JohnT and Mrs. JohnT
School Name
Dear Teacher:
God’s blessings be with you and your family this Christmas season.
We wanted to write in regards to a number of concerns we had with Sophia’s education and intellectual growth. As she has progressed throughout the past half-year at School Name, we are troubled by a number of areas in which she has seemingly regressed. It is our fervent hope and desire that we will be able to address these concerns on a personal basis, both in talking to you and improving our abilities as parents. However, we have no desire to “sandbag” you with a list of concerns without your being aware of them prior to our meeting – hence this letter.
The first, and in our opinion, least important, is her regression in her math skills. Sophia entered school with a minor facility in addition: 2+2=4, 3+4=7, nothing more complicated than that: I do not believe that she understood the concept of subtraction, but she did understand addition.
However, this small ability is no longer evident in her. When asked an addition question she has taken up the habit of guessing along the number range: “2? 3? 4?..” every single time. This is puzzling, but we are aware that children can and will display signs of regression, where an ability once in display is no longer evident. And if this were the only issue in which we’ve noticed signs of regression, we would not be writing this letter.
A more troubling sign of regression is her newly-displayed habit of writing many of her letters and numbers backwards. From toddlerhood-onward, Sophia has always loved to draw and we have made it a priority that, since she does enjoy drawing, she should learn to “draw” (print) her letters and numbers (as well as properly hold a pencil), skills that she has worked on since the age of four and fully possessed in her fifth year.
Unfortunately, we have noticed an increasing likelihood in the past 4 months of her writing her letters and numbers backwards, an apparent display of dyslexia in a child that never shown a tendency towards this problem. As you can imagine, this is particularly vexing as we have believed and known that Sophia entered Kindergarten already possessing the skills and ability needed to begin writing out actual words.
However, the most disturbing sign of a lack of educational progress on Sophia’s part is her complete inability to phonetically parse out words. She obviously recognizes some words, but if you complement them with closely-spelled homonyms, she will literally guess what the following words are. For example, she recognizes the word “Cat”. However, if you give her the following list:
- Cat
- Mat
- Hat
- Sat
- Bat
She will only get the first word right, while guessing on the others. Her guesses always starts with the first letter (“Maybe?” “Maebh?” (a friend of hers) “Mackie?” (her puppy)), but come nowhere close to being correct.
This is especially bothersome to her father: Having been taught phonetically to read at the age of four, he is of the opinion that Sophia should at least be able to sound out this list of words and is upset not merely by her inability to do so but that she shows no understanding of the basic concept of sounding out. He has never been a proponent of the whole-language school of reading, believing that many of the concepts involved are more suited towards older children (such as deriving the meaning of a word from its use in a sentence). As English is based upon a phonetic alphabet, he feels that teaching children the phonetic basis of letters and letter-groupings is a far superior method of teaching basic reading skills, even with the number of exceptions (“bough” vs. “tough”) that exist in this language.
Our frustration and concern is not helped by the apparent daily use of a TV show in teaching literacy, the “Super Why!” programs available from PBS. To make sure there is no doubt to our position in this matter: We do not believe in the efficacy of Television to teach intellectual concepts, especially something as anti-TV as reading and literacy. The dichotomy between what is being taught and the methods used to teach it frankly boggles the mind: it would be akin to teaching music by mostly reading composer biographies. Television is more effective in teaching children social mores, “what is cool”, etc… but when it comes to actual learning, well, TV is useless.
As you know, the financial commitment to School Name is not inconsiderable – at least $700/month when extra-tuition activities and fees such as BAC, food, uniforms, fund-raising, and other items are added. We have made this sacrifice in the belief that not only does Sophia benefit morally from being in a parochial school, but also that the quality of education received is higher. We are beginning to question whether we are receiving value for our money – after all, we are paying for two schools: School Name and our local public school (through our property taxes).
We would like to meet with you later this month, at a time of your choosing, so we can discuss these issues and what we can do to both assist our daughter in her education and ensure that the quality of education received during her time in school is the best possible. Feel free to call us at the above number to set up a time and date for our meeting.
Thank you,
JohnT and Mrs JohnT