Do you think schools treat parents with enough respect?

I decided to post the question above last Monday on Twitter (which also posts on my Facebook page).  I have a lot of friends who are teachers, and most of the responses were from a teacher’s perspective.  I’d love to hear from a parent’s viewpoint.  But the topic elicited enough response for me to consider it in depth this week.  (I hope some of you who responded last week will find it worth your time to comment on this post.)

So this week, I want to explore some of the ideas that were posited by my friends last week in order to explore what might happen if teachers took a new look at serving their community. I’ll be looking at these topics this week:

1.  Teacher Attitude

2.  School Culture

3.  Community Perspective

4.  Customer Service

Why is this so important?  We have lost the direct accountability to parents that we once had.  We teachers feel accountable to our principles and school boards, who hold our evaluations, contracts, and paychecks in their hands.  We feel responsible to the state department (though we also seem to despise that entity deeply) with their new programs, tests, and standards constantly moving us forward.

But, why don’t we feel responsible to the parents?  Why don’t we feel a deep sense of accountability directly to the parents of each child?

I’ll get into that more tomorrow.