to wonder if school staff rooms involve much parent bashing?

[lottielou39]

A comment below (in the thread about childcare being too expensive for people to do poorly paid part time work) from someone who worked in a nursery and said the weekly meetings were mostly about parent bashing, got me wondering. What are school staff rooms really like? I'd love to be a fly on the wall. Are parents slagged off on a daily basis? Which parents cause the most dread? Is it ever possible for a parent to have a valid gripe (in the eyes of the school staff room) or are they always stupid and annoying?

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all teachers are bad, they can make an immense difference when they are good, but there's too much driftwood in the profession, as with many professions but this should be addressed.

Why is it wrong to question the teaching profession? Can't someone be learnt from discussion and openmindedness? Another reason why I despair at the state of our educational system.

Has anyone mentioned the long holidays teachers get?

Bastards.

Personally I feel the biggest issue society faces is the lack of expectations we have for parents!
Plus my DH and his fellow GP's were a lot less sympathetic towards some of their patients than teachers towards the parents. Some of the acronyms...........well words would often fail me! I also find this, rather paranoid, image of teachers sitting in a staffroom bitching about parents hilarious. I spend my time trying to ensure these poor children with hideous parents reach their potential. I ran revision sessions during the Easter holidays and the amount of children who had no breakfast because there was no food in the house........... Strangely their parents had drink/cigarettes. One morning I had so many kids saying they had had no breakfast I ordered pizza at 11!!!!!

I'm on a career break but work in education. My whole family are in education (mostly but not exclusively primary). The more senior members pretty high up.

I have had a bad experience yes. Most of my family started out dis-believing and thinking I had been unlucky. Now they can see it in terms of systematic failure.

Teachers have become robots delivering latest vote-winning government initiatives with no foundation in how children actually learn, pedagogy or child development. They are usually unquestioning as their workload makes questions impossible. They struggle and bad mouth parents who question.

Nobody's saying it's wrong, but it's bloody boring.

Threads whacking teachers come up every couple of weeks.
Threads bashing lawyers/plumbers/social workers? Nah.

Threads about others regularly come up. It is the teachers that get on the defensive.

Not surprising tbh. I wonder many of them have any self-confidence left. All society ills are blamed in them OR parents. Makes me wonder why teachers don't support the challenging parents more. They could be powerful together at improving SLT and challenging LAs.

I'm sorry it's boring, it's not boring to parents who have to trust teachers with the child's education for most of the day. Maybe that's the problem... It's boring to you that some people feel the current situation is not working as well as it could.

No, it's threads like these where one particular experience, however dire, is used to criticise the whole, e.g. "too much driftwood in the profession".

Based on what, exactly?

My sister and her partner are doctors, and I've done some temping in a GP surgery as a student, and I can tell you that doctors certainly do talk about their patients during breaks or in staff meetings! And they also bitch about each other, and the NHS guidelines and just about anything else you could care to mention...

I'm a civil servant and we certainly bitch about some of the completely moronic or horrendously rude members of the public we come into contact with. It's between team members so no confidences are being shared, and if I didn't vent to them I might sometimes accidentally let it out at the eejits concerned and then I'd be for the high jump!

I haven't ONE experience to go on. My Ds is on his 5th school placement.

He is 5.

Plus if you look at the SN board you'll quickly gain a wealth of knowledge on the subject of failed children, that just needn't be, which is all down to defensiveness and attitude, NOT as you might expect, money.

In my experience teachers are as aware and questioning of the failings in the system as any parent. There is, however, very little we can do to change it without damaging the progress of the children we are teaching at the time. I spend a lot more time bashing the system than I do bashing any parent. I certainly agree with a lot of the parents who raise questions, and I have raised questions as a parent with my dds school. If parents don't question then nothing changes, but a lot of decisions are not made by classroom teachers, SLT, or even on an LA basis, they are made by a government who doesn't fully understand how to make the system better.

My current school is much more professional than my previous one and parents aren't discussed much. In my previous school, the ones we discussed were:
The mother who showed her pole-dancing moves to the educational welfare officer who came round.
The mother who bought her 14 yr-old son 100 cigarettes to take on a residential trip.
The dad who defended his son's right to have a porn mag on a school trip "COS I DON'T WANT HIM TO GROW UP GAY!"
The father that we knew was abusing his daughter who then persuaded SLT to allow her to miss large amounts of school while she nursed him in his final illness.
Some kids have a shit time. And we care about them. And you need a black sense of humour to get you through sometimes.
The only one that I've heard discussed that made me a bit was a member of staff sneering at a family who are pagan.

BUt this isn't the SN boards, it's AIBU. I deal with what's being said here.

I think if you look at the research that's been done, you'll see the uk doesn't have the best educational record. Anyway, you're right, it's a boring discussion as it seems there not many who want to discuss it openly. It is a problem and unfortunately it's the kids who are paying for it, thank god some of the parents will be able to compensate for it.

See, when teachers get defensive, it is invariably in response to attacks. Lighthearted thread about staffroom gossip, and suddenly we're all unprofessional, poorly trained robots. Yep, I do feel a bit defensive now...

Failed by individuals or the system? Most teachers are haunted by a child they feel either they or the system let down. I know I am. People do not go into education or medicine if they dont want have a vocation.

Entirely abandoning the idea that out there, somewhere, there might just be teachers engaged and interested and willing to learn about SN? (We can't know about every child's SN immediately, which is why parents are such an invaluable resource.)

I would honestly say that most of the teachers I have worked with meet the above description.

Of course I can't defend the entire profession, not having met every single teacher, but nor can you condemn the entire profession on the same grounds.

I'm not saying parents are not sometimes at fault themselves but we can't control who has children, we should be able to control who educates them at school.

Well all I can say is I work at home by myself and I talk to myself constantly slagging the whole world and his wife off, nobody does anything right. I know this because I have met a few people who were not perfect, made mistakes, and didn't do exactly as I wanted them too, therefore as I everyone knows full well everyone must be like that

People do not go into education or medicine if they dont want have a vocation. Some do and that's the problem, in medicine, you wouldn't get further than a gp... In education you influence every child you teach.

I have to say that I have worked in schools for the past 15 years or so, secondary and primary. And no, ime, most staffrooms do not involve lots of parent bashing. Yes, sometimes very occasionally parents may be spoken off but tbh not that often, and more often not negatively.

Remember that most teachers are parents themselves. And most have other far more interesting things to chat about in their spare time than other parents.

Definitely not in our staffroom. I'm really not just saying that. There are 30 teachers, lots of classroom assistants, students in at one stage or another, peripatetic literacy teachers on certain days, various other people like speech therapists, educational psycs, etc. No one I know is unprofessional enough to sit ranting about parents.Not to mention the fact that in our town you can be sure someone is related to the person you might want to talk about!
I'm certainly not saying teachers don't talk about them, off course they do. But most I know have the sense to do it on the q t, in a classroom etc.

Good to hear the positive staff room stories :)