effective classroom feedback?

>>What kinds of feedback have you seen in your child's classroom?
How effective were they, and how did they affect your child?
What would you like to see?<<

It all depends on the individual teacher.

Email is a wonderful tool and I use it often to communicate
to my son's Social Studies teacher as this is his hardest
class.

I am the one to initiate the email but his teacher is good
about getting back to me. We throw around ideas to
try, she lets me know what she feels she can to and cannot
do - then we contact the sped teacher and tell her
what we have planned.

I find that many reg. ed teachers seem overwhelmed with
some of the things that need to be done. They mean well
but it seems week after week I have to remind them to
follow up. Something has got to change.

Case in point - my dyslexic son will write down the spelling
words off the board and jumble them so that I can't read them
when he gets home. I asked the teachers to check the words
and 75% of the time they come home still jumbled. I jumped
on the computer, sent them the jumbled words and asked
for translation.

Well and good, but it meant that every Monday I *had* to be
home the minute my son got home so I could get to the computer,.
email the words and hope the teacher was still in the classroom.
If not, then we would not have that night to study. Also tried
getting the words on a Friday, same merry-go-round. I tried
gentle pre-reminders, but we were still at about a 25% of
the teachers following thru (classroom with two teachers
sharing the job).

So my Fridays and Mondays were restricted as to what I could
do on that afternoon. After I started working I turned down
jobs depending on the spelling list. So it was having a financial
impact.

This year I said NO SPELLING and that works *much* better.

Also never, ever, ever let a student teacher handle anything having
to do with a sp-ed student without 100% regular teacher oversight.
Been burned a couple of times and will never let that happen again.

Another thing I never let happen is wait for the sp-ed department to
pass on anything to the reg. ed teacher. I schedule meetings with the
regular teachers at the beginning of school and any class change and
tell them about my son and how he works and how we support him
at home.

I know that the sp-ed teachers and regular teachers are good people,
my regular ed kids went through the same school - but SE does
not have anywhere close to the funding it needs.
And until somebody puts the money where the mouth is SE is just
spinning its wheels and kids will continue to fail and fall through the
cracks.

So what would I like to see ---- $$$$$$$$ and lots of it for salaries,
many more positions, lots and lots of aides, MORE individualized
attention and an espresso machine in every teacher's lounge and fresh
flowers every week. ;-)

Anne