An unvarnished testimonial from a parent

Today, our month was made to get two voice messages from a parent whose child we have supported. It has taken a whole village to get this going – his parents, his teachers, his school environment, his tutors and also us at The Teachers Collective. I have transcribed the message, masked identifying information and reported it below with no other edits.

What I love – the nuanced approach for this parent, also an educator herself, acknowledgement of the downs along with the ups and the linking back to the various elements that have worked to get this child here. The backstory, we got into the picture one year ago, when our (joint) child was finishing up Grade 9 and teachers were not sure if he would handle the content, the pressures and demands of the IGCSE curriculum. With no further ado, his mom’s words:

Just want to share a moment with you, a good moment. I reach out in distress, would also like to share the good stuff. His exams are done, and we had a meeting with his teachers on his performance. You said that your goals for him were solid Bs at the very least, he has actually got that, exactly what you said. At the end of the day, it is not about the marks alone but also about how he is setting his goals.

What I want to share is when we got the support for him, the scribe in place, it unlocked his potential. The same teacher, who a year back – it felt like they’d almost give up. We walked out of that report meeting with feedback like ‘he can’t recall’, ‘he can’t do’, ‘his memory is bad’, many many things. They were also sharing from the space of not being aware, I guess, I am not sure of the reasoning behind it but we walked out very worried. But we did find support systems here and there with the assessment, access arrangements, some tutoring help for content, I took up some subjects. As you said, as parents, we’ve been doing the right thing and it is reassuring, as an educator, to see that once you remove the barrier for the child, how he is able to blossom. It’s not about the marks, it is his ability to understand and explain the content and subject knowledge. That has been unlocked, that is what I want to share with you.

Personally, I owe you a great thank you, sincere gratitude. In the sense that I felt really supported. It wasn’t only the support you provided him alone, during the process you answered my questions: “Is this report okay?”, how many times I have reached out. He is lucky to have the adults around him that he does, who also support me as a parent. You have been a great support as a parent on this journey.

It is just a moment, only the mock exams. It can’t be like how we won the quarterfinals and semifinals and then lost the finals; everyone’s told him to not get complacent and to work consistently.

I think from last year when we were wondering if he would do it, if we would need to drop a few subjects and have him write it a different time, we were at that level – we’ve now turned that corner and are in a good space – we will count on you for more support in the future.

One more thing I want to mention here is that the workshop you did with the teachers, it has indeed opened up something in their perspective. We are the first batch in all these years with two kids who have scribes. Over the years, I know many kids who have had significant difficulties and were steered only towards vocational courses, which is hard in India in a system that expects a minimum 10^th pass certificate. We can give importance to vocational training, nothing wrong with that, but that’s not always for everyone.

The teachers are now looking at the lens of ‘how can we help this child’, I feel that the change in perspective is a good shift. We’ve had our ups and downs with the set of teachers on whether they knew how to support him. But after this one-year’s journey, with them becoming more aware, they have actually benefited from your workshop. We can now see the effort that they have now put in with this child, we have closely seen this.

Parul’s and your work deserves a lot of applause and mention here. I hope and wish that you do refresher courses for them and meet them once a year so that the change does not dissipate. This moment deserves mention for the work you have done. Thanks, and bye!

This is why we do what we do and this is how students with difficulties do just as well and sometimes better for the support given. Our experience has been that every child benefits from inclusion because informing the teacher and opening up their perspective means we can support from a distance and step out of the way.

Cheering for this win today. It will hold us for when some hits, as are inevitable, happen!

Have a wonderful rest of the week, everyone!