AIBU to think teachers should be respectful to pupils?

[mammaplay]

DS 11 has just started secondary school. He has mild SEN needs which the school are aware of (effects speed of work and presentation).
Today in front of the class, the maths teacher screwed up his worksheet, threw it in the bin and simply handed him a new worksheet (with no verbal communication) as he'd made a minor mistake in not leaving enough space on the page.
AIBU to think this type of behaviour from teachers is a bit 'old school' and unnecessary, or am I being completely precious about my little snowflake?

Chat to child first, and if you are confident his account is complete (no drip feed of extra circumstances) ask to talk to teacher. It's early in the term for this!

But there's a world of difference between, "Oh dear - you've not left yourself space for the working out here. Look, have a new sheet and start again and we'll pop this one straight in the bin, shall we?" and "How dare you present me with such rubbish! Start again and do it properly" accompanied with dramatic scrunching and flinging.

Try to see where the incident fits on the spectrum between those extremes.

YANBU if it really happened as you've described. Most of the time, there is part of the story that is left out.

Need more info. Did your kid go to the teacher to ask for a new worksheet because he’d run out of room? Or was your kid handing it in as completed work not knowing he’d made a mistake?

Oh dear - you've not left yourself space for the working out here. Look, have a new sheet and start again and we'll pop this one straight in the bin, shall we?"

There is absolutely no need to talk to 11 year olds like babies in order to be an effective teacher.

“Remember I said leave ten lines? Here you go, do it again, please.”

Nothing wrong with that. No “oh dear” or “let’s pop this in the bin” needed. 🙄

Not enough information for us to judge. If he had pretty much completed the work and it was destroyed then the teacher was unreasonable.
If the teacher had explained 6 times how to complete the worksheet so they had enough space to work and your child did it wrong then maybe disposing of the incorrect start and giving another sheet was the correct thing to do.

I think some teachers are arseholes, certainly, as some people are in every profession, but I also think all children are more than capable of embellishing (or leaving out important details) when they want to have a whinge to their mum about a teacher they don’t like.

Is my KS1 showing, seaweedandmarchingbands?!

NearlyGranny

😂 Nothing wrong with being super-nice! But it’s not disrespectful to be no-nonsense and it saves time.

We've had this, my DS has Sen.

I complained about it and the teacher rang me to apologise.

Was your son able to do the work ‘properly’ without further explanation the second time then? If so I suppose he did know what to do and the teachers approach was kind of justified - why explain things a hundred times when a child is just being complacent/ choosing to ignore an instruction. If he was struggling and the teacher did that then it’s obviously different and not acceptable, especially if that was down to his special needs.

There should be absolute certainly from a teacher that a child's work is not of standard due to deliberate laziness before they take that action.
But I doubt in 99% of cases it is.

Other way round.
In most cases it is laziness or ignoring simple instructions.

I have recently had lovely classes with brilliant behaved students who want to do well. By week 2/3 last year I had students who, naturally as kids can be, try and see what they could get away with / not listen properly to instructions / do how they wanted and not how I'd said. I had to get some students to start again because:

1. I'd said the table needed drawing in pencil and taking up half a page (they'd drawn it far too small in pen)
2. I'd given an extract from the novel to annotate, I'd spent time resizing and trimming it to fit within the page and the instruction was to glue it in flat in the middle of the page to make notes (2 students decided to fold is and glue it sideways so they had no space to make annotations)
3. I'd said leave a full blank page for me to glue the marking grid on before starting today's work (they didn't and started on the next page)
4. I'd said to divide the page in half and do not write in the margins so we can peer assess later (they wrote across the whole page and did corrections in the margins)

None of them were bad students, in fact some were lovely. The bottom line is they hadnt followed the instructions so they started again.

It would be most snowflakey for someone to complain that I'd made their DC start again when very clear instructions (also on the board, also on my model, also followed by 29 other students) weren't followed.

Funnily enough my books are always used as examples for best practice and there were no issues with any of those students over the year. They knew the expectations. No lack of respect in either direction. I was actually quite gutted not to teach them this year.

LolaSmiles

There needs to be a new consensus in education that teachers ask students to do things a certain way for a reason, and the onus needs to be on the child to listen and do their best to get it right.

I'd phone the school, check it happened as your child says it did (not saying he's lying, but always best to hear both sides of it) and if it did, I'd complain. Thankfully most teachers do not display this type of behaviour. The teacher should obviously take any SEN into account and clearly a conversation should have happened. If it needed to be redone the teacher should have gone about it differently.

Because seaweed if you have a child with send who can't follow instructions without extra support then you shouldn't be damaging their self esteem for failing to reach standards - you should be providing the correct support.

If a child can complete the sheet and has not bothered/ doodled on it then there certainly is a case for just screwing it up and saying "do it properly".

MonChatEstMagnifique

But the OP’s child clearly did know what he had done wrong, otherwise how would the OP know? Why was a conversation necessary?

Because seaweed if you have a child with send who can't follow instructions without extra support then you shouldn't be damaging their self esteem for failing to reach standards - you should be providing the correct support.

We have no reason whatsoever to think this is the case. In fact, we have reason to think the opposite: even though the teacher threw away the worksheet, the OP’s child does know what he did incorrectly. How, if he is unable to follow an instruction? Surely he would just be a bit confused about why he had to begin again?

Yanbu at all.

I also feel like most people have forgotten what it’s like to be at secondary school - the teachers who had quite a tough approach and dry sense of humour were probably some of the best. Some were just dicks - but that hasn’t exactly scarred me for life... Some were wimps (often the nice ones) and couldn’t control the class, and they were the worst... I hate the word ‘snowflake’, but I think parents getting overly invested in incidents like this probably does contribute to raising kids who can’t cope with a bit of negativity or what they perceive as unfairness. That’s life - and bear in mind bosses can be a lot more mean, unfair and disrespectful than most teachers.

Maybe parents need to teach their children to be respectful to teachers? You wouldn’t believe some of the conversations I have had with parents which have ended in telling me to fuck off or putting the phone down on me. Whilst I attempt to be respectful at all times, I am also human and having young people laugh in your face, call you names, refuse to follow even the most basic of instructions, destroy my property and that of the school, overtly bully other children, swear at me and threaten me (rape, death...), ask a question I have answered 15 times in 30 minutes,.....well, as I say, there comes a point at which we all lose it. It is par for the course in some schools, but doesn’t make it right.

From my perspective as a parent, the vast majority of teachers remain in teaching in the current climate because they genuinely love the young people they work with and want to do best by them. They deserve respect at all times and I will come down on my children like a ton of bricks if they are found lacking in that regard. Sadly, too many parents are all about rights and sod all about responsibilities.

My dishes just come home from school very angry, he has SEN & goes to the SEN centre at lunchtime as it is quiet & less crowded, a Y7 pupil was asking why he hadn't got a TA, he always had one at primary school. Ds said that two teachers were stood screaming in his face that he didn't need one & to get to lessons, afterwards poor Y7 child was so upset he had to be sent home. Some teachers are on a power trip,,they expect to be treated with respect but don't treat pupils with the same respect.

Thanks for taking the time to reply and it's useful to hear other perspectives.

I'm certain the incident happened as described and DS has already been highly awarded with behaviour points in other areas and is unlikely to have been messing about.

I think this particular teacher has a heavy handed approach which may be his style. I'm not outraged and won't be phoning the school, but I will mention at parents evening that my DS in particular performs better in an environment of support and encouragement (processing issues are worsened when anxious).

What incident? I really don’t see the issue. Your DS got something wrong, was given another sheet and was able to continue with the work.

Hmm I'm always inclined to wait here. See how thing pan out.

Take today. 5 of my new year 7 classes (so 50+ kids) haven't done homework they've had a week for.

One utter bullshit story in there. Rest didn't care/forgot/whatever. If there's a real reason absolutely then that's fine but there's not here. All five put into lunchtime detention (I'm being nice, it should be after school). Cue kids in tears.

Sorry kids....you had a week. With reminders. I've given lunchtime detention this time but it'll be after school from now onwards.

I fully expect angry parent calls tomorrow.....

Talk to the teacher first.

We had the same issue last year. Parent came in upset about how her child went home crying because we took his work,scrunched it up and threw it in the bin and he was made to start again. The sheet was never scrunched up,it never went in the bin. We showed it to her and explained to her(as we did to the child) that while the work was good , the layout was all wrong and messy. Since it was for a competition we wanted him to do his best and increase his chances. He actually was one of the winners.

It is beyond frustrating sometimes.

Today, year 8
Give instructions.
Write them on board
Demo under visualiser what to do.
Recap.

1 minute later....."miss, I've done it wrong"

Aaaarrgghhh!!!! I'm never cross with them but it's so wearing sometimes because I just don't know what else to do to help!!