To be tired of teachers exaggerating

[onarailwaytrain]

Dd and DS (twins) in year 11 at the moment and all we have heard is how they have to get their GCSEs, their lives will be ruined if they don't, they will never get to college and never get a good job. Etc.

Dd in particular is unlikely to get many cs or above. AIBU in thinking the teachers should back off a bit?

I feel lucky to live in an area where a person can leave high school and get a job mining or farming or many, many other things which will pay enough for them to have a nice life.

If I won a lot of money I would buy a factory or something and employ a lot of non academically minded people. :o

If I had posted and said they struggled to concentrate due to ADHD or they needed clarity due to asd I bet people would have been sympathetic.

This is my child applies to children without diagnosed sen as well, they are all different, have different needs and it is extremely damaging for their self worth to hear jibes about KFC four times a day five times a week.

It's kind of tough shit on the teachers when this happens.
Great. Thank you so very much. This teacher really appreciates your attitude. How very very dare you.

A teacher's place is in the wrong. How true.

You all appear to be blaming teachers without having taken into consideration the new rules explained here and this will make a budge difference so you can see why the teachers are concerned.

I am sure someone has suggested this but write to the school and the teacher, just explain what you have explained here.

Auto correct! huge not budge!

I would read my link before you write to the school.

Excuse me chile?

To be totally honest I am getting a bit fed up of the 'poor us, poor teachers' attitude here. I have said so many times now I'm not unsympathetic to that. But at the end of the day those teachers presumably have a duty of care towards their students, and surely not making them feel worthless comes under that?

It isn't teacher bashing to say the teachers are out of order to tell my kids they aren't good enough because of something they can't help!

Let me put it another way.

So 16 years ago you have a baby and the baby has a visual impairment. She wears glasses and she can function well enough but her sight isn't as strong as her peers.

You tell her repeatedly it doesn't matter, because she can do plenty of stuff she doesn't need perfect vision for.

Then she starts school and hears repeatedly "no, you CAN see that. Stop making excuses. Sarah can see that so why can't you. I've told you where it is several times. If you don't see that you'll never get a job. If you don't see that you can forget going to college. You want to do this when you leave school, well you need to see that first. You can't see that? Hope you'll enjoy queuing for the dole then."

How would you feel if that was your child?

Who would your priority be? The child or the teacher?

It will be interesting to see if staying on at school changes childrens' attitudes to school, previously, the cool dude rebels didn't work, wasted their time and left at first opportunity, it won't look so cool if you have to sit another 2 years in school doing nothing

I think that rather than take it out on teachers you need to fight the cause the reason why they are saying it If you read this other link you will see that things are not as they used to be even a couple of years ago.

onarailwaytrain you may not believe it but I'm 100% in agreement with you. It's unacceptable that your child ren have been spoken to in this way. It's unacceptable they have been given unachievable targets. That's completely wrong.
But try to see it from our side. Our students have unachievable targets. If they don't achieve them, on a good day our pay is cut. On a bad day ee are forced through trumped up competency procedures and sacked.
We are all human. I work on the basis that if I wouldn't do it to my own kids I wouldn't do it to someone else's. But this is the system we are given to work with. It is a bully's charter, no more, no less.

I realise that delphiniums but I won't be reading the link thanks because this wasn't a thread about "poor teachers." Which isn't to say I'm not sympathetic at all but my sympathy is running dry every time one of my children starts crying.

Besides, the threats and the put downs aren't new; Gove and the Tories aren't completely to blame. Individual teachers also need to think about what they're saying to vulnerable young people some of whom do have special needs.

Without getting involved in anything that's been posted before, just to make it clear to you OP, if your twins, who sound lovely, go on to vocational qualification either in college or whilst working, such as care or to be a mechanic, they will have to do English and maths as part of that qualification if they do not have a grade C or above at GCSE. This is even if they are doing an apprenticeship as English and maths are now an integral part of these and HAS to be delivered alongside it, including exams. I just wanted you to be aware that if they do not get a C at GCSE this is unlikely to be the end of them having to study it, with tutors encouraging them to get a certain grade.

What do they want to do eventually? Surely the way to deal with this is for them to have a realistic plan for what to do next.

I sympathise with that chile and I've been "seeing it from your side" as it were since the DCs were in reception.

I'm now fed up - completely, utterly fed up. With the system yes but also with individuals who have got to take some responsibility.

As I have said to my own DS on the extremely rare occasion he has had a detention there are reasons but not excuses,there are reasons he was late but that wasn't an excuse for being late. Maybe the teachers have good reason to be stressed but that is not an excuse for ruining my child's self worth and mocking the job she works very hard at.

Sorry HAVE to be delivered, and qualifications. I seriously need to check my predictive text.

That was explained in my links ZylaB , the teacher is not putting it very acceptably, but they are facing the new reality for the student. I don't think that some parents know that there is a new reality.

If you have a child with SNs you need to be asking questions early on because this new policy will have an effect.

So they have to study? I don't mind that. They don't mind that. Why would they? They are eager to learn.

Why would I mind a teacher trying to teach them something? :) That's NOT the point.

They work well with all of them, the issue is that if you are a child to whom academic study doesn't come easily you end up in a group where attitudes and behaviour can be poor.

Then the teachers resort to attacking their self worth, as a collective.

I get it but I'm now, really, sick of it!

Lots of sympathy, OP. I agree that teachers are under a lot of pressure but perhaps it would be better if they were honest and instead of saying, "You must pass these GCSEs or you'll work in KFC for the rest of your life" they said, "You must pass these GCSEs because my salary depends on it."

Not everyone can be academic. Not everyone can go to university. If everyone passed 10 GCSEs at A*, some of them would still have to work in KFC.

There's also an assumption that a lot of people, including teachers, have, which is that the reason children don't achieve is because they don't work hard enough. But actually if you don't understand something, then working hard at that thing won't help you understand it. You need someone to explain it to you in ways that will help you understand it.

I hope your DC are able to find fulfilling jobs that they enjoy, OP. We need mechanics and we need carers.