When you are a concerned and loving parent, it can sometimes be a challenge for you when your children go off to school. After all, it means they are spending upwards of eight hours a day under the care, discipline, and supervision of educators that you may have only met briefly in passing if at all. Teachers and education administrators are trustworthy and are highly skilled at managing a classroom and providing a quality educational experience to their students. However, if you have recently listened to your child make multiple complaints and accusations about one or more of their teachers treating them unfairly, you might be wondering what you can do to address the issue. There are numerous steps that you can and should take to act as an advocate for your child in such a situation.

Schedule a Meeting with the Teacher in Question

First and foremost, while you want to take your child at their word about how their teacher is treating them, there may be more to the story than they are telling you. Sometimes children omit details of a story with their teachers (intentionally or unintentionally) or simply do not understand the reasons a teacher is disciplining them.

As such, you will want to schedule a parent-teacher meeting with the teacher or teachers in question as soon as possible to discuss your child's performance and behavior in class. This will give you a good idea of the teacher's perspective on your child and how they are acting and interacting in class. It is best to go into the teacher meeting with an open mind and to try to begin at least the meeting talking about the teacher's general take on your child in their classroom.

If you go into the meeting making accusations or talking about specific incidents, they may not be as open to talking to you and may get defensive. It is better to have a cordial discussion with the teacher and then bring up any specific incidents you may be concerned about. 

Contact the Administration If Problems Persist

If you speak to the teacher and your child continues to complain about the way they are being treated by a teacher, the next step will be to contact the school administration and meet with them. Call the main office of the school and request to sit down with the principal or the associate principal as soon as possible regarding the situation.

When you go to the meeting, make sure you have specific concerns and issues in mind based on what your child has told you. The administration may wish to include your child in the meeting or may wish to speak to you alone depending on the specifics and the seriousness of the accusations.

There are many steps that an administrator may take when concerns are brought up about the way a teacher interacts with students and any possible targeting in the classroom. They may opt to resolve the situation by performing a series of classroom observation visits or random classroom walkthroughs to see the way the teacher performs for themselves. Alternatively, they may see the situation as simply being a poor fit between the teacher and your child because of personalities or teaching style and offer to move your child to another teacher's classroom.

With these steps in mind, you can be sure that you approach a situation in which you child has problems with a teacher or multiple teachers in the best possible way.