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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Wanting to get this teacher fired

690 replies

lividbeyondbelief · 19/02/2011 23:08

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?

OP posts:
Violethill · 22/02/2011 07:40

Hear hear Bucharest. I think the latest twist and turn is that Livid has morphed into lochlomond ! That lack of grip on the facts sounds eerily familiar!

Laquitar · 22/02/2011 07:55

Sarah my verdict was YANBU too and i too think that many points dont add up or are not clear (although this does not mean that OP is made up)
but i don' understand what difference makes that it is a 'free language lesson'. Would it make any difference to you if it was private? Or if it was ballet instead of language for bilingual children of expats?

SarahStrattonHasNiceBears · 22/02/2011 08:06

Morning Laquitar, no I was trying to point out that it wasn't a proper language school with qualified teachers but a more informal affair. Clumsily.

Laquitar · 22/02/2011 08:27

Tbh i still haven't worked out what the arrangement was Grin. It could be that she is a qualified teacher (maybe in the native country) or maybe she is not.

Oh i don't know....My head hurts with this thread (and i still come back to it Grin

SarahStrattonHasNiceBears · 22/02/2011 08:31

It has sucked us in and now we are trapped

Disclaimer: probably watches too much Dr Who

DoingAnythingBut · 22/02/2011 08:35

The problem is the OP doesn't actually know that her daughter was left alone, has assumed an awful lot about the situation, and based everything on what her seven year old told her hours later.

She wants the teacher fired without any investigation into the facts - this is Very Unreasonable.

Bucharest · 22/02/2011 08:36

Trapped. Doomed.

Forever destined to wander round a sink estate/nice area/4 lane highway/ central London/zone 2/2 mins away by car/half an hour away/10 minutes away/coffee shop (with no sandwiches) on every corner/playground/street......

MIFLAW · 22/02/2011 10:41

I imagine that such a teacher might well have left the kids in the building or even taken the kids with her to get her lunch, if the parents had spoken to her or had given her a clear indication of when they were going to turn up.

shame for all concerned that that did not happen.

CameronCook · 22/02/2011 11:09

Thanks Sarah - had often wondered and couldn't come up with a Jilly reference

cumfy · 22/02/2011 11:17

What's the betting OP has chatted with DD more thoroughly and another account has emerged ?

I've found that to be a bit of a theme round here:

  1. "Horror" story originating from DC
  2. Apoplectic/headless parent on AIBU.
  3. MN: No shit/Really ?/ how come/ how could those bastrds etc replies
  4. OP: No really, we could hardly believe it when dearest Tarquin told us.... those bastards, they won't hear the last of this ....
  1. OP disappears of face of MN

Conclusion ?

  1. Tarquin.was.lying.
DeOilyCart · 22/02/2011 11:26

Battersea seems a good candidate! Does anyone know if there were terrible traffic jams there?

I am confused: are decisions by the language school regarding the safety of the child dependent on how far the parent takes and demonstrates responsibility? Or is the safety of the child paramount, no matter how responsible or otherwise the parent is?

Some of the posts seem to imply that as the posters consider the OP to be at fault / have a sense of entitlment / be culturally amiss re lateness, then it is fair enough that the child was left alone?

If a parent had been (unknown to the tutor) run over by a bus or struck bu lightening, would it still have been Ok to leave them alone?

Sorry - I know this thread has been going a long time, but it it's worth getting to the bottom of, let's do it!

Udderly · 22/02/2011 11:33

Personally, if I were the tutor I'd be charging late parents for my time childminding for them. A creche I've heard of charges 20 quid for every 20 mins. I don't believe the OP, and don't believe she is a non-native english speaker. There hasn't been one turn of phrase that sounded like a translation, and some turn of phrase ('you lot' for example) that are definitely native.

perfumedlife · 22/02/2011 11:41

I agree DeOilyCart, the safety of the children is and should be paramount, regardless. However, it is not yet established that the teacher did indeed leave the children unattended to go to lunch. She was there when the parents arrived, finally, half an hour late.

I think most posters have the same opinion, no one is saying the kids should be left unattended.

MIFLAW · 22/02/2011 11:50

DeOily

As a point of principle that is a fair question.

however, I am guessing that, in fact, what happened (if indeed this sorry tale happened at all) was more like this.

  1. class finishes on time
  2. teacher chats with pupils for five minutes
  3. no sign of parents - teacher waits with them for another five or ten minutes
  4. still no sign - quandary. Teacher needs to go out but cannot take kids with her, because she has no idea when parents will turn up and she knows they will go mental if their kids are actually not there. She nips two streets away and is back within ten minutes tops, no doubt telling children to wait in the building if they feel threatened.
  5. teacher is back at school when parents arrive as they suspect nothing and only hear about it later from kid.

In other words, if your hypothesis had proved correct, the kids would have been alone for less than 10 minutes and the teacher back with them. It is important to note here that the teacher popped out. She did not go home and abandon them.

So if the parents were actually ill or dead the teacher would have been back and ready to deal with this it became clear they were not just, for example, fucking about driving to and from a local coffee shop instead of turning up on time.

ErnestTheBavarian · 22/02/2011 12:04

don't think it's ok for the child to be left alone, but

-she wasn't left alone.
-parent failed to call the teacher.
-parent didn't let the teacher know when they would come - presumably teacher hung around getting increasingly frustrated, and I guess torn between diving out to grab a sandwich and rush back, or starving. maybe she usually has a stroll and get some fresh air during her break, and the OP knackered that?
-OP said the dd was really upset and had been crying while left alone, but later said they'd only spoken about it at bedtime. So I'm thinking this is all just a great big fuss about nothing very much. I really do not believ the dd was so upset. Why else would they not have talked about it till the evening?

The OP doesn't accept any responsibility, and I think it is just vindictive and spiteful to be shouting for her to be sacked ffs.

In those circumstances, I'm sure I wouldn't have done the same, but in all honesty, I don't believe the dd was left alone. I am sure the 1 teacher cannot have been left alone in the school building, there almost certainly was other adults there. She would not have gone off and left the school wide open.

My 7 year old has this thing about people lying. He can't quite get his head around the fact that when things sometimes happen different to what is expected, it is usually a misunderstanding. But he is 7.

I

Eloise73 · 22/02/2011 12:07

There are seriously a lot of people on here who are very unhappy in their lives...and should not be in charge of children.

Yup, she was late and shouldn't have been. Yup, she should have parked, if possible, and gone to get the child on foot.

But the main point here is that, in any kind of SANE guide book, anyone in charge of children DOES NOT LEAVE THEM...not even for lunch. Because they are CHILDREN...you don't leave them, ever. EVER.

What's wrong with you people? I sometimes wonder if its a British thing because some of you seem to have very lax views when it comes to leaving children. The McCanns still make my blood boil to think its cool to leave your kids to go have a fucking meal and drink.

I don't care if the mother in this whole post was late because she had an appointment to get a brazilian blow dry and meet her Thai lover at the Ritz...she left her child in the charge of a teacher who is responsible for that child. If the teacher was not happy with her being late she could have charged her, asked her not to come back to the school etc.

Regardless, YOU DON'T LEAVE CHILDREN UNATTENDED. Maybe all parents and teachers should have this branded on them.

Should the teacher be fired? Couldn't care less, but she needs to be seriously reprimanded and told that is to never happen again. Hope the OP doesn't take her dd back.

alicatte · 22/02/2011 12:13

not1not2 - the children concerned are in early juniors and the parents (all three sets) had been told time and time again when the class finished both verbally and in writing. They were not really 'alone' they were being 'kept an eye on' from the reception desk which had a clear view of the door and would have to have been passed by the girls if they wanted to leave. This teacher just felt that it would be better to keep them occupied with practice. If the room had been needed then I guess they would have to have waited at the desk or in the vestibule which is standard practice really.

It really does happen a lot (parental lateness) - sometimes accidentally and sometimes 'intentionally' (is that the right word? perhaps through being careless?) I think what I was trying to say was that when this does happen you have to 'make-do' sometimes it isn't an ideal solution the main thing is to try to find somewhere safe for the children to wait. That can be a playground or just outside the door of a school if there is somewhere to sit and it is not a risk.

MIFLAW · 22/02/2011 12:15

Eloise

That is just a tiny bit hysterical.

hocuspontas · 22/02/2011 12:21

I would have said WAY too hysterical. You are too kind! These are NT junior-aged children not 6 month old babies abandoned in their Moses baskets at the side of the road.

MIFLAW · 22/02/2011 12:27

i haven't read the whole thread ...

BUT has anyone considered the possibility that "lunch" was a euphemism for "I need a massive and time-consuming shit?"

Are Eloise et al suggesting that a responsible teacher (or, as appears to be the case here, someone who helps out at a Saturday school) would soil herself where she stood rather than leave two 8yo children in such a situation? And I think the fact that there were two of them together is as significant as anything else - this is in NO way comparable to Maddie McCann.

Eloise73 · 22/02/2011 12:29

Hysterical huh? Well I wouldn't ever leave any children unattended even if I was hungry...

And what does the NT comment mean? So this would be different would it if the children in question weren't NT? Do you think someone wanting to kidnap a child or a paadophile walking would give two rats as to whether the child was NT or not? What a stupid thing to say.

You don't leave kids unattended...end of.

vintageteacups · 22/02/2011 12:30

Not soil herself, but had it have been me, I would have taken them back inside and told them to sit in the classroom whilst I went to the loo.......rather than let them wait on main London city road on their own.

Eloise is right in all that she said.

vintageteacups · 22/02/2011 12:31

what is NT?

hocuspontas · 22/02/2011 12:37

I specified NT as they would be savvy to stranger-danger and of not wandering off.

hocuspontas · 22/02/2011 12:39

vintage - they were in the school playground! Just outside the main door for all we know!