To think this was really spiteful

Really, really unpleasant of her. Poor little girl

Does the TA always make a very long meal out of explaining something to the children?

D'oh! I'm an idiot! Ignore me. That's what happens when I'm skim reading Mumsnet threads!
Apologies for my brain blip. You are of course, right. 😳

That TA has an inferiority complex and is using struggling seven year olds to get her jollies. Lovely.

I know it's late but you are confusing trunks and tusks. OP wrote trunks. The nimble, meaty, finger-like nose-lip combo they use to put food in their mouth with, pretty unique to elephants (and tapirs). Not made of ivory.

@Stopbeingsomean TAs "knowing" as much as teachers has absolutely no bearing here. Teachers have a standard qualification and are used to feedback. They are in a profession. A TA can literally walk in off the street with no experience. TAs need to be supervised and directed by qualified teachers otherwise- they would be teachers and be paid accordingly.
We don't have this bullshit in Scotland where all teachers need maths, English and undergo a rigorous probation period. We have assistants but they are not expected to do anything that teachers haven't planned and organised.
As for grammar and punctuation there are many dyslexic teachers and assistants- as long as they are aware and use spellchecker etc it's not a problem.
I do think you sound a bit Peter Perfect OP, perhaps work together with your team rather than constantly sniping.

It's people like that that fuck up our kids confidence and a few years later everyone goes 'we've no idea what happened, she used to really enjoy school'.

Elephant's risks ARE made of ivory though.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-is-ivory-and-why-does-it-belong-on-elephants#:~:text=Why%20do%20elephants%20have%20ivory,trees%20to%20eat%2C%20and%20defense.
And most primary teachers don't have maths or English A levels. I don't.

The other stuff is shocking though.

Love this both for you and Katie!

of course it’s not just the sticker. It’s the way she’s speaking to a child who’s struggling to learn.

i dread to think how much the poor child’s confidence has been knocked.

where is your empathy?

For me who has always used logic (to the extreme).
If I was told I wasn’t getting a reward after all the effort I had put in to the work, just because I asked IF this meant I would be getting a reward

I wouldn’t bother making an effort again.

In my mind if I put in a lot of effort doing something and that equals no sticker

or I don’t put in any effort and sit back, chat, and mess around doing what ever I wanted also equals no stickers

Then why would I make the effort.

In school I would also talk round a few other children to this way of thinking and if this teacher has form for this sort of thing then she would be going home each night tearing her hair out because her quiet subservient children she had lauded over were now a bunch of children who made their lives a misery and who couldn’t be bribed to behave as they didn’t believe her.

Even as a child I would think of people as equals, no matter what their station or age
I put it down to being on market stalls and serving customers from a very young age. I also learned to read people and know who was looking to buy instead of wasting effort with someone who was just window shopping.

It is really wearing when the kids constantly ask for stickers or other rewards.
I am a teacher and if I praise someone for a good answer etc, repeatedly the. Get asked ‘can I have a Praise?’
I tell them that Praises are at my discretion and I won’t award one if asked.
parents should encourage intrinsic rather than extrinsic satisfaction, but so many are too ignorant or lazy to bother to encourage that.

There is some truth in this. I am a teaching assistant and I have been involved in various roles in education over the years eg dyslexia tutor, ESL support. I have done lots of courses, workshops, seminars because I am really passionate about it. However it is perfectly easy to get a job without any kind of qualifications and as there's no budget for training any more, there's no opportunity for people joining to improve themselves. I have some colleagues who are lovely but haven't a clue about behaviour management. In my last school, there was a woman who thought it was a good idea to blow a whistle in the classroom during wet play in order to get the noise level down! She was most annoyed when the head teacher told her to stop.

Another problem these days is the increasing reliance on HLTAs. In the same school, a woman joined us. It was her first TA role. By the end of the first term, she'd managed to complete an online HLTA course which required no classroom observation. Our head teacher was desperate for someone to do PPA cover so she got her to teach my class one afternoon a week. I increasingly hated the experience as she didn't know how to manage the class and wouldn't listen to my advice about their normal routine. I was off for a few weeks and when I returned I realised I couldn't put up with the chaos anymore. I handed in my notice. I have since heard she has refused to cover that class, blaming the behaviour of the children. Funny how she was the only person to have a problem with them.

Yeah I do but raising 'bloody hell' with the head as that poster said is really over the top.

This is what happens when you have "teaching assistants" who aren't qualified or properly supervised because the actual teacher is not trained to supervise adults but to teach.
This person is modelling her teaching on her own experience as a child and maybe what she thinks a teacher should be like. She's probably never had intensive training or feedback and has just been posted with a group of kids in a classroom and left to get on with it.
Maybe she doesn't realise that once you start with stickers they become ridiculously important but also lose value, because they become expected and as per this post if children don't get them for every single thing then it becomes an issue. Of course she should have just given the sticker but will there ever come a point when someone says " You're too old for stickers now Katie?"
This TA needs much more training and the school needs more teachers.
I think stickers should be kept for the dentist!!!

I agree. Unfortunately bullies tend to be attracted to jobs where they have access to children, the elderly and other vulnerable populations.

The only good thing about your post is it’s in the vast minority!

Don’t give out stickers for achievements if she thinks it causes issues. But that’s not what she done, she’s set up a system that encourages a child to achieve well and be rewarded with a sticker, the crushes their spirit because of a request that the spiteful TA could pull her up on.

It’s 2025, not bloody 1950 in a convent school taught by spiteful nuns.

Rubbish, it's very clearly spiteful!

She didn't demand, ie. 'Im getting a sticker!' and she didn't actually ask for a sticker ie. 'Can I have a sticker?'.

She asked if she was getting a sticker - the answer could have been 'yes - you've done really well' or 'no, you need to repeat this again/couple more times then you'll earn a sticker'.

Either would have been constructive.

Telling her 'you woud have but now you've demanded one you can't' is both inaccurate as she did not demand she asked if she had done enough to earn one, and spiteful, because she didn't actually know she'd earned a sticker until she was told it was being taken away!

This is a fantastic way to make a reinforcement system highly aversive.

At that age half the time kids are being told 'if you don't ask, you don't get' to get them to communicate, speak up, offer answers and advocate for themselves.

And then the rest of the time being slapped down for doing just that!

Sure but snubbing and knocking a kid down for being proud of herself (especially a girl) is the kind of shitty 90s stuff I'm glad we don't do any more. What's the point, to teach her never to have a good opinion of her own work or advocate for herself? Just because kids need to learn to cope with unfairness does not justify spitefulness on the part of an adult who should know a whole lot better. They're not the same issue.