to think that if you let the students in your class do any of these things you are doing them a disservice?

[pickledsiblings]

• listen to music players whilst completing work (unless it's a music lesson/relevant)
• eat and/or drink (not water obviously)
• get up and walk around at will
• swear/use foul language to you/each other under their breath (whilst you pretend not to hear)
• dry-hump each other (to which you merely raise an eyebrow)
• routinely turn up to lessons with no pens, pencils, books
• treat the floor as a bin
• deface books
• break pens etc
• use their mobiles for texting (against whilst you pretend not to notice)

All opinions most welcome!

Any teachers willing to admit to any/all of these? Would be particularly interested in hearing your justifications.

junsab - as a teacher, you are too busy to use language correctly? Or to distinguish between anecdote and generalisation? What exactly is your field?

Jeez it was a joke. Fine. I'm sorry I used the term 'student'. I didn't realise it was inappropriate when the 120 odd teachers at my school ALL use the word. Yes, I must be a rubbish teacher too.

Yes, I realise you were relating an anecdote but I assumed there was a reason for that anecdote and it had something to do with the overall discourse taking place otherwise what's the point?

I'm sorry if I misunderstood but I thought the reason you relayed the anecdote was to imply that your experience suggests that often teachers with behavioural issues in classrooms are rubbish teachers. You have said this is not the case. Okay

I am sure that it would be quite possible to mimimise discipline 'problems' by turning a blind eye to inapproriate behaviour. Would that be acceptable to you Bonsoir?

The point is that teachers who complain about disruption and discipline issues need to think about whether they are in any way responsible. DP's experience at the DSSs' school is that a lot of teachers make fools of themselves complaining about a class that is good as gold for all their colleagues!

There isn't a discipline problem at all at the DSSs' school. There are a few incompetent teachers, however.

No inappropriate behaviour from any of the students/pupils/schoolchildren either I take it .

There is a bit of competitive stuff that goes on in the staff room though, along the lines of "oh, you're having trouble with 9Z on a Friday afternoon, they're no problem for me......"

Bonsoir this makes my blood boil. Honestly it does. It is often the case that pupils are better behaved in certain lessons and not in others. This is nothing new and not indicative of a bad teacher. There are any number of reason kids are worse in some lessons. At our school as in many it was seen that behaviour always worsens during the afternoon lessons post lunch. If you are the poor sod who sees a year 9 class 4 times a week and always in the afternoon-good luck!

As parents, we have a pretty good grasp of who the incompetent teachers are - after all, we are the ones who consistently have to help the DSSs' (who are both very clever, across the board, and conscientious) understand cryptic homework problems, listen to their moaning about teachers who don't mark within a reasonable time frame and deal with the fall out of syllabuses that aren't covered or are not taught adequately by paying for tutors.

And the correlation between those teachers and the ones who complain about pupil discipline is 100%.

EndoplasmicReticulum-Yes definitely! Sometimes in the reverse though with teachers competing about how much worse the class is in their lessons! 'Oh she only threw a pen at you? Well, she hurtled a chair in my direction'

Disclaimer-this was a joke, not an acceptance and encouragement of poor behaviour

other factors affecting behaviour -

*the weather (when its windy they turn into nutters!)
*the time of the year
*how many e numbers they have managed to sneak in on the way to school/break/lunch
*the latest row between friends
*TV the night before
etc etc

Bonsoir, just a thought but perhaps if the discipline was better in those classes then the teaching would also be better. It seems like these teachers are consistently asking for help and instead of being offered any they are simply mocked and accused of making fools of themselves. Honestly, who'd be a teacher?

thinks that some on here won't appreciate/get that joke junsab

And the students do behave differently for different teachers. We share bottom sets so no poor soul has to have them every day (JOKE - it is so they get the benefit of different areas of expertise)
Most of these could be labelled difficult, some of them are fine for me and some hard work. My co-teacher who is male and 25 years younger than me finds some of the ones that are "good" for me hard work, and some that i find hard, good for him.
Sometimes this is a reflection of their home lives, they may find middle aged women reassuring and safe so no need to act up, or they may naturally respect men more.
Very much agree with quiet tiger that is can also be a reflection of SLT support, teachers in schools with poor leadership have a much harder job then their colleagues in well managed schools.

pickledsiblings - I am talking about a school where the general level of behaviour is excellent (detentions are given for minor misdemeanors that would be ignored in a lesser establishment) and the pupils are delightful. But you cannot expect clever pupils - who by definition have good critical faculties - to respect incompetent teachers. And they show their lack of respect by behaving less well for those teachers than for the teachers whose professional skills they do respect (thankfully, the vast majority).

Bonsoir

In many schools if you have difficult classes it is common to observe the teachers that don't have the same issues.

In my early days as a teacher I took up this offer to view the uber teachers.
In one lesson the pupil didn't make it through the door, in another the pupil played games and listened to music, In the third she was brilliant, not because of the teacher but because she liked sports and was due to go for county trials.

Only the third observation was of any use because when she next messed about in my lesson I set her after school on the day of a school match and she couldn't go.

This worked for three weeks because the school and her parents wanted her to play in a championship match.

I left ASAP.

That is one take on it Bonsoir. Another take on it might be 'Mr X lets us listen to our mp3 players and send the odd text as long as we write exactly what he tells us in our books - oh and he lets us eat too as long as we throw our rubbish in the bin on the way out' - it's a win-win innit?

In a school as high-performing as the one the DSSs attends, I think it can be safely assumed that rather a lot of teaching, and learning, is going on in the classes where the pupils perform to the highest national standards.

And there is absolutely no eating or listening to music in class. None whatsoever.

pendeen - student has been the accepted term for years.

bonsoir you are massively over-simplifying, and irritatingly smug about this. Your "why should children respect teachers whom they consider to be less than competent" argument is one of the reasons that schools have discipline problems. I am a very good teacher (with a certificate to prove it) but I teach drama, which not everyone likes. A low ability yr 9 class on a wet Tuesday afternoon can be difficult. I have had to remove phones from students who thought they could get away with sending a text or checking Facebook. I'm quite sure students sometimes go away from my lessons saying it was "crap" because they don't enjoy drama. They might even moan to their parents about it. Doesn't mean I'm not a good teacher.

Cricketballs/Loshad-Some of the jokes us teachers make about pupils could never be aired on MN .

Wonders is someone will come along and accuse Cricketballs of being a crap teacher because she used the word 'nutters'

FWIW I also agree quiettiger about support from above and management. Also some of the paperwork you have to wade through to discipline a pupil and implement a sanction/punsihment is unreal. To get a student excluded for swearing needs an incident form filled out and then signed by 3 different people who you, as the teacher, have to hunt down during any scrap of free time you have in the day

this is making me smile because on medical advice Dd has to drink lots (and some days plain water is really hard), and get up and walk round the classroom regularly. I hope the OP wouldn't complain her teachers weren't doing their job properly!

In a way it's like parenting but on a much bigger scale - you have to pick your battles and not sweat the small stuff.

We certainly don't encourage our children to respect those in authority who are without the competence properly to exert the responsibilities accorded to them. Which is, of course, not the same as encouraging bad behaviour.

Agree 100% with EvilTwins. I'm sure kids (Is kids allowed? ) have said my lessons are crap quite often and that I am a mega super strict bitch. However, I have been graded outstanding in most of my performance management observations and during Ofsted.

Massive not-so-stealth boast and I could be lying. But I'm not

"Which is, of course, not the same as encouraging bad behaviour."

It is if you let it be known to your children that you don't respect them.