AIBU advice needed about HORRIBLE teacher?

[MrsShitty]

on behalf of my sister who is very upset. Her son is a very good year three child...very well behaved and has been excelling at school, on the g&t register and loves school...his reports are always that he is a good and kind boy, often voted as class rep etc.

This term his class have been taught by 2 teachers both of whom teach year 4...they were sort of tasters for nexyt year to get the DC used to their new teachers.

Yesterday my nephew came home and was very upset. He said that Miss T had screamed in his face...my nephew is almost deaf in one ear due to problems from birth and has had both eardrums burst in the past and this woman screamed so loud his ear was hurt...he cried in pain.

She screamed because my nephew had been going for a pencil and had tripped over another childs leg....she accused my nephew of kicking the other boy and would not listen when my nephew AND the other boy tried to explain he had tripped. INstead she yelled repeatedly as loud as she could in his face that she would not be talked back to and then she told him to sit on the carpet and removed his golden time...she threw his book at him.

My hephew says she has also shouted at him for other minor things such as dropping his book once. She also banged the chair of a little girl up and down with the child still sitting in it....whilst shouting "Go to the toilet then!" and the little girl was crying.

My sister says her normally happy boy has been in tears and could not sleep for three nights until all this came out last night. He is afraid of this woman and his poor ear is still hurting.

My sister has made an appointment to see the HT tonight she does not want to speak to the teacher....she feels she has nothing to say to the woman. I must add that her son is very sensible and very truthful he would not lie....the teacher is new and this is her first job.

What measures should my sister ask to take place? What should the outcome be? And who should she write to in the event that she is still not happy after the meeting? The LEA or board of governers? Thank you. I am very upset about my nephew who has had multiple operations on his ears and only has 30% hearing in the one this woman hurt.

echt, she didn't get advice she got a bloody bashing! No one can deny that!

There is not much advice here, just lots of people piling in because they can't believe that teachers would act this way & that the 8yr old MUST be lying!

HillyWallaby, there is a HUGE difference between helpful advice & what has been posted here (well, the majority of what is posted here)

And I didn't suggest cliques, but yeah, bullying...I see that here

She posted in AIBU

She was told she might be and that her sister should go in with an open mind and be prepared to listen to what the teacher/head had to say.

Some others expressed a level of scepticism at some of what had been said.

She then got aggressive and nasty and gloaty.

And flounced.

I don't see bullying - I see normal AIBU, which, at the end of the day, does come with the warning that it's rather more robust than other areas of the site.

DNFT Only after she reacted stroppily to people's suggestions that she should not ASSUME she knew exactly what happened in that room, third or fourth hand. This is a classic AIBU scenario where the OP and gets angry and defensive as soon as it becomes clear that there is not the massive outpouring of unquestioning sympathy she was expecting, but she actually gets a balanced mix of constructive and sensible views and ideas that don't fit with her own quite extreme take on a situation.

If by a 'bloody bashing' you mean that people came back with stronger and stronger arguments to counter hers then yes they did. And they also picked her up for embellishing the details of conversations she was apparently not even party to, (assuming it really was her sister's child) and blatant supposition. Yes, they did. Is that wrong?

People were perfectly nice about it until she started to get arsey and defensive. It's always the same and I don't know why anyone expects anything different.

ninah the first thing that popped into my head when reading the OP was 'it must be Ms Trunchbull'!

And amazingly not amazing at all really , I think that adults who react like this to differences of opinion are often the ones who, by some incredible stoke of coincidence, seem to have recurrent problems with 'bullying' or victimisation of themselves of their children wherever they go in life. I do not wish to belittle true bullying - it's hideous, but I do think that some people perceive bullying to be any situation where the rest of the world won't fall into line with what they want or pander to their ego.

themselves or their children

Hilly - I was just trying to find a way to word that exact thought.

And also, they seem to have a problem with their children being treated the same as everyone else's and find excuses reasons why they can't be disciplined.

I saw someone who got more than mere robust treatment.

I have seen other threads here on MN where any whiff of criticism of teachers is met by the same kneejerk reactions. It gets worse than the Doghouse here if you dare suggest that teachers are not saints.

That old 'she posted in AIBU so what did she expect' is a massive cop out.

This whole thread is a bit strange and I do feel that the OP has got a bit of a bad deal here. If you couldn't offer advice on the situation or you felt it unbelievable then why bother posting?

But anyway, just wanted to add that when my DD was physically harmed by a teacher I went directly to the HT. I did this because I felt she would be best placed to investigate. It was not my job to listen to the teachers side and try and ascertain the truth of the incident. I felt too emotionally involved. I also felt that the HT would know here staff member better then i did and would be able to judge if she was being truthful.

I was informed that this was not the first complaint against the teacher. I was told that it was going to be discussed at the governors meeting that week. I was also told that some coping strategies had been put in place following the other complaints. This was one month into the new school year so clearly she was having trouble. The HT was very open about that.

Within a week, she was on sick leave with stress and she didn't return. They ended up with a lovely teacher.

I am not sure why the OP was so doubted. I can see that she was just concerned for her DN.

HillyWallaby, the irony of you telling people here that any comment directed at the OP was more sensible or contained a better perspective than hers is of course that you weren't there and are therefore no judge of what happened or what constitutes a superior perspective either...

The OP was not 'doubted'. She was merely told that she should keep an open mind and a calm head until she had heard both sides of the story, and not bandy about phrases like 'assault' without knowing the facts.

She was told a gazillion times that she she wait until she had the full facts from both sides before she jumped to conclusions about what the teacher allegedly did math. I fail to see anything ironic about that.

There was an undercurrent of disbelief IMO. I posted earlier on the thread that firsthand experience has shown me that loud screeching/ shouting can in fact make my 8 year old (hearing impaired) cry. I only posted that because I could see that eyebrows were being raised.
The OP was angry, but the more I've thought about this the more I think I would be too.
I would also go straight to the HT for this type of incident, and I don't consider myself hysterical at all. It's very different from a school friends falling out/ struggling with school work/ homework etc, this was far more personal and would have been incredibly difficult to approach the teacher first hand.
AIBU does nearly always end like this though.

I used to have kids tell me about things their teacher shouted at them for etc when I was on break duty.
If it did happen then the teacher would recieve a written warning and be observed in lessons as well as being asked to have a meeting with HT and parents.

A written warning for shouting, candr?

From whom?

In what capacity were you 'on break duty'?

And how would you know that anyone had received a written warning?

She was told her nephew was making it up, basically. It was suggested to her that she should ask a woman (who had allegedly shouted in her nephew's ear and caused him pain and thrown a book at him and tipped the chair of another child) to give her version of events, based on the assumption that children are not trustworthy witnesses and that an adult perspective will give a balanced perspective. The truth does not always lie somewhere in the middle.

She was also told that she had made things up about the conversation with the HT. There is much irony in the way she was told that she was embellishing things or basing her report of that conversation on second hand or third hand accounts, by people who were themselves one degree further from the source than she was...

Apart from the fact that it would have been completely inappropriate to try to deal with a teacher personally in this way (because what was needed here was for the HT as manager of the teacher to handle this situation as an impartial third party) would anyone seriously suggest that a parent personally approach a playground bully for his or her side of the story before deciding what to do with a child's report of mistreatment at the hands of that bully?

She didn't jump to conclusions. She believed the nephew, who has apparently been a model student up to now, and whom she knows well.

I have seen a lot of threads here to do with the Catholic church where abuse of children at the hands of clergy, brothers and nuns has been mentioned. I have seen many documentaries and read a lot on the subject. One big factor in the abuse that went on was the complete inability of parents and allegedly responsible adults to believe children who complained of Brother This or Sister That beating children or humiliating them in the classroom. Same goes for people who did not believe children who reported sexual abuse. There were idiotic parents who took the reports their children made and went straight to the abusers themselves to find out who they should believe, with predictable and sad consequences.

As long as people are willing to give the adult the benefit of the doubt and claim that children make things up or embellish things they see or misinterpret perfectly reasonable responses of teachers, adults will abuse children with impunity in the UK. It is very saddening to see people still doing this.

So children should always be believed without question and without giving the adult an opportunity to put their side of the story?

That would have led to a gross miscarriage of justice in at least one case that I personally am aware of.

Unbelievable.

As I said. Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable.

(FWIW I don't think the nephew is lying. I think the nephew is probably used to having this army of mother/aunts all defending his every action and, as 8 yr olds do,probably thought he was in bother so laid it on a bit about how traumatised he was. Dd (also 8) does it the whole time. I do think the OP or her sister has embellished the story of the meeting. Unless the HT is totally unprofessional and deserves a P45 of her own, which of course is not out of the question,just very unlikely)

The OP did get a hard time. I got deleted for giving her a hard time. She, however was the first to get offensive. And with a poster (maryz) who is unfailingly reasonable and veh veh lovely always to everyone.

I'm actually shocked at this thread.

If my dd came home telling me this I would believe her. Why would I not? She isn't one or exaggerating or making things up. I would be furious and would go straight to the ht.

I find it shocking that parents wouldn't believe their dc and would go and check with the adult who has upset them as to whether the child is telling the truth .

One of my biggest regrets about my son's time in schools was that I didn't believe him when he told me about awful things that were happening during his school day. I assumed that because of his age he must have misunderstood events, or exaggerated or embellished or otherwise got it wrong. Some of the things he told me were so horrible they couldn't possibly have been true.

I trusted his teachers and HT and believed that they had his best interests at heart.

Over time, I found out that all the things he had told me were true. He had been bullied, ridiculed, humiliated in class and his SEN not remotely addressed. He had a hideous time and I compounded that by not believing him.

It IS possible for teachers to be in the wrong job and have no rapport with children, and it IS possible for 8 year olds to be capable of giving an accurate account of events. Sadly, for a lot of schools situations such as this are easily 'resolved' by claiming that the child must be mistaken. What kind of lesson is that to teach them?

This OP may not have handled her enquiry here the best possible way, but she has been treated appallingly by those she asked for help.

So the child must be believed without question?

And the teacher must be guilty of whatever the child says?

Absolutely not. I would still question it if he came to me with something like this but I'd investigate it carefully and not jump to any conclusions. Experience has taught me that it's possible for him to be right so I'd have to take that into account. On the occasions I've mentioned it affected our relationship that he'd told me the truth and asked for help and I had 'sided' with the school who were telling me he'd got it wrong. I was mistaken.

What I'm saying is that some children of 8 can read a situation accurately and give a true account, and some teachers get things wrong. Making automatic assumptions about who is right is a mistake.

The OP said "my sister wont speak to the teacher as she feels she knows the facts"
A number of people then pointed out, quite reasonably, that she did not know the facts, only the child's version of events.

And if the HT really "indicated to my sister that there does indeed seem to be a serious issue with this "teacher's" ability to keep her cool when looking after a class." and divulged that there had been another complaint recently, then she too needs investigating. Highly unprofessional.

Also, telling nickname, I think.