to want to "have a word" with DT teacher

[fait]

My year 7 DS is colour blind. He is useless at colouring things and even worse being creative with his hands. He has done DT for 4 years at his previous school and is keen, but totally useless - no matter how hard he tries.

For homework he created a poster which I had to print out. I was in a hurry and it printed out slightly to one side. He got a 4C (in a range from 3c to 7a) because it was not centred.

He then tried to create a design for a spoon. He tried really hard, but it looked like a 3 year old had done it. He got 4C for that as well. And told he had not used enough colour.

Today he was given detention because he had not done the above properly. I am happy with the concept of detention when it is deserved. However (there is always a however), the lesson finished at 1.30pm and then it was lunch time for an hour. His detention was approx half an hour which should have given him half an hour to get his lunch. But, because his first lesson after lunch was hockey, he had to walk down to the hockey pitches at 2pm. With over 1000 children at the school trying to get their lunch at 1.30pm, he ended up having absolutely NOTHING for lunch today, otherwise he would have been late for the hockey lesson.

I am furious with the DT teacher. Firstly because he is picking on a child that is clearly totally useless at DT - it is NOT that he is not trying - he is just cack handed when it comes to anything creative. Secondly, he is the teacher, and he should be responsible for finding out if a detention is likely to stop an 11 year old child from having food at lunch time. Thirdly, there was no warning for the detention - he just decided that the table of children who had not drawn a coloured line around their poster were to be kept in for half an hour.

I don't know what to do. My instinct is to send a snotty email to the school. But then, presumably, I will be told my son was to blame. I actually do not care. I expect my DS to be allowed to get lunch EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. It is not up to a teacher to decide whether my DS should or should not be allowed to eat. However, I don't want to make things worse for my son. So I suppose I will just have to leave it.

I am keeping the pieces of work that have been marked and will be taking them to the school parents' evening to discuss as I do not believe that being discouraged in the first two weeks of senior school is conducive to my DS improving. I cannot stress enough how untalented he is with pen and pencil. He is pretty creative in his head, and does have good ideas, but cannot put them down as a design.

Oh well - whaddya think?

I would be worried the same. Because you don't know what path life will take your child.
perhaps he will went to do something that involved dt. But because the attitude is 'if you are struggling don't worry ots only dt' the child is unlikely to every get better or excel.

Yes. It's 'only' D and T . But he may well find himself making posters in English or History. He will have to draw apparatus diagrams in Chemistry. In RE/RS he will be drawing eg the lay out of a Christian church.

And how exactly is he going to break a printer??? You can be in the room with him, just let him do it for himself.

If the printer is owned by the OPs place of work, I doubt they'll be happy about her ds using it.

The school should provide printing facilities. Suppose you don't have a printer?

'I work from home'

I'd bet the school offers the option to print it out there.

But does the school provide printing facilities?
Surely they must do, what do DCs without a printer do??
When our printer broke dd put her work on a USB and printed it at school.

Schools usually provide the option to print there.
Because the OP works from home doesn't mean the printer belongs to her work.
If it does should she be printing her sons homework at all?

I was saying that work would have no idea that he was using it!

Thanks for the (mixed) responses!
Re using the printer - it is a work printer - bought and maintained by the company for whom I work.

He may well be able to print at school - at the moment he hasn't even found lost property, let alone a printer.
The colour blindness has nothing to do with his inability to wield a pencil with accuracy. I never said it did.
The pencil was grey - not graphite. It was a staedtler pencil and looked (to him) identical to the green one. Well, obviously not identical. Clearly the grey pencil looked greener to him than the green one.
He is not an idiot! He is capable of recognising an HB pencil. But thanks for that not so valuable input!

He has no problem with his detention. It was simply that he missed lunch. And I failed to understand what the detention was for. The usual "scare" tactic of complaining to the teacher did NOT elicit the usual response of "actually, I may have been doing something stupid". For once he genuinely did not understand what he was doing wrong.

The hockey pitches are a 20 minute walk from school, then they need to get changed into their hockey boots. If they did not walk during their lunch hour, then their hockey lesson would be approximately 20 minutes!

He has created several posters for RS and English so far this term - and has got good marks for them. But he creates them on the computer and not freehand. As I said before, he has GREAT ideas, but simply cannot get them onto paper.

He is certainly no saint - and I never said he was - but this once I happen to believe what he is telling me.

Would appreciate those people who are still responding to the initial post without reading the follow up responses clarifying some areas, to check them out - all feedback (well, almost all) gratefully received.

He is my only child and generally, most people think I am way to strict with him in terms of mucking around in lessons- (including teachers!) so it is refreshing to think that some of you think completely the opposite! He is encouraged and loves playing sport and is well aware that any excess energy should be directed towards this and not disrupting a classroom. It is a GS so the children are expected to make a reasonable amount of effort (I assume, never having been to one myself)

for the colour-blindness - you need to get his set of crayons, and on each one make a sticker to say what colour - it can easily be done with a piece if paper taped around the pencil.

I was crap at anything artistic at school.
still am, can't draw freehand.

I was good at technical drawing because it was all straight lines and curves - you can get special rules that you can use to draw curves
the junior one would be best for him

and i think you really should look at buying him a printer. what good is a laptop if he can't print out?
you can get really good ones for about 30quid.

Thanks Nickeldaisical. I have done this for years. One of his very bad habits is managing to lose every pencil in his case which are labelled and replace them with non labelled one. I started buying the Crayola ones which already have the name on them, but these seem to walk as well. He did start off term with a pack of Crayolas but now only has the Staedtler ones left.

I used a black indelible marker rather than taping them - from the state of the tape it appeared he spent much of a lesson trying to scratch the tape off ...

Well for a start, as well as the labeling pencil thing which you already do, I would email or speak to your DS tutor and ask them to make sure all the teachers are aware your DS in colour blind. Tbh I wouldn't wait for parents evening.
I would also ask my DS to find out whether printing is actually available at school as that could be useful.

I dont quite understand the logic of having a hockey pitch so far away, what do students do if their lesson is 2nd period or any period not after lunch?
Anyway there's obviously nothing you can do about that and I guess the DT teacher probably didn't know that but still worth mentioning to the tutor.

I don't think you are too soft or over involved, tbh. I think you are just trying to make sure this doesnt happen again which is fair enough.

I agree tamtrums FGS, he has JUST started secondary school. I know it's different at secondary and they've got to be independent etc but they don't learn those skills overnight. Year 7 is a huge learning curve, what parent isn't going to help them out a bit? As for the people who are saying you 'shouldn't' be so involved, then either they don't have a Year 7 child or they do and their child is doing fine. There's no need to be snotty about the ones who are having a few teething problems.

Thanks Nickel - I like the shaped pattern master - that looks useful.
Printer -apart from the financial side, there is a distinct lack of space. We are currently in a rented flt and don't have room for anything extra. It is furnished, so we have our furniture, their furniture plus us - and have totally run out of space!

ah, space is a problem.
You'll have to ask if they can use printers at school for printing out. :)

Did you bollock him for losing the pencils and scraping the labels off? If he got a detention for using a wrong pencil when he'd destroyed the system you'd set up specifically to avoid that situation then personally I'd tell him to suck it up.

Yes - of course I told him off! And he is NOT making a fuss - it is ME making a fuss that he missed his lunch!

He lends things to other children - he likes to be helpful. It sends me mad, but I suppose it is a good trait. Just with he could moderate it a little!

I agree that a child starting secondary needs some help but OP I honestly do think you're babying your son too much. He should be looking after his own pens at this stage, not picking the tape off and losing them. Being colourblind is a pain in the arse but it's a relatively simple problem to deal with and he should be sorting out solutions by himself, not waiting for you to sort it and then destroying your efforts!

Just as an aside, could he have eaten his lunch on the way down to hockey?

No! He didn't pick the tape off this time - this was several years ago when he was in Year 3! I then moved to indelible pen, and then onto Crayola.

If he had been able to get to the front of the queue, then he could have bought a doughnut (healthy ...) but the queue was so long and he couldn't wait any longer.

He made up for it this morning by having a bacon roll at 8.17am (I love the squid card thing that lets you see what they are eating!)

He gets his own bag packed, gets himself to and from school, cooks his own tea if I am out at a meeting, makes his own bed and washes up when asked. He also goes shopping - definitely not babied. But I don't like a child not eating for an entire day at school - it is simply not healthy. I don't care WHAT the reasons were, my child had no food from 8am until he was home at 4pm and that is NOT acceptable!

Fair enough, put a cereal bar into his bag for other times when this might happen. Problem solved.

I am horrified that the school exopects a group of 11 yr olds less than a month into their new school to independently make their own way to a hockey pitch 20 minute walk off site! That must be what a mile away at 3 mile an hour walking pace.

Horrified harvest? Really? Why?

well for one thing if kids are wandering off site in the lunchtime and the fire alarms go off then they have noidea who is on site and who isn't.
At all the schools in this area only 6th formers are allowed off site an only then if they sign out.
Why don't they register in their form room after lunch and all walk to hockey together-supervised

OP my son is colour blind, and terrible at Art and D & T, and always has been. He was behaving very badly in the Art lessons due to the fact he just could not do what they wanted him. Once I explained to teacher on Parents' Eve in Nov that he was being disruptive due to fear of doing the wrong thing and that he needed encouragement, his attitude improved, and he produced some "lovely work" (her words). We found he was much better at messier art like collage, and 3 D stuff. He did need encouragement though.
I am amazed at the printer comments btw from other posters. I am glad I am not one of their children, they sound very supportive
He has only just started a new school, and no doubt has loads of homework.

The school should offer a printer, and they should NOT expect parents to provide expensive printing equipment on demand. We don't even have a colour printer, and if the school expected me to (we have black and white only) I would SPIT. I would never allow an 11 year free access to my printer or my work computer. In fact I am fed up with the expectation that we should all have this equipment.

I doubt they're wandering off, I assume they have to sign out. The OP said that if they left after lunch they wouldn't have enough time for a lesson. I think 11 year olds are well able to get themselves a mile down the road for a lesson.