Should Parents Pick Their Child's Teacher?

Teacher Magazine has an interesting article on picking your child's teacher. You can get to the article by clicking here. I believe you will have to register to be able to read the entire article. A portion is below:

"After doing some research, including sitting in on classrooms, Valerie Gilbert thought she knew which third-grade teacher would be perfect for her son, Stanley.

Impressed by that teacher's creative, visually stimulating style, the Berkeley, Calif., mother lobbied on Stanley's behalf. "I did my best to make my opinion known," Gilbert said.

The school, however, placed Stanley in a different class. And to his mother's surprise and delight, the year wound up being so successful for him that Gilbert said she is approaching his pending entry into fourth grade in a new way: by vowing to stay out of the process."

"Children learn important life lessons — how to be resilient and adapt to a range of situations — when required to roll with the punches, Donahue said.

"Our kids are capable and they can cope," he said, adding that in general parents should do less for their kids to help make them stronger as individuals. While a small percentage of children with special needs may benefit from more parental involvement, most kids are bound sometime in life to be in situations that are less than ideal and "they have to learn to deal with it.""