Emailing teachers - directly or through the office

[ThrallsWife]

I will start this off by saying I am a teacher, so not only am I aware of workload, but, being secondary-based, I also have far more parents to deal with than primary-based colleagues on a day-to-day basis. Our staff email addresses are visible on the website, so all of us can be contacted directly, and it is honestly my preferred type of contact, because I can do this at any time, without having prolonged telephone calls or meetings to deal with. I get a few emails from parents per week, often clarifying sanctions, discussing homework issues or alerting me to family emergencies which could adversely affect their child. I reply as and when I can, within 48 hours.

Yes, I have had the odd angry parent emailing at stupid o'clock in the evening and one or two who may have been drunk - they get forwarded to the senior leadership team to deal with.

One of my children goes to a school where teachers' email addresses are not publicly shared, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out the correct address. They're in Y5 now, and I have had to email teachers a handful of times in all the time at school, only 1-3 times per year. Every single one of their teachers has been lovely and replied, in work time, to my messages and dealt with the requests or questions.
I cannot phone the children's school as I am teaching all day and even if I were free, the signal in my school is so bad I cannot make a productive call during work times, and obviously the office is shut before I get to work and when I get home. For the same reason, I cannot have a quick chat on drop-off or collection, so email is the only way of contacting said teachers.

I have had to email the class teacher yesterday after my child had some unfinished computing work that we cannot work on from home (it's not on the shared drive or in any app - we looked), but that needed completing and my child was keen on finishing the work, ready for a presentation they need to hold next week, and in their own words, they don't like leaving work unfinished. I have had quite a shirty reply back telling me to go through the office for future emails, and that my child will just have to do the work again at home if they haven't managed to do it in school time.

I am quite taken aback to be honest. This teacher knows I cannot contact them in office hours, the office have a 72-hour working day response time policy for anything deemed non-urgent (which unfinished work likely counts as), by which time my child will have embarrassed themselves in front of the class if the work is unfinished, and doing the work again will take unnecessary extra time, given the effort they'd already made in class. In their 5 years at the school, this is the first time a teacher has been anything but friendly about direct contact.

In this day and age, should teachers be uncontactable directly, with an office front to screen and essentially decide on what is, and what isn't allowed past?

Again, can this question not simply be asked of the teacher herself at drop-off or pick-up? Why does the Head or the Chair of Governors need to answer it? Talk about wasting people's time!

I'm primary and happy for parents to email. We have an awful lot of face to face chats with parents (including those collecting from ASC) and genuinely have really good relationships with the vast majority so I get very few emails and have never had an issue with unpleasant or unnecessary ones.

Sorry - I have reread and noticed that you said you never see the teacher in person as you use wraparound care. I would still say, though, if your child is old enough to be getting homework, they are old enough to be responsible for it and talk to their teacher about any problems with it, in the first instance. Certainly in Y5 this should be expected. I don't remember my parents ever getting involved in this way... Do you? I know technology has changed in the last 30 years, but it also seems there has been a shift in perspective, with many parents seeing the school as providing a service to parents, rather than the direct relationship being between school and pupils.

I’m talking about finding out the school's policy if a parent wants to contact a teacher, not the particular question the OP wanted to ask. She’s been told by the teacher she has to contact the office but it might be worth checking that this isn’t just the preference of that teacher. And if the OP is a teacher herself, presumably she’s not there at drop-off or pick-up.

That is also what I am talking about. Just ask the teacher "What is the policy on contacting you?". Or read the school handbook, or ask the class WhatsApp group. This is not going to be a well-kept secret that only the Chair of Governors can answer.

I do take the point about the OP not being there at drop-off and pick-up - I missed that bit first time.

I would never think to email a teacher directly.

You're very lucky. This time a year ago I hadn't either.

I work in private. Messages go straight to the teacher. They will answer within a reasonable time frame.
My daughters are in state, I send my messages through the office for them to pass on to the relevant teacher.

I’m a teacher and luckily our email addresses are not publicised and go through the office. They then filter what needs to get to me and what they can deal with. A lost password or not having handed in their homework really doesn’t need a personal reply. My kid’s school is the same and I’m fine with that. If it’s urgent I’ll either call or get my husband to in normal hours.

I lost a lot of confidence in these class app during COVID. My childrens classes year 4 had a class app which was their only way of contacting their teacher during lockdown. There were no on line classes, not much in the way of lessons just a weekly chat with the teacher on the app. At some point I managed to escalate a complaint about the lack of any work or structure so got to speak on the phone to the head and deputy. At some point in this conversation they (probably accidentally) revealed that the class teacher had been off for months and the deputy head was replying to message on the app using the class teachers name in her signature. When we asked why she would deceive the children like this she said she was not pretending to be the teacher it just happened that all messages sent on the app had a signature with the class teachers name which she hadn’t changed. I never told my child he would have been so confused that his favourite teacher had not been the one he was talking to.
Current school has a go via the office policy. Often I get no reply. No idea if they got to the right person or not. The only way I know of to get to talk to a teacher is for your child to get excluded from a class!

To answer a few questions as to why other routes are currently not practical:

This isn't a homework project, but work done in class (on their schedule, that class happens once a week, so there is no way my child could finish that work at school, and wherever they have been told to save it, we cannot access it from home).

Mummy still has to sort a lot, because my child has ADHD and would forget their head if it wasn't screwed on. They are also a very late summer baby, so almost a full year younger than some of their peers.

There is no class WhatsApp, no home-school diary and the school website does not have any contact information bar the school office and an e-form, which never seems to work. The one app we have access to has all forms of messaging disabled.

So yes, it is probably a very clear message to parents that contact with teachers is to be limited, far more so than anywhere I've ever worked (teachers also do not get in contact on the phone for anything, whereas I seem to make daily calls about behaviour - positive and where things need to be addressed). And yes, I'll have to go the tedious way with this particular teacher if I do need to contact her again.

I simply believe that in this day and age in teaching, parental contact is a lot more at the forefront of what we do and was taken aback by a colleague taking such an impolite stance over it.

As for timing, I work when it suits me, and the stupid-o-clock reference was more for parents who either demand an answer at 10pm for an issue that needs to be dealt with before the next day (they do often get ignored at that time, unless very urgent), but my email is on 24/7 because I work at any time.

I've said upthread that I'm happy for parents to directly email but I think your comments about phone calls are unfair. I'm all but certain I spend more time talking to parents than secondary teachers do on phone calls because I see them at drop off/pick up including for wrap around care. There isn't a single parent I don't see at some point and I have many chats every day about little things children have done. If your child'a teacher is outside for 10+ minutes after the bell every day (and whatever they do at the start of the day), phone calls as well on top is too much.

Ok, so, if I've now understood correctly - your child didn't finish a classroom project in the classroom, and you are now trying to get access to the file so that they can finish it off at home? Which was never intended by the school?

I'm sure your child is not the only one who didn't finish, and regardless, it's a mini life lesson - sometimes you don't finish something and you don't get a chance to pick it up later. That's not the end of the world. And I don't think the teacher needs to be facilitating access to classroom materials at home, when it hasn't been set as homework.

The problem in primary is that some parents will email about every little friendship issue, slight injustice their child perceives, lost jumper etc. If they had to wait to the next day to speak to the teacher in person (which is what would have happened in the past), it wouldn't be deemed worth the effort, but firing off an email doesn't put the parent out at all, whereas answering them all can be a pain in the arse for teachers.

If their emails aren't on the website and you had to work them out yourself, that's a sign that you aren't meant to be emailing them directly. Past teachers might have been OK with it (or just not felt able to speak up if they weren't) but that doesn't mean it's acceptable.

My job involves emailing schools constantly. I've never come across one that didn't have any form of email at all, even an admin one. Use that.

If you think the office are too slow to respond, and it's something time sensitive directly related to that day's lessons, write a note and give it to your child to pass on to the teacher.

My kids primary all emails go via the office.
Never had an issue with it. Most of the time they'll call back between 3 and 5 or they'll get deal with whatever needs dealt with.

So you have an awful lot of parents working, at the most, part-time/ flexible hours, if not many SAHPs. Or you only speak to the same parents every day. I have already explained that this is not an option for me; I cannot be in two places at once and my child's drop off and pick up time happens during my work hours. There will be some parents, like me, who will then never be able to get a quick update or have a quick word apart from parents' evenings - are they just ignored?

Incidentally, KS2 teachers also are not available at the start of the day as children are expected to make their way to their classrooms independently from the front gate, so in DC's school, chats are limited to 10min max at the end of the day.

And yes, I definitely spend longer than that on contacting parents every day; I currently dedicate 30min daily to phone calls and/ or emails, but as I said, I also have 5x the amount of parents to deal with compared to primary colleagues.

Children were given an hour (less by the time they all logged on/ got instructions/ started work) on what is, for them, quite a huge chunk of work. I have been told the expectations; this involved research and then creating a piece of work with a defined (large) number of words, all in one lesson - for children who still have difficulty finding the letters on a keyboard.

Perhaps there are other children who haven't finished - I don't know that - but if children are supposed to then stand in front of their peers and present their materials, at least they should be given the chance to complete their work, and to say that if they didn't finish they'll have to start from scratch again at home seems a bit off to me.

Either way, we will do the work again, because I want my child to feel confident with it rather than fretting because it's not finished. It's not a life lesson, it's an unrealistic expectation.

As I said before, I rarely ever contact teachers, but this time warranted it.

Similar to me then - I'm available for 10 minutes at both the start and end of the day and spend at least 10 minutes chatting to parents at after school club. I have assumed you pick up your child from after school club now and again so I apologise if I got that wrong. I absolutely speak to all parents weekly. As a teacher myself, clearly like you I'm not picking up my own children at 3.30 so ensure I speak to those collecting later every week too. I'm always surprised at how many parents of primary children do work flexibly (again, not the situation for me) but that has always been the case for me at different schools - I've never taught a child whose parent doesn't collect or drop off at least once during the week.

My DC attends after-school club, but it's run by the pre-school staff and no teacher from the main school has ever been to talk to any parent there; most are gone and the staff car park is often shut by the time I can pick my child up at around 5.30pm. I'm not exaggerating when I say it is difficult to speak to the teachers - no morning chat (not that I could attend) and if you collect your child from after-school club you don't see anyone there, either. And as there are no phone calls from school bar emergencies (even when my DC had fairly serious accident I only saw and spoke to the office staff), email is the only alternative to get hold of class teachers. And those have to be, it appears, pre-screened by the office.

Well, I'd say it's a lesson for the teacher, then. I don't think anyone should be expecting the kids to finish this at home. I'd be reassuring my kid that they've done all they reasonably can and that other kids will probably be in the same boat. It sounds like a badly planned lesson.

Thrallswife
You are applying your work patterns and expectations to your child's teacher, perhaps unfairly. I used to do what you do. I worked late. I sent emails in the evening once I had time to get my laptop out. I had the sane arguments as you. But actually I took a step back and thought more. If I was a teacher who did not triage and deal with emails out of hours I was piling on work as soon as they opened their laptop.

If you are a secondary teacher you are also missing that many primary colleagues are on all day. They may have no frees until the end of the week. They are expected to hand over kids at the end of the day. They may not be able to quickly reply or check emails during the school day etc etc.

I now try not to email out of hours. I think about whether the email is more about reassurance for me or whether it is really necessary. I try and encourage independence and a let it go approach.

If you are a secondary teacher you are also missing that many primary colleagues are on all day. They may have no frees until the end of the week. They are expected to hand over kids at the end of the day. They may not be able to quickly reply or check emails during the school day etc etc.

I believe there is no difference in workload there. We're all on all day; PPA time in my school is 2 hours a week for every teacher, same as primary colleagues. We do not hand over kids, but have bus duties and detention duties daily after school, including restorative conversations for 15min. If I replied to emails during lesson time, my manager would quite rightly have words, so this only happens during break and lunch and before/ after school.

Perhaps my expectations are affected by what we are expected to do at secondary level - in fact, it is very likely. I'm not some spring chicken in teaching; I have done this job for a long time and I prioritise well, but parental contact is an essential part of the job. My child's school appears unusual in how restricted such contact is, and perhaps it is part of their wellbeing strategy, but it does mean that the many barriers put in place for something that could be quite simple are high and not always, IMO, justified.

Yes, I have left feedback to that effect the last time parent voice was collected, same as every year.

I disagree. I am a secondary teacher. I am not saying the workload is more in primary but the pattern is different. Your approach is also just that. Many secondary schools are now centralising their systems. I no longer contact home by phone for behaviour. I do make clear notes about exactly what happened on a school app. Parents can contact heads of year to discuss sanctions and behaviour. It is a massive boost to my well veing and much more efficient. You always work like this but that doesn't mean everyone else thinks this is the best and only way to work.

The restorative conversations are a massive red flag to me. Schools with Paul Dix style policies put huge emphasis on individuals. It leads to high workloads. It is also not generally in my view synonymous with good or improving behaviour.