'Well-behaved' girls 'socialising' 'challenging' boys at primary school

But why are you treating being shy or quiet and stoic as some kind of problem. It's personality. Not something to be used to someone's advantage. And why does everything have to be a lesson in some way. What is wrong with wanting to be quiet and get on with things. I am sympathetic to any problems a kid may have. I am of course sympathetic to the issues teachers face. But trying to make these things Into some kind of learning tool..

Look it's my actual DD in this sutuation, understand that this is personal and upsetting to me.

The implication that she is defective in her personality and / or has not been brought up correctly has not landed well.

Do you have ANYTHING to say about the child who is kicking her, or is it all her own fault?

This absolutely reminds me of the victim blaming that is applied to adult women when they are subject to bad behaviour from men.

zzzz don't you put this on my DD.

How can I teach her when to speak up if I'm not there for fuck's sake?

It's the fault of children who are shy / quiet / stoic?

That seems a bit victim blamey to me. Telling children that something that someone else does to the, is their own fault, as they didn't speak up?

This goes into adulthood for women doesn't it.

@ zzzz post.

So I should go in and thank the staff for putting DD in a position where she gets kicked and her work disrupted because she will just sit there and take it.

Not every teacher and not every school and not every child is the same.

For some it has been done well and it worked. Great.

Why so dismissive of those who have different situations, to the point of absolutely not intervening or having a word under any circs? Trust the teachers to do the right thing. So, my child makes the occasional disclosure that she is always sat next to the boy who kicks her and takes her pens and all that. I should say, thats' not a problem, your teacher knows what they are doing.

This happened to DD this year just finished (Yr3). I didn’t realise it at the time, but she told me, rather forcefully, that she would rather be at a girls’ school ‘with no stupid boys messing up the tables’ and on a separate occasion, that sitting with these boys had disrupted her learning, so she couldn’t always understand what was wanted from the teacher etc.

I will feed this back to the school that whilst I understand this is a thing, I do not want it happening to DD again and they need to find other ways of handling these boys. I know one of the boys quite well and to say his parents are flimflammy would be an understatement. Well, they need to step the fuck up and parent their son. And whilst I liked her y3 teacher, she didn’t seem to have such good crowd control of her class and was rather more shouty that her y1 and 2 teachers who could control the class with a look and never raised their voices. She was next to another ‘boisterous’ boy in Y2 but she got so fed up of him I complained and the boy was moved immediately and her teacher apologised for not noticing what had been going on.

From a societal point of view it is essential that girls are not taught that boys’ bad behaviour is for them to deal with, control, change etc. Unfortunately I think that schools quite often, and probably not actually meaning to, reinforce this idea.

DD2 is not unusually bright >> she's standard normal level

What she is, is:
Stoic
Uncomplaining (whole family has a "just get on with it sometimes you are dealt a rough hand" approach which comes from my parents TBH and is not always a good thing

She will not put her hand up in class or tell the teacher when she is being kicked etc.
When she has told me it's when it's been going on for ages.

To those who say "well he has to sit somewhere" >> why not sit him next to someone who won't take it? And quietly "get on with it" while being booted etc?

The teachers told me that apparently next to her he is "starting to settle down a bit" so from their perspective all was good. What it is, is that he can focus on her, and her job is not to make a fuss. That's what it boils down to.

HermioneGoesBackHome
If the same 3 children get hit with it then that is lazy seating (as I said in my first post)
Gileswithachainsaw
The thing with teenagers is it takes a bit of time for them to push and work out boundaries with staff.
A couple of weeks having to remind a new arrival of entry routines, to put their hand up, that they need to pay attention to me instead to trying to catch the attention of others (who are paying attention) is perfectly reasonable.

We get quite a bit of mid year transfers because we have great behaviour and the vast majority of our students are well behaved, we have high expectations etc. Obviously like any comprehensive we have a pocket, but they don't dominate.

Generally, once a student realises they havent an audience they start listening, when listen over distracting they start to learn content, when they learn content they are better able to complete the work (instead of deflecting with 'this is stupid and I can't do it), they get their work back with positive comments and they see their grades go up, they get praise and get to see what it is to succeed. So yes, they do learn something.
Supporting children to change behaviour patterns gives them better options.

I love MN at times. One minute you have posts saying how the teacher is utterly unreasonable for keeping a child in at break for talking because it was only talking and the next we're wrong for keeping a child who might talk a bit in clas because it disrupts others.

I've never put a more challenging child next to a quiet child for 'socialisation'. No idea what that would achieve or even entail. I have split disruptive children up or in extremes moved a child to sit on their own but usually there isn't the space for that.

Classroom teachers cannot magic up extra staff, extra teaching spaces, miracle cures or spaces in oversubscribed special schools and referal units. They have children in front of them that need to be taught with limited time and resources.

I have no doubt that many children will pick up the message that they are there to control or modify another child's behaviour which isn't right. However, options are limited unless schools have more evidence based practise, a more enlightened view of additional needs and a fuck tonne of money.

Eventually?

So the class is disrupted then for a period of time at least?

If this is a tool that's is used very widely by schools and you get alot of mid year transfers from kids kicked out of other schools then surely it's clear that the approach doesn't work really?

And if they get bored then what? Have they really learnt to behave or are they just waiting for an audience that will pay more attention? Can you be confident that they will go to the next school and behave themselves?

Have they really learnt anything?

Maisy I said, I can see where you are coming from.
I can also see why you wouldn’t sit a disruptive child next to another disruptive child (recipe for disaster!).

The issue I have is that, unfortunately, the reality of primary school, for my own dcs, is that it’s alway the same 3 children who are sat next to the disruptive child...
Not 75% of the children that are sharing the burden.

Yea they need to sit some where.
They also need their behaviour to be dealt with
The two can go hand in hand.
Deal with it earlier so it doesn't get to the point you have to wonder where to put them
I would agree. But then i tend to find I get quite a lot of mid year moves into my class, mainly students who have been disruptive in their previous class so I end up picking up students who are arriving with what they think is a badge of honour... only to quickly realise that the vast majority of studnets in my class have got used to disruption free learning and so don't really give a shit if they want to try and fire elastic bands across the room. Eventually most get quite bored of trying to disrupt.

Yea they need to sit some where.

They also need their behaviour to be dealt with.

Instead if pretending it's not happening. Do t leave it til they don't give a shit any more in year 6 when they tower over the teachers and are leaving soon.

Deal with it earlier so it doesn't get to the point you have to wonder where to put them

HermioneGoesBackHome
The children have to be sat somewhere.

So yes, I will put them near more confident students to start with. Usually being near a more confident student and in a strict environment I tend to find there aren't ongoing issues.

The mistake you're making is in thinking that when I say 'hard working confident children of a range of abilities' that I mean the same 3 children. I don't. The vast majority of children I teach are wonderful, hard working, sensitive, sensible students who want to do well and a reasonable proportion of them (75% would say if something was wrong).

Here are the options:

1. Seat for learning and aim to have any potentially disruptive students split up from each other. Space them out arouns the room with pupils of similar ability but avoid lumbering the really quiet ones with them. Manage behaviour appropriately.

1. Sit disruptive students next to other disruptive students so they can have a table where they create their own pocket of disruption

1. Stick them next to really quiet quiet students and make it very obvious to the whole class why that's been done.

1. If there is space, single own child on a desk on their own

Consequences:

1. Usually (95% of the time) behaviour improves and I can tell the disruptive child they are sat with peers of a similar level and they are sat for learning. Much more positive cycle combined witj a focus on learning and firm boundaries means that very little disruption occurs moving forward.

1. The disruptive table drain my attention from the rest of the class because I'm busy policing behaviour. I get angry phone calls from parents claiming I'm spending too much time dealing witj a limited number of students and their child claims...

1. The quiet child suffers, the disruptive child is under no illusions the pairing is to do a "good child witj a naughty child" and so internalizes the idea that Mrs Pops thinks I'm a naughty child, she has low expectations so I may as well mess around because she doesnt think much of me anyway.

1. Same as 3, but the quiet child is spared some of the time but the disruptive child doesn't get paired discussion (and talk for learning helps improve writing), misses out on group tasks and zones out because what's the point. By missing out on elements of learning they don't do as well, and so become more disengaged because I'm crap at this subject so I might as well mess around.

I choose option 1 most of the time.

Disruptive children, boys or girls, have to sit somewhere.

And is a classroom of 30 kids the right place at all?

If they are disruptive to that extent, then they aren't suited to such large groups, and have additional needs which would be better served by adults in a smaller group. Being disruptive is about a need for attention in some way - which should be addressed rather than shoved under the carpet as a problem for the flipping other kids!

well then you do a rotation.
30 children in the class, one disruptive one that needs ‘socialising’.
One week next to each of the other children will more or less cover it.
Rather than a whole term next to the same well behaved child.

Which makes me think that it’s not a well behaved girl vs badly behaved boy issue but more an easy way out for the teacher and the less well behaved child is less likely to get out of hand next to a well behaved child.
I agree.
It's fine to sit them next to A well behaved child (the vast majority of children in a class are usually well behaved). The issue is sitting them next to A quiet child who will probably feel unable to speak out if their learning is disrupted.

E.g. this year I sat a disruptive student (new arrival following exclusion) next to A well behaved confident student who I knew would take no crap. I was managing behaviour by the way so easy way out. One break the student came to see me and said 'Mrs Pops, can I move seats please. I'm really struggling with Timmy and it's putting me off when you have to keep coming over to speak to him or he has to be kicked out'. I moved them next lesson.
A quieter or shy child or a child wary of crossing the 'naughty' students probably wouldn't have felt able to do that. It would be wrong to put them in that situation.

Maisy I have seen your approach done by more or less every single teacher in primary.

My dcs hated it.

The oldest because yes he is bright and yes he is will speak up. But will only do after he had been annoyed for a while. He hated that because it disrupted HIS learning and being bright and able he actually wanted to learn and get on with it.

The youngest I had to intervene and go and see the teacher. Because he is a VERY quiet child. In primary he wouodnt have gone and see the teacher on his own accord (only his last Y6 teacher actually realised that . He was only ever seen as the quiet child that works hard doesn’t create a problem). So yes the teacher had more peace. The ‘less week behaved’ child was doing some work but it’s dc2 that paid the price..... by becoming even more anxious that he already was.

So yes i can see the reasons why a teacher wouod do that. I wouod really encourage you to be extremely careful with it because the scope for getting it wrong is HUGE.
Besides, why shouod it be always the same children who, year in and year out, have to put up with the same disruptive children (remember this carries on in secondary too, where they will, of course, all meet up again...)

Disruptive children, boys or girls, have to sit somewhere. Most classrooms don’t have space to sit them completely separately.

The same happened to my two dcs both boys.

Which makes me think that it’s not a well behaved girl vs badly behaved boy issue but more an easy way out for the teacher and the less well behaved child is less likely to get out of hand next to a well behaved child.

I have much more issue with the twitter line that implies that girls are the ones who are well behaved and boys the ones who aren’t.