To be annoyed at DS teacher for missing taking time off for this?

[Seriouslyirritatednechanger]

My eldest DS is at a notoriously crappy school as it is, I have tried to move him at various points throughout secondary to no avail. One of his teachers is guardian to a child in his year. As a result we have had restricted parents evening times available meaning my dh could not attend with me because she wanted to see her child's teachers on the same night , the child frequently behaves badly and on some occasions the teacher has missed the start of DS lesson to be called in by the head when he deals with bad behaviour. The teacher has missed several lessons to take her child to appointments this term already and it is gcse so DS needs the teacher to revise with. This teacher is the only one for the subject in the school so cover teachers can't teach them. The teacher has refused to give DS extra revision sessions even though it is a subject he really struggles with and he did badly in his controlled assessments so needs a miracle to do well overall. No doubt the teacher will be giving her child extra help outside school but because I do not teach the subject or at all this is not an option for my child. I thought teachers were not meant to miss school time as they have short days and all the holidays to have appointments etc so I don't understand why she cannot do this like any other teacher. Others of DS teachers have children and this does not happen half as often. I feel like she is putting a child she looks after over my son and the importance of gcses for the whole class

If you child needs a miracle to pass, not sure teachers can provide that

Well, you don't really know what the appointments are for and its none of your business. You make yourself sound very entitled. People have lives...even teachers. I wouldn't wait for an important appointment till a holiday rolled around, but then that wouldn't be any of your business either.

The only part that is your business is if the school is offering appropriate instruction during your childs class. Is there not someone covering her class with a lesson plan? Why does it have to be her specifically?

Do you resent all teacher with children/guardians because those kids might get a leg up

my sympathy goes to the teacher, its very hard when yours is the child acting up at school so just imagine how she must feel being hauled in by the head, I would just want to curl up and die.

TBH, I'm saying this as a language teacher. If he's rubbish at it, extra sessions or not, he would need a miracle to pass his GCSE now, it's just too late! You should have brought up the issues much earlier with SLT rather than whining now.

Oh and I suggest you train as a teacher so you can finish at 3.30 and help your other DC, although that would be unfair...

Freddie ...good point. Also one that I would like to say to a parent today!

Forgot to say in my earlier post that it's of course not possible to only attend meetings during school holidays. The child's needs don't suddenly disappear to suit her mother's work demands. Meetings can also be arranged at very short notice if a crisis which needs to be dealt with as an emergency occurs.

Just to reiterate - there are meetings/court appearances that we are legally bound to attend.

It's not easy.

It's a bit late in the year to be complaining really.

Most FE colleges (if that's his next step??) will accept 5 good GCSEs - do you need to stress over this one??

I'd love to finish @ 3.15! Try 6pm with work to take home.
I'm a teacher (GCSE) and have had to take 2 half days thus academic year to take DS to hospital appointments - his consultant only runs clinics on Tuesday mornings so I had no choice - should i not have taken him?

You know what? the teacher in in loco parentis. Any parent will put their child first.

Would you be as vitriolic if it were a blood child and god forbid had to go to chemo session? Or are those in care kids somehow less deserving? because that is exactly how your OP comes over.

Shit happens in everyones life.

No doublecake, clearly you shouldn't have taken him! Don't you know that there might be a child in your class who not only needs you to deliver a miracle but also deserves extra from you for free just because you had the audacity to not only be a teacher, but a parent as well?

YANBU at all, teachers shouldn't have personal commitments or unforseen circumstances, their lives should revolve around every other parents wants and needs for their children. Imagine, taking time off because a child in her care is having a tough time, so utterly selfish.

I assume you have left thinking about extra revision for your struggling son so late because you have been so busy at work and, as we all know, work does come first.

Christ on a bike. Please tell me this is a joke. If not, YABEU.

As umpteen people have reiterated, teachers do not, by any stretch of the imagination, work short days. And your son's teacher hasn't just been waltzing merrily off, her absences - to support her child's additional needs - have been cleared by people who know what they're doing. Luckily teachers don't have to get their absences cleared by parents who think their child should be the centre of everyone's world, not just theirs.

It sounds as though you are fortunate enough not to have to attend appointments beyond doctor/dentist/hair if you truly think this poor woman's a hope in hell of controlling when appointments will me. If they're MDT ones she wouldn't be able to get it budged by a fraction of a second & plenty of clinics run only for a few hours on one day of the week.

You are not wrong to think that adequate teaching should be provided in lesson-time. Demanding extra revision sessions is a bit much though. It is not the teacher's fault that proper cover isn't being provided. Like it wasn't my Physics teacher's fault that my school arranged to have Mr Cadbury's Parrot cover his lessons. My Science grades suffered because I did need the school time to learn what with my home time being quite busy with, er, the home & the running thereof. (Was lovely being told how disappointed the school were I got AA in Science. No, really, telling me I'd let them down by just missing the AA they'd counted on was super.) But that was the school stuffing up. (Something at which they excelled. One of my A-Level History Papers had to be taught to us in our free time because the person meant to be teaching it had slightly less than no clue what she was about & the HoD had to step in to prevent a disaster.)

There are lots of resources out there. Some have been linked to here already, Google will bring you to many MANY more. In Y11 students should (S[E]N aside) have the capacity for independent study & generally not need spoon-feeding, which you give the impression you expect.

I am not a teacher.

But have you considered if her child was behaving and she was a nurse or doctor she'd be called in to see the head in school time.

So it's just making you aware of it because she's a teacher.

Once again foiled by the =bold thing. That was A A* there.

Oh I give up. I really do.

On the plus side, I may have unwittingly provided some comic relief with my TechnoFail. Should probably go to bed before I delete the internet...

Nobody is saying that teachers don't work a "typical" day, just that we don't have "short days" by any stretch of the imagination!

Actually (and I am a teacher) I think it depends of the scale of the absence. It's not good for lessons to be missed for year 11s at this time of year. I have huge sympathy for the school, having recently been through a period of significant staff absence in my department that we were unable to find a supply teacher to cover. We rewrote our timetable to cover as many exam classes as we could within our department, but we are a core subject and can do that, whereas a smaller (single teacher?) department would struggle. However, there is no denying that it has an impact on the students. You can't argue for the importance of teachers on one hand, and then deny the consequences of their absence on the other. The students will have suffered if the absence level is high. However, a couple of days a term obviously has less impact than a higher rate of absence. Which is why it depends on scale...

I'm a teacher. When I was going through my cycles of IVF, I was getting to the hospital for my scans at 7am, the earliest I could, and then heading into school as quickly as I could. Usually I'd miss the first teaching slot of the day. Would you have liked me to have planned my IVF cycles in my summer holiday?

This thread should into be about the hours though. This is irrelevant. The only reason they came up was because the OP brought them up - trying to make out that teachers stopped with at 3:30pm, which is NOT the case. Therefore teachers and other posters, who are not teachers, told the OP that this is not the case. It isn't - so why should it be left unchallenged, esp when being used as a direct criticism?

Any parent who has a child may have to attend appointments which they have no control over with regards to the timing.

This is a looked after child - so likely to have more appointments.

The OP says this child is already displaying behavioural issues - all of which need addressing - just like any parent regardless of their job.

How many lessons have been missed?
What cover has the head teacher put in place?
Why has it only just come to light that your child needs revision sessions - so close to exams?
What things have you and your family put in place to help your child with his revision?

It is not always possible to put proper cover in place, especially in shortage subjects. And especially for more sporadic absences. Ideally it would happen, but sometimes it can't.

And we absolutely should not be expecting parents to make up the shortfall in teaching or exam preparation in school.

I am an advisory teacher for Looked After Children, so can see it from both sides- however, my main concern would be that (aside from a parent knowing potentially confidential information about meeting arrangements) the teacher is being pulled out of her classes to deal with her DFS' behaviour. This suggests to me a school who feel unable to deal with his behaviour, and have failed to implement strategies in order to support him- if his carer was working in another school, she would not be available to deal with behavioural episodes. Similarly, she will not be available to deal with his behaviours when he leaves school, so I would want to know what the long-term plan is and how he will be supported.

If the school want to adopt this as a behavioural strategy for him, then they need to ensure that this does not impact on other students any more than necessary; in other words, they need to make supporting this student in this specific way part of the teacher's role, and allocate time and cover for her to do so effectively.

I think that the teacher has got other things that yes, are more important than school on her mind just now and that's fine.

What isn't fine is that it's coming at a cost: a cost of young people's education. I am a teacher. I'm also someone who didn't get the university place at the university I wanted to go to because a teacher didn't teach a necessary part of the syllabus and I got a C as a result - it should have been an A. Of course, I got over it, but nonetheless, it stung a lot at the time.

The OP didn't mean, I don't think, that "teachers have short days therefore we are lazy slobs." She meant that teachers have the option to arrange things outside of the working day. Of course, as others have rightly pointed out, it isn't always possible.

I think you need to see the Head, OP.

By the way. Not everyone is in the position to be able to afford a private tutor.

Hulababy:

"Any parent who has a child may have to attend appointments which they have no control over with regards to the timing.
This is a looked after child - so likely to have more appointments."

I think it is fair to say though that most full time working parents would be in pretty heavy duty negotiation with their employers in these sort of circumstances though as to how they'd be making up time, and making sure their job got done effectively.

As are teachers in my experience. As explained before hand any appointment normally has to be requested in writing and accompanied by a medical appointment card. The written request must give reasons showing why the appointment is when it is, etc. And if there are deemed too many appointments then it will normally result in a meeting to discuss this too.

The point is here I guess is that noone, not the OP either, knows what discussions having taken place regarding these absences.