to think dd's teacher was maybe over-reacting a tad?

[Northernlurker]

Apparently dd has been 'very rude' today as per the message from teacher via after school club. Very rude consists of not listening to story but talking to friends and then saying 'no' when told to stop and 'no' when told to move. Now I agree this is very rude and the teacher obviously dealt with it at length because dd was in floods of tears when collected by after school club. I have spoken to dd and she was talking because the book was one we have at home and she was telling her friends as much. At the end of a hot day, at the end of term her attention is shot to pieces as is that of most of the other kids. AIBU to think that a message home about this infraction was overkill. She didn't get a warning, she didn't get a timeout - and really what am i supposed to do about this? i speak to dd about her day every day. i am clear about what is expected but seeing as she's a stubborn 4 who has been at school less than a term i don't expect miracles. Frankly impressed we've got this far.

Or should I be grovelling tomorrow?

Soooooooo maths exactly how many hours have you actually spent in a working classroom during lessons?

I'd be interested to know if she has any direct experience of responsibility for pupils' progress. I suspect she only has experience of observation and lengthy pontificating.

Watching someone else is very different from doing it. I don't think there is anything nicer than reading a story to a group of young DCs and have them hanging on every word, but you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot first by letting one DC ruin it.They will often be far more interested in discussing it afterwards.

The trouble with a class of 4 yr olds is that they all want to talk and no one wants to listen!

Yes I also liked the aspersions cast on the teacher because she dared to be off work - clearly she was skiving / burned out etc.

I'm a teacher and missed a few days last week myself - on my doctor's orders, what with being pregnant, having a chest infection and coughing myself sick. No doubt there was a little corner of MN where people sat tsking over my absence and implied that I was a skiver etc

Ah well, you see, I pay my taxes and therefore your salary, Angelico, so therefore I can be as rude as I like about you and then accuse everyone else of the same thing.

Don't be silly Feenie. The fact that you pay taxes is irrelevant: you're a teacher. You have to simply be a consumer for it to count.

At our parent-run and led pre-school (4 is pre-school here) when we read aloud to the kids it really doesn't just involve reading the story aloud to them.

I shall ask again, in case you missed my request the first time.
Where, exactly, in this thread has anyone said that sharing a book with a class of children should only involve the teacher reading and nothing else?

They haven't come back because it wasn't mentioned. It was actually nothing to do with the reading-it was a rude DC who wouldn't stop when asked and wouldn't move when asked.

"Because, that would mean I had been arguing the toss with someone who has absolutely no working knowledge or hands-on experience of what they're talking about wouldn't it?"

But everyone went to school, so of course they know exactly how it should be - how to plan, teach, assess, manage behaviour of up to 30 young children, etc.

'the bit where you likened everyone on the thread to child beaters was not your best argument.'

Do you mean the poem by Lewis Carroll? Did you do much comprehension when you were in school Feenie? Did you study English?

May I assume that the preference many have expressed for short posts means school was something of a challenge for some of you?

Apparently a few of you have missed the bit where I spoke about volunteering over a period of fifteen years in the DCs' various classrooms. (I have also volunteered in a club for children whose parents were in prison and I have taught adult literacy). I have now answered your question twice, LeQ.

'Where, exactly, in this thread has anyone said that sharing a book with a class of children should only involve the teacher reading and nothing else?'

LeQueen, for one, seems to suggest that silence during reading time is as much an imperative as not running out in front of a bus.

And I'm sorry to upset anyone any further by the novel idea that as teachers you are accountable to the parents of the children you teach (because clearly this concept has touched a nerve), but in fact you are. You are accountable to them and they have a right to question your aims and your methods, because it is their children you are teaching. As parents and first teachers of their children they do in fact have experience no matter what other hats they may wear, and since they know those children intimately they are eminently qualified to question how you conduct yourself in relation to them.

I will be charitable and assume that this one teacher was just ace when it came to planning and assessing, AbigailS, but when it came to classroom management she failed.

(Noting here that the class size here was first assumed to be 24 but it has now grown to 30... How did that happen?)

Shaking my head in disbelief that this is still going on. The child was badly behaved, and no amount of pontificating will alter that fact, she was told off and didn't like it. Not many do but they usually learn not to do it again. She was not being a free spirit, she was being a pita and the teacher has the rest of the class to think about. What were they supposed to do whilst the teacher listened to one child hogging the time?

And btw Math, I dont think anyone has a problem actually reading long posts, it's more the fact that they're just so bloody boring.....perhaps we're the rest of the class getting bored by one person trying to take over......?

Sorry I missed where the OP stated her class size was 24. But up to 30 is the usual class size (legal infant class sizes) and many classes are full, - hence me using up to 30 in my comments.

Also no teacher has denied we are accountable to parents; teachers are being held accountable for all sorts of things, so I'm not sure where the feeling that we are not came from. I think what they were trying to get across is that we are responsible for all the children in the class and if one (or more) free-spirirted children disrupt the organisation, safety or learning of the others we have a duty to manage the class to prevent it.

Teacher is also accountable to the parents of the twenty nine children who would like to hear the story and not waste time whilst she panders to one rude child then, surely?

There's a world of difference between volunteering in a classroom and actually being responsible for classroom management and pupil progress.

Or twenty three other children. Point still holds.

Agree with Nit

Ilovesooty, yes, there is a world of difference between volunteering and actual classroom management. However, whether you choose to believe it or not, I have seen what I have described (and I have provided links to descriptions of similar environments) over the course of fifteen years volunteering in various capacities.

TheOriginal -- The teacher is equally accountable to each one of the parents. As a parent I personally would not want to think that a teacher would be willing to have a child crying in the classroom for any length of time because that would have distressed my children and distracted them, and because they would not feel comfortable in the sort of atmosphere where a child was made to cry in the first place and then sent on to the next activity still crying. A teacher should not assume that parents would be willing to have their children witness the distress of another child and be unable to offer comfort, or witness a teacher sending a crying child to the after school club. A teacher should not assume that all the parents would be equally as fixated on getting the book read as she was.

How did we arrive at the conclusion that there are 30 children in this class btw?

Ladymariner -- Boring? Surely you jest? I even provided a poem...

30 is the usual class size, unless the school is private or undersubscribed. Every class I've taught (in far more years than I am willing to tell) has been at 30 or very close. One had 42 (in the bad old days).

Hope that helps explain why we, especially teachers, keep using 30. But really - 30, 25, 24 - it doesn't make much difference to the argument of the needs of one child not compromising the rest. It's about looking at the bigger picture of a child (and parent) who thinks they don't need to conform.

Yes maybe other parents might not have been "fixated on getting the book read", but how about these statements you might get from a class teacher .... "Oh, I'm so sorry I haven't heard your child read or changed their book this week, because little NL needed me to discuss at length the book we were looking with the class", or "sorry there's nothing in you child's Learning Journey this week, little NL wanted to use the small world and needed to discuss it with me", or "sorry the class didn't get time to go to the hall for dance in PE this week, little NL didn't want to take her shoes off, so the class had to have a discussion about how we might hurt other people by standing on their toes in heavy shoes if we didn't take them off, even though they were very pretty shoes and it was so exciting you went shopping for them at the weekend and had an ice cream while you were in town and the ice cream was chocolate chip ...."

Are teachers really that pathetic?

Do you really believe that a teacher can't direct the attention of a four year old back to the matter at hand without pulling rank or causing embarrassment/upset?

I have a degree in English Literature and Primary Education, Mathanxiety.

Go on then, enlighten us - what did you mean by posting 'I see we haven't moved on much?'

No, sorry: what do you think is more likely- that a child asked to be quiet would the proceed to howl so loudly and persistently that all the other children became disturbed, or that the child persistently interrupting and refusing to stop annoys and irritates children who would quite like to hear how the story turns out?

Pretty tenuous ground with that one, I think.

I am sure that she could direct the attention back BUT it is hardly fair on the other 23 (or 29) that they waste time while the DC is persuaded that it might be a good idea to let them get on.

As adults we don't like interruptions. Last week I went to a talk (light hearted and amusing) and a couple behind kept up a running commentary. It was very (I could use a stronger word) annoying. We looked at them hard, other people turned around and looked at them, they didn't get the message until someone told them to shut up! I would have welcomed the person giving the talk telling moving them-out of the hall altogether would have been fine with me!
I don't think that the rest of the class would have wanted the teacher pussy footing around while the 'little dear' decided (in her own time) to stop-they wanted it loud and clear-'stop talking-or you will be moved'.

It seems to have worked effectively-hopefully she has got the message that she has to consider others.

I can't believe I am still reading this nonsense from Maths-I would just love to see her in front of some of the lively classes I have had and see the mayhem while she appeals to 30 better natures to keep quiet! She seems to be missing the point that by the time she has spent several minutes getting the attention of this one child back she has lost the attention of several more!
Children are very fair-and they like the teacher to be fair. One DC disrupting a story for everyone, and the teacher letting her get away with it, is not fair.

Not that this is anything about reading the story-it is about a rude DC who was asked to do something and refused. Maybe OP lets her get away with being rude to her but isn't in the DCs favour because other people won't like it or put up with it.
I am often appalled by the way DCs talk to their parents and even more appalled that the parent lets them. Teachers do not let them-it takes some a while to realise that they may be very rude to their mother but other adults are not going to take it.