid. Do it with your kid. You check it with them, right? Now,
00:04:21.660grades 7 and 8, I still think there's a level that parents shouldn't be responsible for what
00:04:28.500their kids do. They should be aware of what their kids have to do. I'm going to get to students in
00:04:33.100a second because sometimes that impacts kids, right? They should be aware of what they're doing
00:04:39.120just to be that second reminder, that second check. Also at home, consequences. And I would
00:04:48.300say the consequences of not putting in enough work, and really that's my goal. My goal as a
00:04:55.740teacher has never been, and I don't think your goal is necessarily a parent, should ever be get
00:05:01.120a 97. For some kids, that's very much attainable. For other kids, that's very much a struggle. I
00:05:08.480think for everybody, you want to see your kid do the best they possibly can. And depending on the
00:05:13.600course, different kids will have different natural aptitudes. Now, I want to see them progress in that
00:05:18.800aptitude as does a parent, but having an unrealistic expectation for your kid, not going to help that
00:05:25.100situation. So talking to teachers about what they see, about what they expect, about the work they
00:05:31.460do, I think it's incredibly important to see what your kid does at home, to talk to the teacher about
00:05:38.140what they do in the classroom and get a vibe of, is my kid, if they're getting 70, let's say,
00:05:45.160are they, is it a hard 70? Are they grinding that 70 out? Or are they doing it in the last 10 minutes
00:05:53.500and watching the 70 come into play and go, yeah, I'm cool. 70 is good enough. My parents never got
00:05:58.340above a 70. Those are two different kinds of 70s. And I think the latter is the one we need to
00:06:05.900address. As far as Ontario goes, the way that we have structured everything, I think is a bit
00:06:14.560problematic from the Ontario government perspective. They've kind of taken out time
00:06:18.980management. They've taken out effort. They've taken out all of these things and they've kind
00:06:22.660of put them over here as things we do not grade. For example, we're not supposed to take late marks
00:06:26.680off. That's asinine, in my opinion. And as a parent, you should feel it's asinine too.0.97
00:06:33.620As long as students are given ample time, you're on it, the kid's on it, the teacher's on it,
00:06:40.300there is no possible way stuff should be handed in late and there's not a consequence for that.
00:06:46.540Now, in my class, my consequences are different because I don't really like just taking off marks
00:06:52.180because some kids don't care, right? They've been so turned off because of grades. They're just like,
00:06:57.380whatever. I don't care if I lose 5%, 10%. Well, in my room, you don't lose marks. You have more
00:07:02.900work to do because what you've done is you haven't proven you can do that work. So therefore, I'm not
00:07:08.980just taking marks off you and calling it a day. We now are going to climb up another mountain
00:07:13.420together. Now, also let me be clear, parents, there's always exceptions. Always exceptions.
00:07:20.680There is no world in which a teacher never takes into account something, an externality,
00:07:26.280taking impact on your kid and then discounting it altogether. But we have to understand what's a
00:07:35.880serious externality, what's one that we need to take account for and make some space for and
00:07:42.100maybe extend a deadline for and what was a party they needed to go to that weekend or a ski trip
00:07:47.940they needed to go on or whatever. This is where grade seven and eight is where real accountability
00:07:54.120is getting balanced between being accountable for what they do and their social life. Because
00:08:00.100let's be honest, grade seven and eight, the number one driving factor will be puberty.
00:08:04.420And that's going to roll right into grade nine. So as parents, I think open, it's always the same
00:08:12.040case, guys. Open communication is the key. And if something goes sideways, if something goes
00:08:19.460sideways. If your kid is involved in something at school that isn't okay, if they've done something
00:08:25.520where it's crossed the line, if somebody has done something to them, dealing with that and being
00:08:30.020aware of those factors, incredibly important. It's not necessarily a parent to control, but it is a
00:08:38.820parent to understand and be a part of that so you know the holistic picture that your kid is going
00:08:46.000through in school. I also think for parents, encouraging, if you can, your kid to join as
00:08:54.540many things as they possibly can that make them happy. I think education is holistic. I don't
00:09:01.540think dropping a course because they're not amazing at it is healthy. I don't think never
00:09:06.080joining a sport or never joining a club or never joining the theater or the band or whatever it is
00:09:10.860they're used to. We're missing out on things that are incredibly important to develop a whole
00:09:17.520person and a happy person and an individual who knows, I don't just get to be great at the things
00:09:24.760that come easy. I need to work at the things that don't. That's it. And all the while as a parent,
00:09:32.840building them up, building them up to be freaking superstars at school with making them accountable.
00:09:40.860And the reason why I want the parent, the kid, and the teacher all on the same call at all times for everything, because we all know there's three sides to every story, right? And then somewhere in there is the truth. So let's cut it off. Have a discussion. If there's a problem, even if there isn't a problem, even better, having that dynamic before there's ever an issue, it negates all of that. It mitigates all of that from happening.
00:10:07.780right but as the parent understanding that the teacher has a curriculum has a job to do
00:10:16.960and encouraging your kid to also understand they might not like that teacher
00:10:20.820listen I have kids don't like me I don't understand it but I will say to them you need to
00:10:29.000understand how to get something out of that teacher anyway you don't have to like me but
00:10:36.260I will respect you and I expect the same in return. So let's figure out how you can learn
00:10:40.420in this environment. Not every educational environment will be suited and formatted for
00:10:46.820your particular student. They might not like my teaching style. They might like, you know, the
00:10:52.040English guy down the road or the, you know, whatever. They might like different people for
00:10:56.900different things. That's amazing. But it doesn't mean you get to call it a day. I think also
00:11:04.060So teaching your kid how to advocate, how to advocate, how to stand up for themselves and advocate for themselves within a peer group, how to stand up for themselves and advocate with their teacher, them, they can do it from seven, of course, and on, right?
00:11:21.920If they don't understand something, they need to be supported to go ask.
00:11:28.320It can't be the parent picking up the phone.
00:11:30.140They need to be leading that charge at that age.
00:11:33.740If they don't understand a mark, they need to go ask.
00:11:37.520If they're missing something in the classroom, they need to be able to put up their hand or see the teacher afterwards.
00:11:42.560They need to find avenues to be responsible to some degree of their own learning and understanding.
00:11:50.660If a teacher is treating them badly, they need to wait till after class and address it. And I know that seems so incredibly hard, but it's incredibly powerful. As well as parents need to understand that that needs to happen within their peer group.
00:12:35.880If somebody's doing something that you don't like, you need to be able to calmly, coolly, in a collected fashion, say, no, I'm not okay with it.
00:13:00.700now the other thing for a parent a lot of kids will have IEPs which are individual educational
00:13:08.420plans right different kids have different learning abilities different learning styles different
00:13:12.560things they need different things they demand what I would advocate here is this understand
00:13:17.720the IEP that your son or daughter needs be able to convey that in that first kind of email make
00:13:23.020sure that the class is able to do what you need them to do and it's okay and and and and understand
00:13:29.980that just because your kid maybe, let's take this for an example, maybe has a form of dyslexia,
00:13:39.680it does not mean they will never have to read again. Because your kid has a learning disability
00:13:46.120when it comes to reading or processing in an auditory fashion. Look, I want the teacher to
00:13:51.560take all those things into account, but it's not to negate the learning in those learning styles.
00:13:57.460My job as a teacher and your job as a parent, I feel as though, isn't just to say, oh, they're
00:14:04.000not very good at that. We're never going to do that again. It's to say, they're not very good
00:14:07.640at that. How do we make that better? They don't listen well. They don't, how do we make that
00:14:14.280better? They fidget in class and they don't pay attention. How do we make that better? What are
00:14:18.840some strategies in order to help my kid master and get better at the things that might be holding
00:14:25.820them back. It is not to make space for them to do it indefinitely. That's not what education's
00:14:31.720about. Now, when it comes to time management, parents also have to understand what the plan
00:14:38.780is so that when a parent is planning all the different things that we have to do in our world,
00:14:43.700family trips and gatherings and all of those kinds of things, you can do that with the idea
00:14:50.720of also what your kids have to be committed to and what job they have to do first. Because if
00:15:01.080you're going to negate their job to go on a ski vacation, you're going to teach them a particularly
00:15:07.440problematic lesson. And will the school make accommodations for that? Sure, they will. Of
00:15:13.480course they will, because the parent has made that decision. Should they? Well, the parent
00:15:18.940you know should be taking into account sort of the bigger picture and with constant communication
00:15:24.920those things never fall through the cracks now does this sound like a whole a lot of hard work
00:15:29.800yeah being a parent is horrifically hard exhausting time-consuming and never-ending barrage
00:15:36.560but these are the things that need to happen in order to grow your kid teachers everything i just
00:15:48.180said about parents, you need to mirror. I would never tell a teacher how to teach. That's
00:15:53.740ridiculous. Every teacher is going to have a strategy and a personal style, and that's going0.88
00:15:58.620to flow out. Here's what I expect, or what I would expect of all teachers. Having a clear
00:16:04.880and consistent expectation for the course, and expectations for each assignment in each
00:16:11.960classroom, having clear consequence if they do not meet those expectations, and having
00:16:18.340consistent, that's the key, consistent follow-through to meet the consequence of failed
00:16:24.920expectation. Now, again, that sounds an awful lot like parenting, doesn't it? Well, it is because
00:16:30.880you're parenting in a very different way. You're educating these kids, but you're parenting on a
00:16:36.500whole bunch of different life skills and the life skill is clear if i hand out an assignment
00:16:42.260i better have clear expectation what's in the assignment what do i want what am i expecting
00:16:47.860when am i expecting it that's that as a teacher you have to be clear in your expectation
00:16:55.940now i also go a step further because i let students hand things in early so when they
00:17:00.740do give it a go i can mark it up and say here's where you're missing something here's you need
00:17:04.580need to expand here. So there's a learning curve. I can do that at my school because I don't have
00:17:09.86030 kids in the classroom. So it makes it a lot easier. But then you need a consequence. If you
00:17:15.220have something, hand in something late, what is the consequence? If you underperform, what is the
00:17:22.020consequence? If you negate your responsibility altogether, what is the consequence? Now as a
00:17:28.460teacher, you have to, have to, have to have consistent conversations with the parents.
00:17:33.000and the kids. Again, three-way calls all over the place. Every time I need to call a parent,
00:17:41.140talk to a parent about behavior, about academic issues, about social issues, I tell the kid,
00:17:47.680I sit the kid down and I say, I'm going to call your parent. We're going to have this conversation
00:17:52.180right now. Every single time. I don't hide a thing from the student because I want them to
00:17:58.420understand what my expectation is on them and i want them to exactly hear what i have to say to
00:18:04.420their parent and what their parent has to say to me so we are on the same page for follow through
00:18:11.700the amount of kids who don't try to sidestep that it's astounding because they know as soon as they
00:18:18.100try to you know get around something and listen nobody wants to be caught nobody wants to get in
00:18:23.220trouble. Everybody wants to avoid it. And if a kid can't avoid it, they will. My grandpa and then my
00:18:28.560mom always said to me, never put in a kid, this is probably true of people, but as a teacher, never
00:18:34.140put a student in a position to lie because they will lie to protect themselves. And it's not
00:18:38.720because they're a bad person. It's not because they're an evil kid. It's because they feel
00:18:43.000backed in a corner and they're going to do whatever they can to avoid getting in trouble,
00:18:47.320either by the teacher or by their parents or by their peers they will do it and if i know
00:18:53.800something has gone off i don't ask the question in hopes they tell me the truth i make a statement
00:19:00.120of fact and then i say what do we do now what what's the consequence now and they might say
00:19:07.240oh but i need to explain no you don't you don't need to explain it because we're past that point
00:19:13.320and i'll say to them i don't want you to explain because you're going to try to explain away
00:19:17.320you know a very you're going to try to explain away your let's say failure now if it's a situation
00:19:26.180again teachers of course there's always exceptions there's not even a case in my head that says
00:19:33.100there's not exceptions with every single thing that teachers do and students do of course there
00:19:39.760is. The question is, how do we, how do those externalities get relayed to us? How do we find
00:19:47.320out about them? A lot of the times kids will, interestingly enough, make excuses where there
00:19:53.780shouldn't be and then hide, which I find very interesting, hide legitimate reasons for either
00:20:03.220poor effort, academic performance, or time management. And they'll hide it because it's
00:20:08.000embarrassing, because it's personal, because they'd rather take a bad mark rather than face
00:20:13.880the conversation. Now, that's a hard one to get around as a teacher. That really is. The only way
00:20:21.160to get around that is, again, open conversations with the parents, open conversations with the kid,
00:20:26.560and hopefully you create a safe enough environment in which you can hear pieces of what needs to be
00:20:31.980heard in order to mitigate, you know, what the kid is doing. Now, as far as students, as a teacher,
00:20:40.080also, as far as those expectations go, you need to work on, and the hardest thing is working on
00:20:46.980how they are crystal clear. And as a teacher, each individual student that has different learning
00:20:53.000abilities, you need to also be a lot of balls in the air for a teacher. How do I maximize what
00:20:58.620they're good at, like just, just big them up, right? If they're good at presentations, like
00:21:03.360fanfare, but the things they're not good at, as a teacher, we need to figure out how do I get at
00:21:11.240that thing? How do I make them feel just a little more secure in it? How do I make, how do I make
00:21:17.520sure that their progression is on, you know, an upwards trajectory? How do I make sure they're
00:21:23.260getting a little bit better at the thing they weren't good at? They didn't think they were
00:21:26.340good at. They didn't feel good about yesterday. How do I make them better today? And that obviously
00:21:31.320I'm not negating anything. Right. And that's why a teacher with 30 kids in the classroom is just
00:21:37.040like a whole truckload of balls in the air, because that becomes very difficult. And what
00:21:40.820becomes really difficult is figuring out who's about to slip through the crack. Because as a
00:21:46.080teacher, you're also consistently watching out for their mental health. You're consistently
00:21:50.280watching out for their peer groups and what's going on there. You're consistently watching
00:21:54.180out for changes in behavior that can be indicative of big things going on either socially at their
00:21:59.420house or wherever, it's a lot in the air as a teacher, right? Also, as teachers, we need to
00:22:08.220know that line when something's happened, who to contact, how to contact them and sort of protect
00:22:13.580kids in that capacity. It's not an easy job. It's not. I would also say to my fellow teachers,
00:22:24.180just like I say to my students, join as many things as you can. Now, pause that for a second,
00:22:30.040because I know that teachers aren't paid for those extracurriculars. So, if that's not within
00:22:36.940your scope to do so, I believe teachers should be paid for that. But understand as a teacher,
00:22:42.280because I've taken breaks from that at school. I've taken breaks from the extracurriculars. I'm
00:22:46.900like, I'm too overwhelmed. And what ends up happening is I feel, just like a student would,
00:22:51.100very disconnected from the school. I feel they're very disconnected from the students I teach
00:22:56.860because when you're on the volleyball court with them or when you're doing art club or when you
00:23:00.960take them to a movie or whatever it is you do, you're able to develop different sort of academic
00:23:06.820and teacher-student relationships that help for the whole picture. It makes you a better holistic
00:23:11.920teacher. It makes them see different sides to you. So rather than sitting and forcing the fur
00:23:17.220trade down their throat. I'm out there teaching them, you know, I don't know how to bowl on a
00:23:22.980Friday afternoon for school. It gives a different venue. And education is about respect. It's about
00:23:31.240trust. And it's about understanding you're going to get good things. You're going to have hard days.
00:23:37.100You're going to do things that you love and things that you hate, but you're going to do it with
00:23:40.660faculty and parents and kids that all want the same thing, which is absolute success.
00:23:47.220So, students, oh, students, nobody wants to hear the students, grade seven, you're smart, you're responsible, you're capable. Stop allowing people, your parents and teachers likewise, to treat you like you're not that.
00:24:08.780Start taking, stop taking the easy, well, I am only 13.