How do we know how our children feel about school? - By Christine Simmonds, Regional Managing Director - Middle East

When my daughter was at school, like parents everywhere I was always tempted to fire questions at her during that journey between school and home at the end of the day.  I would start with a tentative but bright, ‘how was your day?’ Then I would progress to ‘what did you do?’ Sometimes I would risk, ‘how are your friends?’ At age seven her stock answers would be, ‘fine,’ ‘nothing much’ and ‘French.’ The latter was due to her attending a bi-lingual international school. Her seven-year-old responses were rapidly followed by, ‘what’s for dinner?’ Further probing seemed invasive so I usually backed off, but I still wanted to know, ‘was she happy there?’ ‘Were others kind to her?’ ‘Did she learn anything?’ ‘Was her French actually improving?’ These were my silent questions. Others included, ‘are they still using text books?’ ‘What am I paying that school for?’ ‘Do they realize how mean some children are?’

The million-dollar question remained unanswered as well - ‘did I do the right thing?’ We all question whether we chose the right school for our child and we all reassure ourselves that we would know if they are unhappy, not learning or friendless, wouldn’t we? 

After a particularly frustrating question and non-answer session one day I decided that if I needed reassurance that all was well at school, and my child was actually making progress, then I needed to change my questions .... and my timing.

I decided to introduce ‘our time’ after dinner and before bed time. We would sit on the sofa ‘snuggling’ as Abbie called it. We would then play a game of 20 questions (we rarely made 5 let alone 20, but the quality was great) The rules were: 10 each, alternate, must be focused on our day, no one-word answers, no repetition.

It went like this:

Me: What was the most amazing thing you learnt today?

Abbie: (thinking pose, finger on chin, head tilted) That dolphins talk to each other. They are so brainy but sometimes they get confused and end up in tuna nets, especially in Japan and people eat them in burgers, yuk, that’s so disgusting, dolphin burgers... I am never eating tuna again and I will never eat McDonalds in Japan. Can I swim with dolphins one day? 

Me: Maybe we can see if it’s possible here, but it would be in a dolphinarium and that’s like a zoo for dolphins and we don’t ‘do’ zoos, so it might be tricky.

Abbie: You’re right, well maybe I can go scuba diving one day and I will see some in the sea.

Me: Great idea, your turn for a question.

Abbie: (puzzled thinking look again) Was anyone mean to you today?

Me: (thoughtfully) Well nobody was mean to me, but I didn’t much appreciate Elizabeth’s attitude towards someone else. She was dismissive of their work.

Abbie: What did you do?

Me: I just had a quiet word about how hard the other person had worked and how we needed to appreciate she was still learning. Elizabeth just put ‘her look’ on and seemed to ignore me but she was kind after that.

Abbie: Miss Sperry says we are all learning until the day we die. Do you believe that?

Me: Well I hope that’s true because if we ever stop learning then life would be a bit boring.

Abbie: Your turn

Me: What were you most proud of in school today?

Abbie: (without hesitation) I did an amazing tackle in football and Mr Palmer said I must have got it from my dad. Not many of the girls tackle hard and if you don’t do it right you can break your leg. Was dad a hard tackler?

Me: The hardest, apart from Graham Souness who was really tough and tackled your dad so hard from behind, that he had to have knee surgery.

Abbie: I thought you said tree surgery! (giggles) James’s dad is a tree surgeon in England.

Me: Your turn

Abbie: When you’re at work and you can’t do something, what happens?

Me: If I am not sure how to start it, I ask someone else what they would do. I think it’s best to work in a team. We just brainstorm ideas, and someone comes up with something.

Abbie: But in Maths we are not allowed to talk. I can’t do multiplying like the others do, they do it the French way.

Me: I didn’t know there was a French way, can you show me how you do it?

Abbie: (grabbing paper) like this...

Abbie used the grid method to find 14 x 23:

X	20	3
10	200	30	230 +
4	80	12	92
			322

20 x 10 = 200

4 x 20 =     80

3 x 10 =     30

3 x 4 =       12

Add together = 322

There followed a long but fruitful discussion on different methods of multiplying big numbers. At Abbie’s insistence I shared the ‘French’ way which was also the way I learnt.

14 x

23

First 3 x 14, then 20 x 14

42

280 +

322

With our new-found reflection time, life became far more rewarding and we enjoyed a close relationship based around ‘learning.’ Neither of us became stressed, neither of us felt pressure, I felt included and my child learnt to share her thoughts, feelings and ideas more readily. Trouble is... now she is at university I receive daily learning focused calls to chat about her day!

Christine Simmonds, Regional Managing Director – Middle East, International Schools Partnership