Persuade a school principal to change something about your classroom to aid learning

This year, it happened. We needed to request a change in my child’s classroom placement. Thankfully, the change was requested in a timely manner and the transition to a new classroom was seamless.

Requesting a change in your child’s classroom placement can be tough, here are some ideas to help get started.

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Requesting a Change in Your Child’s Classroom Placement

My daughter went from dreading to looking forward to her day at school. As a parent, I ho-hummed about requesting a change in her teachers, but then realized that speaking up for her needs at school was what I had to do. Now that we are half way through the school year, I am SO glad we did.

Read How to Get the Teacher You Want for next year!

How do You Know It’s Time to Request a Change to Your Child’s Classroom?

1. Your Child Doesn’t want to Go to School

The classroom placement for this year just wasn’t working for my grade school daughter. It started out ok. The new teacher was friendly, organized and enthusiastic. My daughter seemed to get along with her, but then things never really settled after the first few weeks of school. She was coming home frazzled, didn’t want to go to school, and was having a hard time making friends. It wasn’t like her and so we sat down and talked.

Some kids do not want to go to school for a variety of reasons from feeling frustrated with academic tasks to having friend issues. Talk to your child about what is making them unhappy. If they say, “I hate my teacher,” or “My teacher is mean.” Ask for examples. Keep in mind, you are hearing the kid-version of the story. E-mail or call for the teacher version.

Because of the grade levels schedule, my daughter was seeing one teacher for home room, another for reading, another for science and yet another for math. Add in all the special teachers (library, art, PE…) and she didn’t see one teacher for more than 90 minutes in a day. Which also meant, she didn’t see the same kids either. On top of that, she had to keep all her belongings in the homeroom class and stop there – like a locker- in between all the other classes. It felt like my 9 year old had the schedule of a middle schooler. When we really analyzed it, she had MORE transitions that a middle schooler.

My book-a-holic, straight A student hated school? WHAT? This mom knew, her daughters homeroom classroom needed to change.

2. You have scheduled a conference with your child’s teacher, made a plan, and things still haven’t gotten better.

The first thing we did was talked with the teacher about our concerns. She really listened and referred me to our school counselor. Because my daughter has a 504 plan, she arranged a meeting for her education team (all the teachers and school counselor) to discuss possible solutions. Even if your child does not have an IEP, Individualized Education Plan or 504 plan, you can always ask your school’s guidance counselor, curriculum director or principal to help set up a team meeting to discuss the educational needs of your child. (After the conference, plan, and no improvement)

3. A change in your child’s classroom placement should occur if your child’s learning is affected by a relationship with another child or adult.

This not getting along with a teacher, professional in the room, or peer may be causing inner turmoil. Looking at the facts, there are just times when 2 people do not work well together. It is my opinion that if a child does not feel emotionally safe at schools then we, as parents, must speak up and insist upon a change. I have seen parents remove children from the public school setting to homeschool due to these bad connections. Changing classrooms is always an option to consider too.

Recently we've heard more disturbing stories about principals banning plays and teachers having to fight with new administrators to keep using plays in their classrooms. We all know the ironies here. These types of principals are obsessed with test scores, but they forbid the very teaching tools that would actually increase those scores and get students more engaged in the classroom!

What a world. But given that the academic climate is what it is, we want to provide you with more tools you can use to get the administrative support you need.

Below is a real, successful letter that one of our teachers wrote and used to get permission to put on one of our plays in her classroom. You are welcome to modify it for your own needs!

If you have your own letter (or other method) that worked, please send it to us! We will post it on our web site in our resources section for other teachers to use.

Finally, if you are a principal -- or you have a principal -- who supports using musical plays at your school, please get in touch with us.

Thank you! Lisa

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Dear ____________,

I would like to do a class play on immigration called We Come from? Everywhere. It ties in with our immigration theme, which is part of the? fourth grade curriculum. It also teaches about diversity, of which we have? very little here! I will have the students practice during their ?library time, which we have for two days a week in December. I don't mind giving up my prep time for a few weeks. If you? approve this, we would like to present the play to third and fourth ?graders and parents in January. It is a 25-minute play.

What suggestions can you give to improve the classroom setting?

How will you modify your teaching to help students who are struggling with the subject?

What should I persuade my teacher about?