This is not a teacher bashing thread at all. It really really isn't. Please don't let's turn it into that.
Last year, my son (year 1) had a teacher who I didn't ever really get to know due to covid. She seemed fine though and I was very hands off during the year. Only met her once or twice for parents eve and the odd time when my son had misbehaved a bit or had an issue during the day.
His end of year reports was fine. He's meeting expectations or exceeding. I was pretty happy.
But then I got his books back at the end of the year. Every single book has been scribbled on the front of, every one. On some of the books he's written silly things like poo. The work inside the books is pretty shoddy at times, again he's sort of scribbled a bit on some pages. Lots of silly faces written in the corners of pages and at the back of the book.
His work is always untidy, and very few pieces are what I was expecting given that he's apparently at the expected level. He's only ever had a few pieces of written homework to do, but when we do, I work with him to get them neat and tidy. It's an effort for him as he is dyspraxic, but I was still quite surprised at how messy his books was. It looked to me like he wasn't ever really trying.
Only a handful of pieces of work seemed to be marked. I'm not sure if this is usual? Perhaps it is, I just don't know!
He had a folder of worksheets he had done. I would say that 50% of the worksheets, he had just defaced. Either not completing them correctly, just sort of doodling or scribbling on them. On comprehension style sheets he'd answered the questions in a really silly way, with stupid answers like "she did that because she's dumb".
Like I said, this is not a teacher bashing thread. I know full well that my child is the one who is doing this in the first place. He absolutely shouldn't be writing things like this, and he should be trying his best as much as he can. I know a lot of fault is with him.
But equally... Is this ok? Is this what it's like? Is this what school work that comes home is like? Is it normal? He is still only 6 so I'm not expecting miracles, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shocked and a bit disappointed. It's not nice to feel disappointed in the work your child brings home from school 😟. I made sure we gave him lots of praise for all the decent bits he bought home but they really were few and far between.
I have obviously spoken to him about some parts of it, the doodling and just not doing th worksheets at all. We've talked about what's appropriate and about always trying our best. He seemed a bit embarrassed about it but I don't want to dwell on it too much.
I would like to speak to his new teacher at the start of the year and just say I was quite upset with the state of some of the things he had done. I will not be blaming the teacher, as I don't think it's worth it. She left the school at the end of this year anyway. I more want to know the same thing won't happen again, and that we can work together to help him improve his attitude a bit. I know that a lot of the 'blame' lies with him for doing this stuff in the first place.
But like I said, I'm not a teacher. Maybe I'm expecting too much? Maybe this is normal? It's an ofsted outstanding school but because of the pandemic we have been very distant and only been into the actual building three times during reception. So I feel quite cut off from it all. Cut off from how much I should speak to the teacher, what we should expect, what's normal etc.