to think some parents are totally unrealistic about how schools work?

[CailinDana]

I'm a former primary teacher (now SAHM) and I loved my job but the attitude some parents had towards me and my colleagues was one of the worst aspects of being a teacher. Despite having never taught, and being a maximum age of eleven when they were last in a primary school, some parents seem to think that they know far better than teachers how to run a school.

Some threads on MN give me flashbacks to those parents. It just makes my blood boil when parents seem to be putting everything teachers do under a microscope as though they're bound to be doing something wrong. Some parents seem to be under the impression that teachers are minor dictators, completely controlling everything in the classroom with no professional standards or supervision. Other parents believe that a teacher, one solitary adult, should be au fait with every little aspect of every child's progress and ability (eg reading books) at all times despite having at least 25 children to teach. Who do they think teachers are? Where do they get these ideas from?

I do definitely think that parents should be involved in their child's education but I have seen good, hardworking teachers ground down by overbearing parents who question their every move. Teaching is a difficult enough job without feeling like people who have no real understanding of the job are constantly monitoring you. AIBU to think that to a large extent parents should trust teachers to have their children's best interests at heart and that they should try to have realistic expectations of what teachers can actually do?

CailinDana Tue 10-Jan-12 22:47:48
"Cory - sometimes my older students have told me I am going too fast in a lesson or that they need me to go over something again. I would always listen to that feedback and follow it.

We are talking about PARENTAL involvement. We are talking about people who are never in the classroom. Not students."

Yes, but the parents are the ones who can hear the French teacher at parents' evening and realise her accent is appalling- the pupils who have been taught by her can't know that.

Parents with the right type of education are the ones who can read the history homework and realise that the questions are impossible to answer because the pictures selected by the teacher to illustrate a certain phenomenon are not actually from the relevant era and in fact show something completely different.

Parents are the ones who can notice when the spellings sent home for their child to learn are consistently incorrect- the child who has been taught to spell them that way by the teacher can't do that.

Parents are the ones who know that it is wrong to leave a disabled child without tuition or without access to the toilet- a child won't know that.

I agree wherearemysocka - there seems to be an assumption that teachers have no "real world" experience. In fact a lot of teachers do a degree, do a non-teaching job and then go back and do a PGCE. But even if they go directly to a degree it's not like they're delivered there in a soundproof box, they have exactly the same university and life experiences as everyone else.

Well just in case anyone is interested, there are 30 children to one teacher because historically there are usually 30 Soldiors to one Officer.

So, Starlight, if your friend who has never had children but has looked after her cousins now and again told you how to parent your children, would you listen to her? If she saw you disciplining your child and she said "No Starlight, you're doing that wrong, you should slap him/her, I know because that worked on me when I was a child" would you say "Oh ok, let me look into that," read a pro-smacking website and then begin smacking your child?

Oh didn't know that Starlight!

My eldest thrives on a 30 - 1 basis. He doesn't do 'best friends' and likes to have a choice of people. He'd suffer in a smaller class. But that's a tangent I suppose.

Perhaps it's system though. There is so much focus on level's and achievement that parents get to expect a certain level of service.
I am the first to admit that reading levels work me to a frenzy even though I know that in the long run if my Ds enjoys reading that's all that matters.
It doesn't help when teachers are always banging on about being a profession. You assume therefore that you will get professional service and can complain when you aren't getting what you expect. I don't blame teachers for this by the way as for most it is a vocation - they do what they love.

That example is poor CailinDana, as no-one would expect teachers to hit the children.

But for the sentiment then I can whole-heartedly state that if given advice or suggestions to try I most certainly would research and explore and most certainly have, even those that some would find controversial. How else have I become such an expert on how to bring up my children? And I have as numerous independent reports have confirmed.

Cory - no reasonable teacher would have a problem with the examples that you have given. In fact, as a languages teacher myself I am a massive stickler for pronunciation (that's proNUNciation, lovely colleagues) and accuracy. It's the baseless, petty grievances that grind you down - plus the way that some parents take their child's word as gospel and see the teacher as the enemy.

I'll give you an example - there was a boy in my year 10 class who was struggling. We had a chat and decided together that it would be best for him to move down a group. He was fine with this as he had plenty of friends in the lower group and felt that he would do better in the smaller lower group.

We moved him down and then I got an angry email from his mother asking why I had moved him down, why I wasn't giving him support to enable him to stay in the top group, how dare I make this decision without consulting her. When I replied saying that her son and I had had a long talk about it and decided it was for the best, I got a meek e-mail back in which she said that she hadn't actually talked to him about it and didn't realise it was with his consent.

Btw, I'm nothing special. I'm a 'fairly' typical mum of an SEN child.

If you reread my post Starlight you will see that I was talking about someone giving YOU advice. It was an analogy. I was not talking about teachers smacking children. I was talking about how you would feel if a friend who had no experience advised you on your job, the way parents advise teachers on their jobs.

Wherearemysocks....how old was the child concerned? I'm not sure of what age you are in year 10.

About 14/15

And I answered your question in that context (although some people like to imply that what I do with my child is akin to smacking, - but that is a whole other thread).

Wherearemysocka - I agree, the examples Cory gave are pretty reasonable, sensible ones that I would expect a parent to bring up and I would expect them to be dealt with (except perhaps the accent one - that's a huge issue that some teachers are extremely sensitive about).

I have an even stupider example than you where. I did regular supply in a year 5 class. One particular boy was lovely but very inattentive. He was on the carpet one day and I was calling his name but he was off in his own world so I tapped him with my foot to get his attention - literally a tiny little tap. He turned, smiled and answered my question. The following week the headteacher got a three page letter from the father detailing how I had kicked his son for not listening. The headteacher just read it out to me and then showed me a file with the hundred or so other letters from the same father about other teachers. An extreme case, but one that still upset me, as no one likes to be accused of kicking a child, no matter how mad it is.

On th whole I agree with Starlight here.

I have come across some shocking teachers, who had absolutely no idea how to teach my children, and yet would not listen to someone (me) who does know.

I was told, by a highly respected and qualified teacher, that I would have to accept that my dd woudl probably not learn anything at school. she was 4 at the time, and already the whole of her educational life was being written off.

Caillin, you ask how it would feel, as a parent, if someone came along and told me I was doing it all wrong, and gave me some suggestions to try. err, that is my life, for the last 6 years, tbh. I am certainly parenting in ways I never thought I would contemplate. and I have been given more advice on how to handle things, and what to do, then my dd has had hot dinners, probably. what do I do about it? I listen, research, think, digest and then act. and usually there is somehting useful in what has been said. sometimes, there is a lot of useful stuff. very rarely is there nothign at all that I can take away from it.

as an aside, wrt the whole knowing the individual levels of attainment for each child in a class of 30 - my dd1's IEP runs to 54 pages. It has at least 150 targets on it (I say 'at least' because several of them are either broken down into minute steps, or expanded into broader categories). her teacher knows exactly where dd1 is at wrt achieving each and every one of those targets, at any given point of asking. and does the same for every child in the class.

I htink a few NC levels are quite easily remembered, tbh.

For sure there are daft parents. And teachers get through enough parents in their careers to come across many I should think. But that doesn't excuse defensive behaviour, inaccessibility and refusal to engage.

Callin, if you didn't pay attention in a staff meeting would you expect to be "tapped" by the head teachers foot??

I'd imagine looking after your daughter is easy silverfrog. Of course I've never done it, so I actually don't have a clue but seeing as you're able to comment on things you've never done...

well that's quite an assumption on your part, Caillin. and sadly wrong.

but yes, looking after my dd is reasonably straightforward thanks, as long as you are able to get oyur head around retaining a few facts and figures.

...the wrong assumption being that I've never had to know the attainment levels of pupils in my care...

In the circumstances my only other option was to get up and allow a very disruptive boy to have access to the store room so I had no other option but to tap him K999. The headteacher knew all this by the way, that's why she had no problem with it. My point was that the father said I'd kicked the child, which clearly wasn't true and yes it might have seemed odd that I'd tapped the child with my foot but if he'd actually asked me what had happened I could have explained and then it would have been perfectly obvious that I was trying to keep the class running smoothly so his son and all the other children could learn and the whole lesson wouldn't be derailed by one boy.

I too thought my examples were reasonable ones. But the problem still remains that some teachers can get hurt or defensive very quickly.

Things got extremely unpleasant after I pointed out that leaving dd without maths tuition and toilet access was not acceptable: the headteacher made a complaint about our parenting to SS (who came, listened to him and to us and then closed the case immediately).

The spellings I probably should have done something about- but then this was the school that made the difficulties about toilet access etc, so I suspect they would not have taken kindly to communications on spelling.

I obviously hadn't the heart to do anything about the French accent: it would be such a difficult thing to change for the teacher (this was a far nicer school, though). Otoh I was upset that dd spent two years with this teacher and we had to work very hard on her accent after that, which I didn't really feel should be my job.

The history example is a bit more tricky: several pieces of work were set that showed that the teacher really knew very little about the era she was supposed to be teaching in Year 7 (which happens to be my field of research and one in which dd is also well read). The one time dd took my advice on anything and tried to argue the point in an essay, she was marked down. It was quite clear that the teacher was convinced she knew best. So what do you do- correct the teacher and point out that you/your child may have reasons to actually know your stuff or just tell your child to suck it up and fudge it to keep Miss happy?

zzzz I've already explained the situation. The father was under the impression that I had launched an actual kick at his son in order to hurt him, which clearly wasn't what had happened. In fact I was waiting for another boy's assistant to arrive and take him out of the class. The other boy had behavioural problems and was trying to access the store room in order to tear it apart. I could have moved and allowed the boy to hurt himself or I could have done what I did which was to stay where I was and tap the boy whose attention I needed with my foot. It was an unusual circumstance but one that could have been easily explained if the father had actually asked before going on a rant to the headteacher.

I'm sure you didn't mean anything by the tapping, but what concerns me is that you have to resort to physical means in order to keep a handle on your class, and to ensure you can manage the behaviour of this particular disruptive boy in particular.

Why would this particular boy have been allowed to think it okay to help himself to the store room if you got up?