To think the school have lost the plot

[Hardymonica]

I am so cross with the staff at my daughter’s primary school. Today they set up a fake incident where it appeared that someone had vandalised the girls toilets. The children were tasked with writing a report about it and it was then revealed at the end of the day that the teachers set it up.

My daughter is seven, she understands logically it was the teachers who did it but it has really unsettled her. For the whole day she was led to believe that school was unsafe and the impact of that has stayed with her. She is anxious about using the toilet at school on her own now and won’t be in a room on her own at home. She gets very distressed at bedtime, saying she’s frightened of being on her own in case intruders come.

I’ve had to send a message to the school to let them know and ask them to make sure she’s using the toilet. They are aware that she suffered anxiety last year but obviously weren’t thinking of the more sensitive children when they planned this bizarre thing. I’ve asked them to let us know in advance in future if they’re planning a pretend event. I’m sure they could have thought of a more positive incident to use to inspire them to write.

Aibu to think this was a bizarre idea for an activity and to feel angry they didn’t think about the potential effects on certain children?

Reminds of my niece and the cheetah at the bottom of the playing field. She is autistic and has ADHD. Her class mates thought it was funny to pretend there was a cheetah at the bottom of the playing field. We couldn't convince her it wasn't there. They did plenty of other mean things.

Teachers should know better!

That's awful. It's humiliating and confusing for the kids.
Since when was 'fear' a tactic in literacy? Like a PP said, imagine if your DH did it to your home and then told you it was all a joke. I'd go ballistic!
Fine, conduct an investigation as part of a literacy project. But why insight fear? It's cruel.
It's made me feel upset imagining their bewildered faces and it's not my kid!
I'd be furious

My primary school really was Burgled several times when I was there. It was announced in assembly by the head teacher. I don't remember anyone being traumatised by it. My secondary school was also the victim of some very serious arson attacks.

My DDs reception class "filmed" a dinosaur in the classroom overnight leaving them an egg to find in the morning. DD, only just 4 was terrified for weeks that a T. rex was going to wander into her classroom. Not long after they were watching a clip of Toy Story and buzz lightyear ran into their classroom. DD burst into tears and had to go to the office to calm down. One of several reasons that I took her out of school and now home educate her.

I've thought of another one. Got to school to pick up my 8 year old to find the pond all smashed up and fenced off with "police aware" tape. He wasn't worried by whatever scenario they'd been doing but for ten minutes I bloody was!

At my child's school the story was that someone had broken in through an unlocked window in the head's office and stolen all the books from the shelves in the year 2 corridor. I think the most worried person was a particularly gullible parent.

I think staging a crime, especially if the crime is said to have been committed by intruders, is a step too far. Usually when there are crime solving activities the crime is 'who stole the headteachers pen' with a list of suspects. Usually other teachers (kids love that bit).

However, I think even benign or fun activities can have unintended and unexpected consequences for some children, as can be seen by some of experiences shared in this thread. No setting is going to get it right 100% of the time. When it doesn't work, parents need to go in and say actually Jodie found this quite unsettling or David was very worried. Then staff know what is working and what isn't.

This is just the stimulus for a writing unit, don't be over dramatic!

I don't know how I would have coped with something like that - I might have found it funny or weird - but I remember doing some police workshop where we got chased through the woods, I think I was in Year 6, and this Iranian girl who barely spoke English proper freaked out because she thought it was real.

What is the obsession with resilience and teaching kids to be resilient? I mean, why not just go the whole hog and pretend the school is under attack by terrorists or something if you're that keen on 'toughening up' kids?

A school in my local area once pretended all the children were being evacuated and would be going away of a train and not seeing their parents It terrified the younger children www.kentonline.co.uk/sittingbourne/news/children-in-tears-during-fake-126200/. who ever dreams these things up ?

Isn't one of the Ofsted criteria "the children feel safe at school"?

What is the obsession with resilience and teaching kids to be resilient? I

maybe to remind parents that you don't need to hold your baby's hand all their life, and it's fine to be faced with a bit of unknown?

What happens the day you are not there to hold their hand and they have not been prepared AT ALL? What happens then? What happens if an adult behaves inappropriately but they have not been taught to stick up for themselves?

I remember ds in Y3 coming home in tears because teachers and TAs 'lied to us'. They'd said the kids were going on a trip on a plane 'and then we didn't, we just went in the hall'.

What would be lost by the teachers saying "We're going to pretend we're going on an aeroplane" instead of lying?

Resilience if taught sensitively is a useful skill. I do think it's good to learn a bit of stoicism, and an understanding that being upset isn't the end of the world and you can recover, etc and I do agree that some parents don't encourage this in their kids. The snowflake is real n other words.

BUT you don't learn resilience by being lied to and scared witless! That just teaches you not to trust, and makes you feel stupid.

Also, what if you are just not very resilient? People are different, and some find challenges harder or for various reasons might be more anxious and easily discouraged. That's not their fault and making kids feel shit for not being resilient enough isn't helpful.

I think there's a big issue in many schools with grabbing well-meant ideas and bludgeoning the kids with them instead of applying them with a bit of sophistications and sensitivity.

I wouldn't know, I'm childfree. I did have to deal with real life as a kid though. My dad had cancer for most of my childhood and was in and out of hospital, and he died when I started Year 5. My parents never bullshitted us about his illness either, we knew he was terminal. Some kids do have scary shit to deal with at home. Not sure if it made me more resilient - it did fuck up my mental health a lot and gave me abandonment issues.

We did get taught about stranger danger and what to do in an emergency and whatnot - I was in Brownies as well. But scaring the shit out of kids and pretending the building is under attack or whatever, is it really going to make them tough and brave?

Is there something in the curriculum that makes them do completely batshit tasks in year 3?

When my dd was in year 3, her school tried to some cross-curricular learning - they were learning about life in Britain during WW2 in history, so decided to have them build bomb shelters in DT.

One day, 4 weeks later, they were all told to bring in a cuddly toy - to use for a ‘surprise’. Most of the dc were expecting a teddy bear’s picnic or something like that.

Instead, they were taken out to the playground, where their model bomb shelters were lined up. They were told to put their cuddly toy inside their shelter, and then the teacher went down the line dropping a brick on each one to see which cuddly toys ‘survived’.

Dd was distraught at the time - she thought it was her fault that her teddy bear died -though she finds it funny now that she’s 20!

@Bartholeme 😂

I can imagine that would be quite a fun activity for Year 5 or 6 - perhaps using a class cuddly toy than their own individual ones!

But definitely misjudged for Year 3. Especially springing it on them like that!

Instead, they were taken out to the playground, where their model bomb shelters were lined up. They were told to put their cuddly toy inside their shelter, and then the teacher went down the line dropping a brick on each one to see which cuddly toys ‘survived’.

Dd was distraught at the time - she thought it was her fault that her teddy bear died -though she finds it funny now that she’s 20!

Oh my god, I would have been inconsolable. I could get upset now thinking about it.

We had a variation of an alien invasion one in Y3 or Y4, this was in about 1984. I wasn't scared by it though and it was pretty entertaining at the time.

I think generally though it's a good idea for teachers to NOT play extended practical jokes on children. It can easily backfire and in any event it erodes trust. I wouldn't do it to a group of adult colleagues either.

Nothing wrong with a make-believe scenario which they know to be make-believe. They can use their imaginations. They don't have to be pranked into believing something is real to produce a good bit of writing.

I remember a “break in” at my primary school in the eighties. We were detectives for the day measuring footprints the caretaker (I later found out who it was as my mother was the crossing lady) had made through the school. We took fingerprints and followed a trail of clues. We interviewed teachers and other staff. We had A4 paper with footprints around the border (which should have been a big giveaway it was all make-believe) on which to write our findings, and the village bobby came in to talk to us about home security - locking doors, closing windows. Not leaving valuables on show or telling people you were going on holiday.

In reception, DS went in one day and the classroom and been all messed up - tables and chairs etc everywhere and upturned.
They had to find the clues to see what had happened. A dinosaur had been to visit apparently.
He absolutely loved it and I don't remember hearing any complaints from anyone at the time. Although I suppose it's all about how the teachers do it. His teacher was excellent.

It's not got anything to do with year 3, though probably has more impact because they are the youngest in ks2.

Its got to do with giving children experiences they can draw upon to improve their writing. It's long been a topic of discussion as to how we get children to write about places such as the beach, cinema, woodland etc etc if they've never been there. How do we make things relevent. Creating school based senarios is one of them but I suspect nobody will be shocked to know there isn't really any guidelines other than, don't be like those idiots who convinced a drama class there'd been a nuclear strike.

Replace the words 'school children' and 'scenario' with 'experimental subjects' and suddenly a whole world of ethics floats into view!

Really interesting example about the forensics students upthread. Why on earth would students of forensics need to practise being the victims rather than the invetsigators? If 'victim empathy' is a required part of their learning, there would be smarter ways of doing it!

I don’t understand the point of it..

We had this in Y4 but more as a "another class caused havoc in the room" and they had to find which class did it. And they got to have their "revenge" in the next term. It was done in a very funny way and the children loved it.

When DD was in Y6 though they were told the town had to be evacuated and the two classes divided in two groups, one stayed and waited to be collected, the other class was told they would walk straight to the station (10 min away from school). At the station they were told it was a hoax. The reason for this was that they started WWII as a topic and focused on Kindertransport first.

DD luckily was old enough to actually realised what was going on, she knew the topic was up and with her granddad being evacuated during the war she had an idea what they tried to do.

Still, I wasn't too fond of it.