Question/suggestion for primary school teachers

[Lovelybitofsquirrel3]

I’m not a teacher and I’m not interested in becoming one.
behavioural issues can be partly caused by diet, sleep, or stress. If children filled in a diary daily to record bits of information about their week each day, it could reveal a lot about that child. I’m not sure why it isn’t routinely done in schools, or if there’s some kind of rule that doesn’t allow it?

I appreciate that you want to help but the sad reality is that even if you had a class of reliable and enthusiastic participants in this strange project, you still wouldn't be able to do much with the information. You can't personally provide a safe place to sleep and a balanced dinner for children who don't have this so what would you accomplish.

But in reality - My kids are super lucky but their perception and memory is not reliable and they'd say all sorts anyway.

In my experience, where there's a need, school will get involved holistically and look at the bigger picture. Good, caring staff are perceptive and will usually pick up on patterns/issues and speak to the child/parents.

My child struggled during reception and it didn't take writing in a journal (not that he would have had the skills at the time) for his teacher to pick up on it and for the school to work closely with me to support him.

I remember reading a comment from a teacher on here a while ago that stuck with me:
"If you promise not to believe everything they tell you about school, we'll promise not to believe everything they tell us about home". Obviously that's slightly tongue in cheek, but it highlights how children can be unreliable (whether intentionally or unintentionally).
Regularly taking the time to decipher whether a statement like "I ate marshmallows for dinner last night" means "the whole meal" vs "a few for pudding" for a class of twenty something children would take time away from teaching (aka the reason the children are in school in the first place).

The thing is though if there was a child who you knew had very poor sleep, poor diet etc
Maybe you make a safeguarding referral on your school system. The DSL rings home to speak to the parents.
Nothing changes.
The next time you ring again.
Nothing changes.
You have the parents in for a meeting, on and on this goes.
You suggest an EHA but it goes nowhere/ makes no change
Perhaps the family is referred to child and family wellbeing team, perhaps they engage on some level
...nothing really happens

Hi Op

I'm sorry that you were abused in your home.

It's not ok and children should not be abused.

I left teaching two years ago.

Teachers are required to report safeguarding issues that are indicators of abuse. I personally reported quite a few myself.

There are two things stopping children being helped.

One is that sometimes there is a court order that they need to see their dad or mum and it's hard for SS to go against that court order even if dad or mum is abusing the child. They need to have actual evidence and convince a court which is hard to do.

The second is that SS are massively under funded. There used to be two or three levels of service, one of which was "early help" for parents where they were supported to get beds/toys etc for their child, gently educated in child development, given food bank vouchers etc etc. early help basically doesn't exist any more because so many families are in poverty, temporary accommodation, can't feed their kids that SS now pretty much only accept the more "serious" cases.

The time it would take all teachers to read their students journals would be to the detriment of their teaching of the curriculum. So which subject would you drop?

Teachers make referrals now and nothing is done. It isn’t spotting problems that we struggle with - it’s that when problems are flagged the threshold to deal with them is too high.

What we need is better social care, and better education for parents on how to raise children.

Mmm
Seems doable.
Children with severe behavioural issues so often come from happy, stable homes where parents would engage with this.
Luckily all the kids with messed up homes, awful parents, chaotic lives, estranged parents, addict patents and housing nightmares are all delightful.

The two year wait for Cahms isn't going to be helped by organic yogurt.

Do you know how much teachers roll their eyes at having to record if the children walked, cycled, car or bus to school? 😂
Data collection, especially daily, is so time-consuming. And you probably want to add in what level of gaming/TV they are exposed to. A definite link from our observations.

I'm a primary teacher, and reading x 30 journals daily (and thoroughly so as to not miss something) on top of marking x 30 reading comprehensions, x 30 maths sheets, x 30 bits of science (all after school) just wouldn't be do-able.

This is seriously one of the most batshit suggestion I have ever read here. So teacher reads 30 of these and goes “ oh little Jonny isn’t getting enough sleep so his cognitive functioning might be impaired so I will bear that in mind when I ask him questions” and “ it appears that Lucy might be nutritionally deficient as she doesn’t eat breakfast so I had better not call on her in the mornings”. Ffs no wonder nobody wants to teach.

You are right that diet, sleep and stress and signs of abuse. And teachers are well aware (or should be) of the children in their class who are struggling in those areas. And whilst not hard evidence of abuse or neglect, they do contribute towards a picture of that child's safety. So you're not wrong, a diary would be fine, but a very cumbersome way to gather evidence. You'd probably also find a child experiencing abuse will be struggling academically and writing a challenge. So imagine they'd put 'apple' or 'toast' for breakfast as it's easy to write and spell rather than accurate.

At this point, I can pretty much tell who has and hasn't eaten and slept properly from how they present. I'm lucky to work in a SEMH school where we can meet these needs but having this info in mainstream wouldn't necessarily change much, the teachers don't have the capacity or resources to allow children to sleep for hours during the day and neglect is a safeguarding issue, of course, but it's incredibly hard to unpick.

I assume your six year old completes such a diary seven days a week, so she can show it to someone if needed?

Teachers just do not have enough time to read over 30+ children’s diaries every morning.

https://www.saasschools.com/moodtracker

This is just an app that is used on a tablet by the entrance to the classroom. Kids tap their name and then select an icon to match their mood. IIRC, if it's a negative mood like sad or angry, it asks them if it's to do with home or school. The data gets sent to the teacher who can then follow up with the child

Things like Zones of Regulation get children to identify what they are feeling. I'm not too familiar with it, but say the green zone is calm, contented happy etc they would have strategies for what to do to keep them in that zone. If they identify with red. Which might be angry, annoyed , irritated, there would be strategies for helping with that mood.

So it is possible to do in school.

I think it's so important for children to recognise their feelings and then do something about it.

We know lots about our pupils anyway, from, you know, proactively fostering respectful and supportive relationships with their parents. No need to survey diet. If a child presents with behaviour which is challenging, we rely on those good relationships to unpack how we can meet that child's needs. Diet is generally just symptomatic of greater challenges in a child's home life so we naturally seek to support or signpost to professionals and organisations who are well placed to do so.

Every so often there is a lifestyle and wellbeing survey which thousands of schools participate in and children complete an anonymised online questionnaire which includes their perception of what their diet is like. What was picked up instantly by previous posters -children often have a very skewed idea of what their diet is like‐ is spot on and always amuses me when my class fills these things in. An example includes a 7-year old vegetarian pupil who ticked 'never' in answer to how often he eats vegetables, despite his mum preparing him the most beautiful cooked packed lunch feasts every day, consisting entirely of a range of vegetable dishes. I asked him about it and he hadn't made the link, as the vegetables depicted in primary school frequently are colour-saturated raw whole versions of themselves, and not the prepped, cooked versions appearing in our meals.

As someone who has volunteered in my child's primary school for years, I can say one thing for absolute certain about all of the children I have spoken to: they talk nonsense, for what appears to be no reason, no matter what their home life is like.

My child once wrote about what he did in the holidays 'slept in bed all day and played with a ball' we had been abroad, to museums, events, parks, soft plays etc. I asked him why he didn't write any of that he said he tried to think of the shortest words because he did not feel like writing!

Teachers are very perceptive. Infant teachers pretty quickly work out which children in their class go to bed a decent time - it becomes obvious when some are half falling asleep after lunch or struggle to get through the day because they go to bed too late.

And likewise over time they pick up on the kid who says 'we were really late today so i got to have a sausage roll in the car!' fairly often...

You act as though this is brand new information to teachers, pretty sure its not 😂 a teacher in my family 25yrs ago used to remark she could tell you within a few weeks of September which kids in her class go to bed too late!

Schools get enough flak over the "lunchbox police". That is for a meal eaten in school time, the original premise being to check against full size Mars bars and a share bag of crisps for lunch for a 5yo... buy apparently used to demonise normal food in moderation.

Can you imagine the abuse teachers would get for monitoring home food?

I think also many schools have breakfast clubs, which can often be funded at least in part or for vulnerable kids

A lot of this information is also discovered by talking to children over time which is why having reliable teachers in primary is so important and the recruitment / retention crisis needs a better solution

sadly when kids fall through the net it's usually one of a few things
Either the relevant agencies knew and there was a huge fuck up like Sara sharif, or parents /children don't want it known they're struggling, or they don't meet the threshold for help in a really pushed system

But who is lokking at them? If the teacher takes 1 min to look at each one and 1 min to write a comment that’s a hour. Are they just not teaching maths? What are the kids doing for that hours?

That’s before you consider that the teachers aren’t qualified or have any training in supporting parenting.

Yes, first thing in the morning is SUCH a quiet time for a teacher. She can easily find the time to read 30 sleep and food diaries.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but really? Not only is checking 30 diaries impossible at any time when managing the education and behaviour of 30 children, but there's no busier time than first thing in the morning.

You're astonishing naive about what it is to teach.

Most decent teachers are doing this without having kids have to write a daily diary.
You just chat to them And get to know them. I'm a secondary teacher but we have form tutors, mentors and support staff in place as well as just teachers and as lots of pp have mentioned a safeguarding system in place for specific concerns. I would also speak to parents if needed. Eg 'X seems tired this week? He is struggling to concentrate, just checking in to make sure he is OK, has anything different happened as its not like him'...
Then depending on the answer you would speak perhaps to X or maybe make a safeguarding referral.

We feed kids, provide equipment, wash clothes, lend shoes, we have even provided prom dresses, bags and shoes.

My kids primary do a daily mood check as a pp has mentioned . They rate themselves red, green, amber.
DS once said he was red for a week. His teacher rang me. It was because his ear hurt, he told her that. I reassured her that he was having calpol and had ear drops to sort it. He failed to mention that part!!

No writing needed.

With the kids whose parents let them stay up very late on school nights and who exist on snacks I think there would be very little point the school pointing out that these things aren't great. The parents won't give sweet FA.

Then there are the parents who don't have control over their situation. Living in one room in a B&B and no cooking facilities while they wait to be housed. How is educating those parents that a varied diet and good sleep are key going to do anything apart from make them feel wretched about their situation.

Basically you'd be trying to change the living habits where either the parents can't or don't give a shit anyway.

And that's before we get onto the fact that it would take at least 30 minutes a day for the teacher to oversee this and have a quick glance at what's being written in 30 diaries.

Teachers know the importance of diet, sleep, activity etc. and how it impacts on the kids' ability to engage with school. In my experience when there is a child who is struggling, the teacher might have a chat about homelife in a non-obvious way in case there are any real flags for concern.

My DD has some issues at school and her teacher does check in with her about what goes on at home but she manages to do it in a way where my DD feels like they're having a 2-way conversation about the foods they like to eat and what they like to do when they get home from school.