Teachers

[Flatwhite32]

Is it just me, or have there been quite a few threads on here recently criticising/questioning teachers? I'm a teacher (currently on maternity leave) and while we aren't perfect, I find it demoralising that I work so hard in a job made extremely difficult by the government (funding cuts and stupid, pointless bureaucratic policies) yet the respect for teachers from some members of the public seems to be decreasing. I know in some instances teachers are unreasonable (I commented on a thread a few weeks ago where the teacher in question was being very unreasonable), but I am finding that more and more parents complain when I tell their child off, for example, or refuse to read to their child because 'that's just the teacher's responsibility, not mine'. It really gets me down sometimes!

I just wish people would go and try and actually get some information before posting all over the internet. It gives the impression loads of teachers/schools are nasty, child hating and incompetent, even actually many/most incidents turn out to be different than first thought.

Where did I say anything about "just working harder", I was talking about taking responsibility.

I thought we were talking about the cartoon..? Where the child is being told off for not working hard enough. Hope that helps!

SallySangFroid

If we are just taking about the card then why bring SEN and equal playing fields in to it?

I agree.
The numpty one really annoyed me.

I wouldn’t have been happy with my child being called a numpty.

I wouldn’t have complained about it but I would have found it off.

Oh my god can we not start the bloody numpty discussion here as well. A more pointless storm-in-a-teacup thread I have yet to see.

I’ll post what I feel like within the guidelines, thanks.

If we are just taking about the card then why bring SEN and equal playing fields in to it?

Because I think the cartoon is unfair; the cartoon harks back to the day when parents blamed children for failing exams - the “good old days”. Whereas now HTs blame teachers for failures.

One, I don’t actually think that’s true. Do HTs honestly blame teachers for one child failing an exam? Surely they will only be “berated” if more children than expected do poorly, rather than one individual.

Two, I don’t think the days when children were held solely responsible for their exam results were “the good old days”. Yes, ultimately it’s down to the child to work as hard as they can to do as well as they can, but there are many other factors at play which make it an uneven playing field. It isn’t just “should have worked harder” as the cartoon implies.

Does that make sense to you now?

Anyway, back to the op, I think it’s becoming cyclical. The best students don’t usually want to be teachers, because it’s so hard and such a thankless job, so the mediocre students get recruited and this lowers standards overall, then public opinion is lower too as standards are low. I think more needs to be done to improve opinions of teachers, but whining on here saying “we’re all so lovely and nobody loves us and it’s your children who aren’t working hard enough and won’t listen to MY rules about having a wee blah blah” isn’t going to achieve anything. Obviously that’s not all teachers posting on here, but some certainly aren’t doing the profession any favours.

To change public opinion of teachers for the better, I’m afraid SOME of it has to come from the profession. Not just demanding it on MN.

Oh balls! Name change fail. That’s me^^

Also, I personally think the answer is better funding or at least improving the chronic underfunding.

There was an incident referred to up thread, where a teacher said she had to buy glue sticks with her own money and when a child them broke the glue sticks, the teacher was obviously very annoyed and put the child straight into detention. The parent took issue with the detention and the teacher was saying “what the parent didn’t know was that I had to pay for those myself”. This sort of implies that she might not have given the child detention if she hadn’t paid for the glue sticks herself.

Whether or not another teacher would have given the child detention over the broken glue sticks regardless of who paid for them is another matter, but maybe the parent was a bit surprised if it was a usually lenient teacher who gave their child detention.

As I’ve said, I understand perfectly why a lot of teachers must be at the end of their rope btw and detention isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But direct your anger at the right people - parents and teachers should all be angry, but not at each other.

I’m just using this as an example of how underfunding is causing friction between parents and teachers.

I also think teaching needs to be made a lot more attractive to top students. Golden hand shakes mean fuck all if the job is so dire that most people leave within five years and the salary isn’t exactly going to go far if you live somewhere like SE England. More support and more funding is needed and I’d support any teacher making that point. But if you’d rather bitch and moan on here about how terrible parents and pupils are these days and how you wish it was like the “good old days”, (as in the aforementioned cartoon), then no, I don’t really support that at all. It’s pointless to wish for society to be completely different and I think some teachers are getting angry at the wrong people - I had to pay for glue sticks? That’s outrageous - blame the underfunding, don’t take it out on some kid by putting them in detention when you wouldn’t ordinarily do so.

Do HTs honestly blame teachers for one child failing an exam?

Yes. It's not uncommon for your classlist with results to be put in front of you and to have to justify exactly why individual students failed to reach targets. A list of all the interventions you undertook for that specific student is also often expected. So yes, yes they do blame teachers.

Honestly, people just don't understand what happens in schools these days. It's not saying teaching is the hardest job ever - there's plenty of jobs I's hate to do. It's that when you say out loud what the reality of the job is, people say "oh no, that can't be what happens", when it is!

Is asking for justification the same as being “berated” for each individual who didn’t pass?

I believe you though. And the point you’ve picked up on certainly wasn’t my main one. Teaching sounds like one of the worst jobs imaginable to me, but I know a lot of teachers who are passionate about their jobs and stay even though it’s dire. You don’t need to tell me how bad it is; I’ve just had a big rant at how bad it is, for teachers. Can you see that the education system being underfunded and possibly mismanaged also has a negative effect on PUPILS though? It’s shit for everyone no? Get angry at the right people. It sounds terrible and it makes me angry too.

Sally,

It's a 2 panel cartoon. Google it if you haven't already.

The point of it isn't to discuss every single issue affecting education today. It's a 2 panel comic for crying out loud.

The point of it is to compare and contrast the different attitudes to teaching, in general, and the paradigm shift in the relationship between parents and teachers over the last couple of decades.

50 years ago, teachers were (hypothetically) respected professionals, and parents trusted us to make the right calls the vast majority of the time. Any time a parent marched into school angry, it was genuinely because a gross error had taken place. If it hadn't, they were given extremely short shrift.

Now, (hypothetically) parents are "customers" and the customer is always right. The teacher is afforded roughly the respect given to someone who works in PC World, and gets harangued about as frequently. Your value and worth are judged solely and entirely on your exam results and "Why didn't this one specific child achieve an A+?" rather than "Are your kids happy in their classes, psychologically healthy, is nobody being left behind, and are you broadly covering the curriculum set by the government?"

All the crap about inequality of outcome is important, sure, but completely irrelevant to a comic that is solely addressing the perceptual change over time about who, exactly, is responsible for a child being successful and whose fault it is when they fail. It's simplistic, sure. It doesn't address subtleties, sure. Maybe it's not even accurate, because rose tinted glasses are a thing. However it is, at the end of the day, just a comic.

I also think teaching needs to be made a lot more attractive to top students.

I disagree. The top students need to be going into higher education careers like research and development, cutting edge science/IT and university level projects.

What we need in schools at the secondary level are teachers with strong single subject knowledge and good group control skills, not someone who got a 1:1 and has never taught a class in their life.

At primary level we need responsible and empathic teachers with a good grasp of the basics across the board, and specialist training in safety and current thought on child development, again, not someone with a 1:1 who can't tell a child from a large monkey. The governments attitude of giving £20,000 to people with a 1:1, £18,000 for people with a 2:1, £15,000 for people with a 2:2 is beyond useless, almost as bad as their plan to put ex-military staff into schools to "instill discipline".

You don't need a degree to teach, except at A-Level or University. What you need is a level head, an understanding of the curriculum, a desire to help people achieve their best under difficult circumstances and the ability to deal with stress and abuse on a daily basis. Any of the above is more valuable than whether you got full marks for your thesis or not. People who function well in ivory towers do not always function at all in classes of 36 teenagers.

You’re assuming I meant top students to mean just too academically, when I just mean the best possible candidates. At the moment I don’t think that’s happening, or it might be, but those top candidates soon leave if there’s even the remotest sniff of something else. I’ve seen loads of posts on here where teachers are desperate to leave. That’s not good; that is my point.

And yes, it sounds like a very overly simplistic and inaccurate comic / meme / cartoon. But someone brought it up on here as a discussion point, so I was discussing it. You joined in, so I don’t know why you’re now saying “it’s just a comic, why are we even talking about it”?

You’re choosing to get defensive and critique every point I make just so that you can ‘win’ the argument. It’s a bad attitude to have. I seriously hope you don’t adopt that attitude when you’re teaching. I’d rather be ‘in the right’ than do a good job.

I will say it again, I, the parent, am not your enemy. You’re getting angry with the wrong person.

Teaching is no different from any other profession. There are great ones, there are decent ones and there are god awful ones.

The latter should of course have some sort of accountability.

I’m yet to meet a poor teacher who has been involved with DD. I think the good teachers far outweigh the bad.

Sally, if you use the word "Student" then of course I'm going to assume you mean "Graduate". The definition of the word is "Someone who studies academically". If you mean something else, say something else.

I have no objection to discussing parental attitudes, which is what the cartoon references, but you're dragging in multiple unrelated topics like government funding and SEN. If you want to talk about parental expectations, then talk about that. But don't take a comic about topic A and criticize it for not mentioning topics B-Z.

I don't "have to be right". I have nothing invested in this at all. But by all means, continue to make passive aggressive insinuations that I'm a bad teacher.

You need to learn the difference between "Defensive" as a personality trait, and "Defending your position in open debate". I have no need to be defensive towards strangers on the internet because I'm a fully functioning adult human being. You can't make me angry. Pretend you're having a conversation with Spock, if that helps you to understand my tone.

You also should know that critiquing every point is... basically the point. If I selectively pick and choose some of your points and disregard others, that makes for an incredibly poor debate overall, because if I ignore 50% of what you say and you ignore 50% of what I say, what's the purpose of having the conversation in the first place?

But either way, there's a huge difference between having differing ideas on a concept and idea, and insulting someone. I've tried very hard not to insult you personally, or make any kind of assumption about your skill or personality. I'd appreciate the same in return.

Of course you're not my enemy. I don't even know you. I don't even live in the same country as you. However I'm happy to have a conversation with someone who has opposing opinions to my own on the off chance either of us can update or change our points of view.

sethis

You have displayed a nasty attitude and are like a dog with a bone trying to rip apart my attempts at offering support to both sides. I’ve said countless times on here that blame does not lie with parents or teachers. You disagree, which is fine, but you’ve made a point of picking apart my opinions so that I can’t be right. And if I am right, as with the cartoon, it’s because I’m discussing it wrong . Bleurgh, I genuinely shudder at the thought of being taught by someone like that. Yikes.

I’ve already explained my train of thought re the comic and why I thought it was inaccurate. You agreed with me I think..? But you also don’t think I should be discussing it at all... or something. I really can’t tell anymore what your point is tbh, except to have a go at me, which really isn’t my problem 🤷‍♀️.

Top students aren’t only “top students” based on their grades, to me anyway. But maybe that’s another point where we’ll have to agree to disagree.

You’ll have to find someone else to bully now. Toodlepip!

I don't blame teachers but the education systems wrong. Inclusive sen doesnt work. Ds started reception 5 weeks ago. Previous to this i have fought to get him the support he needs and got no where so hes in mainstream with no support tracking 2 to 3 years behind in development and isnt toilet trained yet. Do i believe his teacher should have to change his nappies no i dont but what am o supposed to do i tried to get support and also i have tried (and keep doong so) so hard to toilet train him. I can see teachers frustrated about having ro find time to change him and support his other needs. I can sense the frustration from teacher and senco towards me and believe me between ds preschool a d EP blamining me for everything i have took a massive step back and let the teacher get on with this. I don't have no respect his teacher but honestly feel they have little respect for us and the phrase not trying hard enough has been thrown around often about whos. We understand and appreciate how difficult it is for ds's teacher but we have tried and we arent just being difficult parents.

One, I don’t actually think that’s true. Do HTs honestly blame teachers for one child failing an exam?

Yes. And not just asking for clarification/justification either. The way some headteachers speak to their staff on this issue is awful and they can actually punish staff with pay, department budget cuts, extra work and scrutiny.

In my case this year, all because a year 13 child got an unconditional UCAS/University offer early on and downed tools. Even upped and walked out of exam room disqualifying a paper, but giving my stats a U.
All through the year, it was meeting after meeting with Head and Parent, where both were asking what I was going to do about it all. Soul Destroying. I now have to take time out of my evenings to visit other schools to see what they do, had a reduction in department budget and had to write pages and pages of response to their questions after analysing the data in my own time, before term started.

That's what people mean when they post that cartoon, I'm afraid. That year 13? Got his place and has just started his course.

I hope some SLT would blame it on the lazy Year 13 and not the teacher?

Some would, yes, CarmelAngel. Of course they would.

SallySangFroid

I am intrigued as to why you believe that a child with a SEND cannot work hard or harder? All teachers should be striving for children to do their best but that doesn't mean that all children's best is going to be the same.

And yes I do believe that children should ultimately take responsibility for their work and their grades. Is it not a major complaint that school children are spoon fed and cannot work by themselves?