To be late for parents evening

[42bunnytails]

DD2 (Y9) has made an appointment with her German teacher.

She hates him, she's absolutely useless at German, gets put in detention and has made no progress in three years.

She's a straight A student at everything else

She's done it purely to see if I can keep a straight face, when she knows I think he's an idiot too.

It's not fair, she knows I had a fit of the giggles watching one of her class just wander off mid bollocking, leaving her parents to hear the end of it.

To make it worse you can see the French teacher trying not to giggle too

Absolutely Lottie

Under performance management teachers can't be that complacent.

OP can see in to the teacher's mind, steers the thread onto general political concerns, re-casts the it as some kind of joke.

Nah, still not buying it.

Still utterly knobby.

By the way, with such profound concerns about a straight A student, surely there would be a paper trail a mile long raising your concerns to the higher-ups by now?

There's obviously some issues here, but honestly, either suck it up or be an adult and make a formal complaint if he's that bad.

Everyone comes across the odd teacher who is useless or they don't click with, but encouraging your DD to show such flagrant disrespect and wasting his tine at the expense of other families is really not on.

My DD had a less than brilliant teacher last year, both pastorally and academically (six months of issues culminating in out & out bullying that he didn't notice until I went in 3 times in one week to get it sorted), and whilst we'd have a bit of banter and she knew I was no more keen than I was, I always pointed out how bloody hard teaching is and that although he wasn't our cup of tea, he was doing his best and she had to grin and bear it and do likewise.

Horrible no, making tasteless jokes because I'm frustrated and irritated, yes.

Had I wanted a serious debate I'd have not posted in AIBU.

Truth is he'll have corner DD to make an appointment because everyone will try and avoid him (and I can't because he'll be next to French, who I need to see).

I'll smile and nod and make all the right noises, while sheathing that it's a total waste of time.

I'm not going to use my "That Parent Credits" complaining about a subject DD will give up. Neither is anyone else.

Therefore, he continues to be paid for getting poor results and alienating bright and generally hard working pupils from a subject that could be fascinating.

Sorry, it's late and my dyslexic English is getting the better of me.

DD1 is also dyslexic, hence I need my "that parent credits" where they do some good, although I really have to say much these days.

Rarely (oh do wish we had an edit button)

If she's a straight A student, how about buying her a dictionary for this homework all in German? I very much doubt year 7-9 homework was complex enough for a dictionary to be no help. I've seen French year 9 homework from a school following immersion. I bet 'die Katze ist schwarz' would be the limit of it.

That's what I would do, for the sake of my child, if the language teaching didn't meet my standards. And personally, I found German easier, thanks to Latin. Welsh and French are more difficult for me than German.

So if it's that bad, be the bigger person and make the complaint so that others who follow will not suffer as your DD has done. Of course you will have supported and monitored her progress in the subject since Year 7 so you will have all the evidence to hand to show how bad he is.

By your account he's a poor teacher at least partly because he sets more detentions than any other subject teacher (love to know how you know that), but not sure how that makes him a bad teacher.

As for getting serious debate in AIBU, you can get it, but usually not by posting silly, inflammatory OPs as you run the risk of getting your arse handed to you on a plate. As has happened here.

To be fair, had you posted your OP anywhere on MN, the reaction would have been the same, just more, and more unbuttoned traffic on AIBU.

Why not complain properly?

If what you are saying is true and your daughter is a straight A student in everything else, including French, then why are you allowing a teacher to deny her another subject?

If she's getting an A in French then the entire MFL department can't be shit so why are you not being proactive, complaining each time there is an issue, speaking to other parents to get their backing - why are you, and they, sitting back and allowing your child to suffer that?

Nothing annoys me more than hearing parents complain about a teacher (when it's fair and justified - not in 'that big bad teacher picked on my princess' cases), but none of them actually getting off their arses to do anything about it.

Add message | Report | Message poster 42bunnytails Tue 13-Jan-15 00:26:22
Chipping you have a wonky memory, I may or may not have been here before, but if I told you I'd have to nibble you to death.

??????????

No. I have Advanced Search which I used when people were accusing you of being a troll or this being a reverse.

So despite knowing full well that this German teacher was awful (on account of his terrible reputation and years of failing students) your dd chose to take German anyway? Clever.

And despite you escalating this problem to the Governors, nothing is being - done despite years of failing students. OK

And now you and your dd are acting like bitches on principle. But of course.

Dh is a teacher, I would love it of no one wanted to see him. That way he could see ds on his birthday. Alternatively do see him and ask some hard questions some of then maybe pertaining to your child's attitude

In this world of academies NO teacher is safe. If he is really this bad over a three year period I'd expect him to at least be going through capability.
Parents' evenings are awful enough without infantile behaviour.

I fully agree with you that MFL is treated like an 'extra' in schools and has some bad teachers that bump along the bottom just under the radar of capability procedures. It does start at primary, with no funding given to qualified MFL teachers and pupils learning from crappy DVD resources that do nothing to inspire them or make them want to take the subject further.
Playing silly games with Parents' Evening appointments isn't the right way to tackle it, however.

Maybe he IS a bad teacher but to make no progress at all in 3 years, especially in German of all languages, is absolutely a bad student, and perhaps the parents should have been more supportive of homework rather than ridiculing the teacher while not even raising concerns fully. Laughable that the 'immersive curriculum' is to blame for not being able to stay on top of homework - I'm fluent in German but this year am hit with Welsh and Spanish instead (dd in Y7), two languages I previously could care less about. I do this really radical parenting thing - make dd explain it to me first if she needs help, and if she has to look every word up in a dictionary then so be it. Then she understands it better and I have it translated so I can help her, win win. You might find other parents try it too and see at least some results in THREE years, however poor the teacher is.

The kids I loved to teach, were the ones who wanted to learn. I had a bottom set of yr11 who were such pleasant kids, they tried their hardest in science knowing that they would be lucky to get a decent grade. In return I could make the lessons as 'fun' as possible because I could trust those kids to be responsible. They all did really well for their ability and much better than their predicted grades. I also had a second set yr11, very clever individuals, but quite honestly the majority of them were lazy and immature. They were horrendous to teach, practical lessons had to be very much pulled in because they liked to piss about playing pranks on each other, and half of my time was spent following up their bad behaviour. Those individuals did less well than expected. It is not just down to the teacher how the teaching and learning goes.

Yabu and very rude. Why your dd getting detentions?

How about teaching your daughter respect?

My dd does german, she's struggled as before year 7 had never done german and nor had we.
She's tried so hard because it's not something that comes easy to her and I'm incredibly proud of her for simply trying.

'parent credits'

You think the teacher is like this because no one cares enough about his subject to raise a complaint.

So complain, properly, through the correct channels about the sub standard MFL teaching and learning. If you haven't tried, you don't know if it would make a difference. But much easier to blame teaching than your daughters lack of effort in the subject.

Then instead of blaming the teacher for her shit grades, you could start taking responsibility for her shit attitude. She got it from somewhere.

42BunnyTales here's the thing. I put it to you that you have made up everything in your second and subsequent posts to deflect the pasting you were getting and to justify your puerile behaviour.

I don't believe he knows his job is safe. I don't believe your DH has tried to have a sensible word with him. I don't believe your DF "had a go" at teaching MFL and I don't believe your DC are polite and respectful to him, hence the detentions. There I've said it.

And FYI the English Baccalaureate has no requirement for students to do 2 languages, so that's a crock of shit as well. HTH.