Mumsnet Talk

hi,my son has been disrupting a class he attends at secondary school (boys)

im feed up to the back teeth of his attitude regarding his behaviour

im also getting phone calls about this by the teacher,anyway as a last resort i asked the teacher if i could sit in on this lesson,maybe embarrass him,realise i mean buisness,sure you get the drift

anyway teacher was more than happy so i sat in OMG what a shambles

1/4 of the class would not sit down for the first 10mins of lesson
continuous calling out,throwing pens,offensive language,basically a shambles

one boy was sent out for good but there was still a huge amount of dissruption,my son was better behaved but im under no illussion he acts the same when im not there

there was a reward system going,lots of incentives but nothing made any difference

there was some students that wanted to learn,but how can they learn with so much going on

ages 13yrs

i liked the teacher and really felt for her,what a hard job

AIBU t think that alot of parents dont really realise what is going on in the classroom and maybe every parent attended one lesson it would open there eyes,it has mine

doesn't sound like much of a teacher.

You'd be far better making an appointment with the Head and telling them that this teacher has absolutely no control over the class.

I think, all classes should have CCTV with sound, and parents evening you get 20 mins of your childs 'best bits' .... it would be an eye opener for sure in a lot of cases.

Unfortunately, we have a culture of 'Little Emperors' who, no matter how badly behaved, have parents who will not support authority (be that schools or other).

It is an eye opener isn't it?

Every teacher, every TA, every support work could tell you horror stories that no rational person would believe.

Good for you, Op for going in. Out of curiosity, did you son play to the crowd because you were there? or did he hide away in shame?

What a typical response!

YANBU thekidsrule.

Absolutely agree troisgarcons

Sounds pretty normal I'm afraid.

Love your idea trois, apart from the HOURS those vids would take to edit!

good on you for going in and sitting there, I think that more schools should make disruptive pupils have to bring their mum in for the entire day. The awful embrassment for any boy aged over 12 of having to sit next to his mum for every lesson, break and lunchtime might have more of an effect than constant detentions.

It shouldn't matter who the teacher is, there will be a school disipline policy, and the teacher will be applying it. It depends on the numbers. I've worked in schools with 3-5 disruptive pupils in the lesson. You can follow a disipline policy with about 3-5 kids per lesson (say about 20 a day) phone cals, write ups, reports, letters detentions etc. Once it reaches 15-20 kids per lesson, ( say 80 kids per day), and each rewuires at least 5-10 minutes follow up after the lesson, you can see that it isn't going to happen. These kids needn't be any worse than the children in the "good school", on an individual basis, just a lot more of them.

You'd be far better making an appointment with the Head and telling them that this teacher has absolutely no control over the class.

Not always so, worra - with the closure of SEN schools there are a lot more pupils in mainstream education that you knowwouldnt have been there in days gone by.

We have one class, now of 30, with reading ages of 6 or 7 (they are now Y9) and because they are set with other pupils of equal ability it encompases those gentle souls along with the roaring off the scale ADHD in its worst scenario, and the EBD.

Try settling 30 of those down.Its a bloody nightmare even for the most competent of teachers.

Why is it the teacher´s fault?

When I was at school, we did as we were told.

Certainly no acting like a twat for the sake of it.

my son was soooooooooo better behaved,and i told him thatb every time i get a call i will be sitting in on the lesson,

the teacher has taken a video of the class (not the one i sat in)and is going to be used within the school,cant remember what

why blame the teacher,these kids behaviour was bloody awful,maybe if there parents saw that themselves their kids might behave better

ive already said my sons been one of them and i will try my level best to stop it

if my son was one of the ones that wanted to learn as a parent id be hacked of

funny the day i sat in his behaviour improved alot

Try settling 30 of those down.Its a bloody nightmare even for the most competent of teachers

Yes I absolutely agree.... but the teacher still has no control over that class.

Therefore I'd like to know if the Head is actually aware of that and if so, are they ok with that?

If a teacher is put in charge of a class with kids who have SN and it turns out they can't handle the class, that's all the more reason for the Head to be made aware.

Oh god, I wish the parents of a handful of children I have taught could have seen for themselves what their offspring got up too. I used to hate having to resort to phone calls home.

Some blamed other siblings and said they couldn't control them at home (), some said it was the fault of others in the class, one said her son had ADSD even though he had been assessed as being fine, one father quite obviously didn't care (). Then there were the parents of a yr 7 girl of mine who told me she was well behaved and I was treating her badly. Ha ha, I don't think...

If I could have set up a webcam and let parents of disruptive children see exactly what their DCs behaviour did to an hour's worth of teaching, oh, I think there would have been some different conversations going on.

It just takes a couple of kids to kick off for a meltdown sometimes. It can happen to experienced and good teachers. I've seen it happen to an HoD.

It sounds like the teacher IS trying to do something...hence the parental phone-calls and willingness to have you sit in on the lesson, despite knowing the indiscipline you would see.

If the teacher is new or struggling, they need a structured programme of support; if the class is an unfortunate combination of 'characters' then the groups need changing or if this is an endemic problem then it's a problem for the whole school and the whole community.

Can I also say, good on you for going in to the lesson.

And I'm not blaming the teacher by the way, but if my child was sat in that class unable to learn because of what was going on around him, I'd be bloody angry and want to know what the school intends to do about it.

Inviting every parent to sit in on a class is likely to solve nothing if the adult in charge has no control when the parents aren't there.

It might not be the teachers fault, but the head needs to be told that the system isn't working.

Putting 30 SEN/EBD in one class is madness.

Some of them probably have parents who couldn't care less as long as their children are out of the house all day, and say "don't let that bitch tell you what to do our Dwayne, you got rights you have" and "If that fucking school phone me again I'm going to smash that bloody teacher's head in" and similar pearls of wisdom. The school can do nothing at all as far as punishment or sanctions go, it's only the pupils with parents who do care who are remotely affected by being suspended etc, and they are the ones who just put their heads down, pray not to be noticed, and hope they can google the lesson from home to have a chance of finding out what they were supposd to learn. Parents who care and have the money send their children to private schools.

I think a genuine issue for schools today is precisely Theparanoidandroid's attitude. If your child behaves badly, disrupts the learning of others, is disrespectful, foul mouthed, not remotely interested in learning...why, that is the fault and responsibility of the teacher, not the parent.

I can't think of another scenario when you could blame some other service provider for the failure of your own parenting.

"AIBU t think that alot of parents dont really realise what is going on in the classroom and maybe every parent attended one lesson it would open there eyes,it has mine"

YABU for assuming all schools/teachers are like that one.

"If your child behaves badly, disrupts the learning of others, is disrespectful, foul mouthed, not remotely interested in learning...why, that is the fault and responsibility of the teacher, not the parent.

Because it is the teacher who is in charge!

A few years ago I did a terms supply in a rough boys comprehensive in London. I'd taught in FE for 5 years and wanted to see whether secondary was for me. I started in the September term along with 4 other new teachers. One had been head of English at another school. I was the only one still there by half term.

It was absolutely hideous - behaviour exactly like the op describes, in many though not all of the classes. Top sets were ok, as were classes taught by the very senior teachers, but all others were really difficult. Only people who had EXCEPTIONAL classroom manangement skills could have coped at that school. Or people who'd been there for long enough to develop a very strong relationship with the children. The rest of us were fucked frankly.

I developed a clinical depression after a month but stuck it out until I'd lined up another job somewhere nicer.

I often thought that if I was a parent and saw how little learning went on in some classes I'd have withdrawn my child that day. It was shocking and heartbreaking.

It's very hard to be a good teacher or a good pupil in a school where there is a culture of disrespect and poor leadership in relation to behaviour. OP - you should see the head and tell him/her what you saw. Ultimately it's the heads responsibility. It's unacceptable for children to be expected to learn when there's so much disruption and it's damaging to the mental and physical health of teachers.

Have worked as a TA and a Cover Supervisor in secondary schools. The OP's story sounds very sadly familiar. Generalised chaos, noise, disrution, and well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual teachers just engaged in crowd control and doing very little teaching

When I was a CS my more strict draconian tactics were viewed aghast by same well-meaning teachers. One teachre specifically requested I didn't take his class in his absence, as I 'was too strict.'

By which he meant I expected a quiet classroom, to not be routinely interupted when speaking, and for pupils to stay sitting at their desks

Excuse me, that is not my attitude at all.

Makes sense to me though that if the teacher can't keep a semblance of order in a class with a parent sitting in it, she really can't keep any order at all. And if your country is so packed full of such badly behaved teenagers as it sounds from this thread, you must need some stronger teachers, as well as better parenting.

My parenting is fine, my children aren't feral, and the teachers I know keep excellent order in class. You should be asking yourself just how badly you've all fucked up to have such problems.