Wanting to get this teacher fired

[lividbeyondbelief]

My dd attends a language class on saturday mornings in central london. This week due to horrible traffic we were 30 minutes late to collect her. We tried texting her teacher to say we were stuck in traffic but never got a reply. Anyway to make a long story short - she left my dd outside the school, alone with another boy, whilst she went out to go buy lunch. To make matters worse she told her to lie to us and say she was in the room next door if we asked where the teacher was when we collected our dd.

Our daughter was really upset and cried whilst being outside alone with this boy. My dh noticed she had been crying but the teacher just dismissed it, saying to dh she cried because he was late.

Obviously the bond of trust is broken and she wont be going back ever again. My question is what else should we do?

angry enough to leave two children alone??

No one is arguing that the tutor (that is what she is) is completely in the right to be highly pissed off with the OP and her DH. What she doesn't ever have the right tp do is leave children alone. Teh 2 issues are separate

So, after all this, I have a practical suggestion for you, livid - I think it may be best to hold fire on your annoyance until you have clarified the situation with the school.

I say this because you only have one explanation, from your DD, who is remembering what she thought happened at a time when she was probably already upset/frightened because you weren't there.
In particular, the fact that the tutor had to "buy" (rather than "get") her lunch and was away for 10-15 minutes and told DD to pretend the tutor was in the classroom (rather than, say, meaning that she would be in the classroom after she had got her lunch) depends on your DD remembering all this correctly at a time when she was not her usual self anyway.

Maybe you could find out more from the school first - you might get more info than if you go in all guns blazing.

But Freshmint, I'm just getting into my stride

I am about to name several estates in Zone 2 which have 3 or 4 lanes of traffic going past one side - such as the Aylesbury Est by E&C...but that isn't close enough to the river, so perhaps we are talking about Worlds End, or somewhere off the Highway by Wapping, Or Jamaica rd, all of which have small estates with primary schools off them and are in zone 2, and now I'm trying to plot the co-ordinates of demos against Barclays (causing jams and road blockages), the position of consulates, the river , A roads and family friendly coffee shops....

Am off to bed before full moon turns me into a werewolf.

Stealth Sorry, I should have clarified the tutor of an unregulated (I would assume and may be wrong) saturday school thing. But I wonder if outside of moral obligation she actually must supervise the children outside of classroom time? She may be perfectly within her rights to have left the children there as legally there was no requirement of her to watch them.

What I should have said is that the OP is expecting too much of a setup of this nature.

TBH I haven't read the whole thread so if I am wrong about the school setup and so on, then my apologies.

I wouldn't have done it myself, but I would have penalised the parents in some way.

How many times do i need to ask? What proof do you have that the tutor went anywhere? There is only 1 thing you know for sure. And that is that you were late.

hahahahaha

oooh, this could be it...I think I've found exactly where this thread has led us...yes...up the garden path!

The problem doesn't lie wth the teacher but organisers of the saturday school, there should be someone on premisses who would keep an eye on children when parents won't turn up on time.

Had they given you a contract to sign?
What if you had an accident and couldn't turn up?

Are we still here?

I see 10 pages have been added since I last looked, and apart from these ever-changing road systems around the school we still don't know what type of organisation has abandoned these poor children.

I'm inclined to think, not that the OP is an out and out liar, but given the amount of hyperbole and inconsistencies and self-justification, that quite simply there was a misunderstanding here, not involving the teacher, but the child and the parents.

Why did it take hours and hours for the parents to notice the child was "scared" (or scarred) and "cried when the teacher left them")

I put it to my learned friends that this is the more likely scenario.....Child finishes class, teacher says "where are your parents?" CHild doesn't know. Teacher says "well, I hope they hurry up, I need a bun" Child and other child go outside into the playground of their own accord and wait for respective parents, who when they turn up (finally) are understandably miffed at seeing children out on their own. Daughter panics, thinks she's in trouble for going outside instead of waiting inside (otherwise why the whole "we told dd she had done nothing wrong" thing? Why would dd think she had? Unless the parents were all firebreathing and "what are you doing out here on your own?" and the child then thought she was in Big Trouble.

I really would not be taking the word of an 8 yr old (and I have one myself, and have taught 1,000s) without getting further detail about what really happened.

I look forward to hearing the outcome though.

If it were the language school where I work, I, as manager, would be telling you not to bring her again if this was the trouble you were going to cause my staff.

Blu - to clarify, what I meant was, in your fictional scenario, you assumed that one adult (the tutor) would be responsible for knowing the policies of her own children's care provider, contacting them, having a back up plan, in order to put in place emergency arrangements for her own children, while the other adult pissed about and just didn't show up or bother phoning.

I wasn't meaning you have a sense of entitlement at all Blu! - simply that your scenario demonstrated that same sense of entitlement that the OP has shown - ie "I can bugger off to a coffee shop several zones away, get stuck in a traffic jam, not bother to call the tutor even though half an hour late, then demand that I want the tutor fired!" While all the time, not acknowledging for a moment that the tutor may have had other urgent responsibilities. (Didn't she refer to possible diabetes or other medical conditions as "freak eating disorders"? - nice)

Anyway, entertaining though this has been, I've a feeling we're never going to hear the true version of events, as the OP clearly doesn't know what happened either!

.. and it could also be that the teacher, knowing that her pupils had spent the last two hours in a class, had sent the children into the playground to play while she went to get her lunch ...

Do let us know if you succeed in getting the teacher fired [hmm

Inspector Woolly here...

I haven't seen anyone consider this scenario yet, which relates to the lie:

Teacher is teaching a foreign language to OP's kids.

Teacher is possibly a native language speaker and perhaps her English is not perfect.

Perhaps there was a language difficulty between the child and the teacher which resulted in the child believing the teacher said one thing and the teacher believing she was communicating something else.

This is the whole element of this sorry tale I'm struggling with... Why would an adult tell a child to lie on their behalf when either one of two sets of parents could turn up the second after they'd left and catch them out?

LOL Ormirian - I would take anything the OP might come back with, with a very large pinch of salt!

"But you tell me if it was your child left scarred wouldn't you be angry?" Aren't you being just a little OTT ? The incident happened at lunchtime but she didn't discuss it with you until that evening. Surely the fact that you were so late and she didn't know where you were is more likely to have caused the upset than being left in the company of another child, but even that needn't cause any long term damage if you can reassure her that you won't let it happen again.

Fair point well-made Inspector!

This is the whole element of this sorry tale I'm struggling with... Why would an adult tell a child to lie on their behalf when either one of two sets of parents could turn up the second after they'd left and catch them out?

Because she could deploy precisely the arguments you've outlined to muddy the waters.

Do we know what txt said ?
Was it:

sry rn bt lt b thr 10min ciao

OP, it's cut and dried imo. YOU were late YOU should have called. It is not the teacher's responsibility.
You sound like and absolute PITA, nightmare parent.
Poor bloody teacher

I'm with sarah Stratton above and all the others that say they simply don't beleive it...

Too many inconsistancies for me

There are 2 coffee shops in the area - 1 5 minutes walk away that they OP was in and one "right next to the school" that the OP can't use because of her health issues

However the ONLY shop for food is 2 and a bit streets away down by the river..

Half an hour late isn;t a big deal in their culture hence no-one should have been getting really stressed about it before....but the OP has never ever been late picking up before.

Its in Central London, its in Zone 2, its a housing estate, its a horrible place (with a choice of nice coffee shops)

In the playground, on the streets, in the playground but anyone can access the playground so it might as well have been on the streets....

My DH noticed she had been crying and the teacher just dismissed it - then it becomes that no-one knew what had happened until bedtime...

The OP has ASSUMMED that the "teacher" (Girl paid by the consule to teach the children the language/culture which frankly could be done at home anyway) went to this only food shop in the area that was 2 streets away without any indication from either the teacher or the OP's DD that this was what actually happened...

When any of these inconsistancies are challeneged all we hear from the OP is "but none of this is important, she asked my daughter to lie..." - which language did this happen in - the teacher's native language that your DD has to go to classes to understand, or English, your DD's presumed native language, which isn;t the teacher's native language....whatever language the whole conversation about lunch and "I'm just in the next classroom", it was a non-native language for one of them....

Well OP, if "lying" is such an awful thing in your family, and THAT is what needs to be concentrated on in this story, then I suggest you take the plank out of your own eye (all the inconsistancies above) before attacking the spec in the teachers eye...

or does it not matter if you are lying to us as we aren't children...

Round of applause for Bathsheba!

I thank you...

Encore encore!

Also had it occurred to you that just as you have a near-perfect excuse for your excessive lateness, the teacher may ultimately have an equally houdinilike valid excuse for her behaviour.

Parents are sometimes late - it happens for a multitude of reasons. Teachers / tutors know this. I suppose a lot depends on whether the poster is consistently late - but even then I would not leave an 7/8 - even a 12 year old hanging around unsupervised - I would be very cross with the late parents.

I would be absolutely livid if my child had been left outside alone at this age. I would without doubt, speak to the organiser to clarify what the policy in these situations. It would have been preferable to take the children with them to the sandwich shop - or ask the parents to get some sandwiches upon arrival.

When I was young, my father had a car accident on the way to collect me from school. These were in the days before mobile phones. A teacher stayed with me until my mum finally got to school 3 hours late.