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?

I would like teachers to realise just how 'harmless' this harmless moaning about parents in the staff room or whether else they do it, actually is.

Because i pushed for a diagnosis of my ds i was labelled 'over anxious' written on ds's school file and had to change school because of it.

In new school because i pushed for ds to receive the help he needed in school after diagnosis, because i was previously labelled as 'over anxious' and it was written on his school file, i was reported to social services by the school 'to help mum deal with her anxieties'

All gossip, all 'harmless' moaning i do not suffer with any anxiety related disorder or have a diagnosis of any anxiety related disorder. So a harmless bit of moaning, quickly turned into being reported to social services.

This has been detrimental firstly to ds receiving his diagnosis and secondly to any help that he receives.

Luckily for me i did experts on my side, but harmless moaning can be dangerous to some.

It's just the tip of the iceberg actually but if I post any more I'll lose credibility as it looks like the stuff of fantasy.

I do however have many a letter and recovered document from schools and the Local Authority which I am considering publishing as a collection and illustration. I have plenty of evidence, as well as evidence of cover-ups and denial of said document I now have.

Documents.

And not only does this stuff cross schools, it crosses Local Authorities!

claw4 - at the school I worked at you would have been more likely to be labelled as a committed parent who really cared about their child's future. Sorry you had asuch a bad time of it.

PS you should have seen my mate in the pub who looked at her and very loudly said to me "Bloody Hell, I'd hate to hear what they all say about my kids behind my back"

Star, did you ever get anyone involved to acknowledge wrongdoing and genuinely try to set it right? Or were they all way beyond that point? It sounds beyond horrid and I am sorry you have had to deal with it repeatedly.

No, because we're still in the thick of it, and procedures and processes cancel each other out. If you're involved in one dispute, another agency won't take anything up until the first is resolved iyswim.

And when you get to a certain level, Social Services turn up to investigate an annon allegation. Thankfully they have always disappeared pretty quick as the allegations are daft, but I'm angry with them nonetheless because they shouldn't just disappear, they should help!

Shrinkingnora, thank you please dont take this personally, but i doubt it, unless your school is the kind of school who would be prepared to say weve made a huge mistake and failed your ds miserable and we have been incompetent!.

School were unable to identify that ds had any difficulties, hence my 'over anxious' and 'difficult' and 'demanding' mother titles. Which is why i hate to see parents being labelled as 'difficult' and spoke about in staff rooms, this is what starts the ball rolling, once it starts its hard to stop. Many disabilities are 'hidden' disabilities and maybe, just maybe one of those 'difficult' parents, might actually have a point.

The problem was ds had not yet received a diagnosis, so received no help in school. He was struggling to cope in school, began refusing school and scratching his skin off, it became very extreme (a sign of anxiety and not coping) He ended up in hospital, on IV antibiotics to prevent septicemia and almost had to have a finger amputated.

Now school at this point could have turned round and said oh shit, we were wrong, but then that would be saying they couldnt do their job. Lose our jobs or blame the parents!

Anyone interested in the science of learning, please take a look at this youtube video, found it this morning and explains much better than I managed to last night. Its fairly long, so I doubt many of you will have time.

The actual presentation is only 30 mins...but the rest brings it up to 90mins.

Shrinking even when you have a child with a diagnosis of moderate to severe autism who is self harming only in school, you are still a difficult and demanding parent whose child self harms in school because her mother at home is anxious.

Had I sent dd into school bruised and bleeding which is how they sent her home I'd have expected SS on my doorstep. Instead when I refused to send her they sent out Educational Welfare who luckily was one of the good ones and on seeing the photos told the school to shoulder the absences whilst I looked for a new school.

Dd hasn't self harmed since so I know for a fact school was the cause.

Comments passed by various members of staff of dd's old junior school made it quite clear that the headteacher's view that dd was faking her disability with our connivance was filtering down.

Also, a lot of dd's anxiety is directly related to her having overheard members of staff discussing her condition without taking the trouble to lower their voices or waiting until she was out of earshot. It is terribly hard to get up the courage to ask for help in an emergency if you know for a fact that the person in charge of medical room thinks there is nothing wrong with you. This is why dd is school refusing: she knows she couldn't bring herself to ask for help in an emergency because after what she has overheard people in authority actually say she doesn't know what they might be saying about her in private when she is not listening.

I am quite sure that there is a different culture in the staff room of dd's current school- just as there is a different culture in the staff room of my university department: we think very carefully about how we speak of students even privately, and I think that really affects how well we deal with them face to face.

A little bit of gossiping can be enormously influential when someone has to make a decision on facts they do not understand well. I am glad there is little ill-natured gossiping in my current workplace.

Yes, quite a lot of parent bashing in our staffroom but all of it well deserved.

The main victims:

• Parents who complain or are abusive because their child wasn't chosen for the 'A' team/a main part/a scholarship etc
• Parents who get aggressive on the sidelines of sports fixtures
• Parents who lurk outside classroom to verbally attack staff for any number of reasons or who send intimidating and abusive emails.
• Parents who have complaints about other people's children almost every day.
• Parents who swear at teachers or other parents.
• Parents who refuse to believe that their child can be in the wrong.
• Parents who believe their child is the cleverest, most talented being on the planet in all areas and expect you to believe the same and show it.
• Parents who want a 'quick word' at 8pm at night and have you standing at the front door nodding and agreeing between gritted teeth half an hour later.
• Parents who, for no good reason, consistently bring their child to school 15 -20 minutes late.

We have one particular parent who is so notorious that a conversation with him (NEVER shorter than 15 minutes) is know throughout the staff room as 'you know what you've been tangoed' (but using his surname in place of 'tango').

The vast majority of our parents are wonderful and will do anything to help their children and the school. So I don't see why it's so bad to maon about the few who aren't in the privacy of the staffroom.

'Parents who, for no good reason, consistently bring their child to school 15 -20 minutes late.'

What is a good reason for being consistently late then?

^^
having other children not at school/at a different school, reliance on public transport, having a difficult child, having a child with special needs or a disability, having a very long journey. Things like that.

I'm asking as the parent of a child with who was consistently late more or less every day over a period of approximately 4 years. School(s) didn't help, despite my asking very loudly. So I'm more than a bit touchy when it's thrown into the arena as an example of bad parenting.

Well, if you had a good reason, then you wouldn't be on the hit list anyway and, if you didn't have a good reason, then I can understand why you'd be touchy but think the point still stands.

I don't think lateness is an example of bad parenting anyway. Nothing on my list is anything to do with being a bad parent, it's to do with being an annoyance to teachers. Some people would belong in both camps but not necessarily at all.

manicinsomniac Wed 18-Apr-12 16:08:53
"Well, if you had a good reason, then you wouldn't be on the hit list anyway"

Don't be too sure this is true of all schools. Dd's head complained to Social Services about our parenting despite several paediatricians' letters explaining that her patchy attendance was due to genuine medical circumstances beyond our control.

The school made it quite clear that we were an annoyance:

because poor attendance, for whatever reason, affected their chances of getting an Ofsted Outstanding

because having a wheelchair in the classroom was an inconvenience (they told us so)

because having to open the disabled toilets was inconvenient for the cleaner (they refused for a long time)

because having to move the sets to ensure dd's set was on an accessible level was an inconvenience (their take was that dd was "refusing to walk up the stairs"- dd was in a wheelchair and certainly not capable of walking anywhere)

As the head so charmingly put it, "of course we accept that corydd is ill but you can't expect us to be happy about it "

Being an annoyance to people doesn't necessarily mean that you have done anything wrong. It may simply mean that you are an inconvenience.

I've worked in several schools and generally parents are rarely mentioned. Usually there isn't much time for chattiing/bitching. The one exception I can think of was when one of the mothers went on Jeremy Kyle as she had been sleeping with her BF partner. Someone taped it and we all sat and watched it one lunchtime

Manic from your list, i would meet three of your criteria.

• who send intimidating and abusive emails.

After ds came out of hospital, i tried to phone the SENCO to ask about putting some help into place for ds before he returned to school, bearing in mind he had none. She did not return my call. So i wrote to the school, my letter was ignored. On the school website the SENCO email was listed, so i email her a copy of the letter i had sent. She then phoned me, to tell me to stop 'harassing' her!

• Parents who have complaints about other people's children almost every day. Ds was being bullied something terrible in school, he was poked with sticks, strangled, pushed down the stairs, had his lunch and belonging taken off of him, called weirdo, freak, shitty pants etc on a daily basis.

• Parents who refuse to believe that their child can be in the wrong. Despite teachers reporting the above incidents to me, the minute i called it bullying. My ds was lying, he was making it all up (despite the fact, that it was THEM who told me about it, not ds!)

Now in the staff room for example, im sure SENCO failed to mention the circumstances surrounding my email, just that i harass her! Same as the other situations. Do you see how quickly things can get out of hand and how differently a teachers approach to parents can be altered by gossip?

sorry, phrased this badly:

"because having to open the disabled toilets was inconvenient for the cleaner (they refused for a long time)"

makes it sound as if it was the cleaners who refused

it was the head who thought it inconvenient

cleaners/caretaker were lovely

cory - it sounds like your daughter's school was so far out of line it's criminal.
claw - sorry your son had such a shocking time but yours are really not the kind of complaints that are going to get you bitched about in a staffroom (not ours anyway!)

Loads of people will have perfectly valid reasons as to why they might do any number of annoying things. If the reasons are known they won't get moaned about. But, ime, the majority of harrassment emails and constant complaints are annoying, not valid like the examples raised above.

I also wouldn't equate gossip with whining either:
whining - "argh, I had such an awful time with Mrs this morning. She just won't stop going on about __ and it's so annoying."
gossip - "hey, did you hear that Mrs and Mr __ are having an affair and the children walked in on them"

whining is ok as far as I'm concerned. Gossip is not.

Anyone had a chance to watch the first 30 mins? It basically demonstrates how important teaching is and why learning is firmly based in science...

6:47 mins in: education is applied brain science.

I would have thought some of the teachers on this thread would have been remotely interested... Maybe getting teachers involved in the latest research isn't such an idealistic viewpoint after all.

I am not remotely interested by some stuff you find in youtube.