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As the new school year begins, teachers and parents are pondering how to work together to help children get the most from schooling.
Last year, Victoria’s Department of Education and Training announced that escalating disputes between parents and school teachers and principals would lead to independent mediation.
Mediation seems extreme, and expensive, so it’s timely to ask: how can teachers and parents prevent conflicts from intensifying?
When I was a teacher, I taught a boy whose reputation for being badly behaved was legend. His name was met with eye-rolls and pity when you said he was in your class. But this boy, let’s call him William, was doing incredibly well in my vocational computing class.