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?

They could have done it differently ...I think it was probably well intentioned but badly handled. Kids are resilient little things and she will have forgotten it...just take her out and reassure her /make a fuss of her
...you are always gonna be her safe place throughout life so let her feel that...

This makes me think of America, where children as young as age 4 go through “active shooter drills” every so often at school.

Very sad indeed.

That's just terrible!

When my high functioning autistic ds was in juniors they announced in assembly that some other children in another school in the city had vandalised a school bench so nobody was going to be allowed outside for break or lunch time anymore! They didn't carry through of course, but spent the morning discussing the point.
He took it all very seriously and was angry about the initial injustice and then the injustice of the staff lying to them for months. Forget months he's year 8 now and it still increases his anxiety levels to talk about it 😂😖

Fire drills - the clue is in the word 'drill'. Everyone knows it's a practice.

American active shooter drills are superficially similar but actually the opposite to this scenario. They concern a real risk but are presented to young children as a game, to avoid them getting scared and upset.

That's not true about fire drills though. There may or may not be a real fire.

My dc's school has had a real break in, as has after school club, and is opposite a nasty incident where there was an explosion and someone was killed - the air ambulance had to land in the playground.

I know it is not at all the same as making things up that might be frightening, but the fact is it is hard to shelter children from bad things happening, and i honestly wouldn't have expected seven year olds to have such an extreme reaction to an incident such as vandalism.

Adults get very upset about burglaries and vandalism in their homes. It's the sense of intrusion into tehir safe space, often described as violiation.

That's quite different from thinking about fire, which while devastating, bears no malice or intent.

Well it's hard to say, this particular explosion was an act of arson, albeit committed by someone with severe mental health issues. I would be very upset/traumatised if that happened in my home. But we still have fire drills. Anyway, i digress. Exercise sounds misjudged, going by the comments on here, but i wouldn't much higher than giving feedback that it's not a great idea to do it again, suggesting they do a proper debrief for the class and give suggestions about other, less scary, ways to achieve the same thing.

We used to have regular bomb threats when i was at school, thinking about it. Sometimes they were real (as in based on real threats, we never had a real bomb), and sometimes drills.

Ok but you were making a comparison to fire drills. School fire drills don't include faked malice or death.

Horrible things happen. The question is, why choose to pretend that something horrible, invasive and malicious has happened, when it hasn't?

It seems to me that with real life threats, fires etc, adults work to minimise stress and upset for the children in their charge. They don't deliberately cause extra stress, as in this silly fake vandalism example.

As i said, we had fake bomb threat drills. They didn't fake deaths, no, but neither did the op's school. There was fake malice though.

I know what you are saying - why create upset necessarily- and i agree, which is why i say feedback is appropriate, but i just don't think it would have occurred to me (granted i am not a teacher) that this exercise would provoke such upset, any more than I'd think they'd be traumatised by the sight of a vandalised phone box or whatever, even though it's not a nice thing to see or contemplate. The burned out house is still there opposite my kids' school, which isn't at all nice to see on the way to school each day, and the kids comment on it, and we talk about how sad it was that someone whose brain was unwell set fire to it and yes, they died, and that was sad too.

OK apologies, I should modify that to most of the teachers I've known, the ones who have taught my DC. They often look baffled and confused when I explain that my shy / introverted child is interested in the topic, but is put off by having to stand up and tell the class about it, or be filmed by them for their feedback requirements, or doesn't want to go to the big party because they don't like parties.

It's not that I want my child to be treated like a special snowflake, just I would like teachers to understand that some kids are shy and reserved, and the things the teachers seem to think kids automatically love can often make anxiety worse.

Also I did say "most", not all. There have been one or two kind, sensitive teachers who do understand and don't assume everyone wants to be the centre of attention.

I think the sense of school as a 'place of safety' equivalent to home (more so for some pupils) and the specific issues around children and toilets, make this very different from something happening elsewhere, or something unavoidable. PP's have expanded on both points upthread.

Well yes, once you've had that pointed out, you'd take it into account when planning future activities. I just don't think it was so obvious that i would be angry at the teachers for not having anticipated it - I'd approach it as a feedback/lessons learned thing is all. But obviously lots of other posters disagree. School break ins are quite regular events though so i don't know what i would do to prepare children for that.

I have not and never will shelter my DC from the fact that bad things happen. I would still fundamentally disagree with making toilets (of all things!) seem scary for the sake of an educational ‘hook’. School toilets are hideous at the best of times.

With fire drills etc... fire is a real risk that again I have no problem with my kids knowing about. Plus a drill is different. As lottie says, it’s the ‘faked malice’ aspect I dislike.

I was thinking about the Bomb threats we had as a child - and the key thing was (as with fire drills) out teachers were calm. We whinged about being out in the cold, but everyone was calm.

On the other hand with my DD, he school gave instructions to her form tutor that she wasn't to attend "telling off" assemblies. As DD took everything to heart, when it wasn't her fault. But this was at secondary - I hate to think how stressed she got at Primary.
And from my experience of these "hooks" teachers tend to act it up a bit to try to make it dramatic. But of course for the "imaginative" and anxious that easily becomes too much.

But are you a primary school teacher longestlurker? They should know about the place of safety and toilet-specific issues.

How ridiculous! If these teachers wanted to waste valuable time playing silly buggers they should have 'vandalised' their own loos - or better still, the staff room.

Well yes, once you've had that pointed out, you'd take it into account when planning future activities

But why wouldn't any teacher, at least with any amount of experience, just know that some kids are shy and easily upset? All teachers should know about ASD surely, and that it means kids can take things very literally and get overwhelmed by the unexpected? It seems obvious to me this wouldn't be a good idea if the teacher/s have any empathy and understanding of different needs/special needs.

Also it's not at all about sheltering children from the fact that bad things happen. Surely there's a clear an obvious difference between being honest about reality, which includes sad and upsetting things, and setting up a fake upsetting scenario and involving kids in it in a way they would not be in reality?

No i am not, as i said. Seems misjudged in retrospect, as i also said.

It still makes me wonder a bit about how such children will cope with real intrusions or threats to this "safe space" though, which, as i said, aren't rare. School toilets in my memory were often graffitied or covered in toilet roll or damaged or whatever, especially at secondary school.

I'm not saying a dramatised shock value pretend exercise is the way to go at all, just thinking that kids need to know that they can cope with such things and that vandalised toilets aren't the end of school being safe, and lots of parents reacting in an over the top way to this exercise doesn't really seem like it would be helpful in that respect.

My dd had a mystery party for her seventh birthday, complete with hammy "oh no! someone's stolen the birthday cake while we were playing pass the parcel", and detective games. I cavasssed for ideas and no one warned me some kids might take it too seriously and be upset, and to my knowledge no one was. Perhaps the key is to keep the acting rubbish so kids know it's"just pretend".

Apologies if this is a wanky thing to say, but there’s so much made of “safe spaces” nowadays. As a child it would never entered my head that that’s what school was supposed to be, but then, the term hadn’t actually been invented back then.
It kind of suggests that the world is a desperately unsafe and frightening place and we must all have designated places of safety where all is butterflies and rainbows.
Seems really odd to me.

It’s just a writing stimulus, the same as setting up giant foot prints and pretending a dragon has been in! They’ve done nothing wrong except give a real life reason to write, which is what is recommended by both Ofsted and all literary experts. We’ve trashed the classrooms and had ‘police tape’ where the gruffalo has been in and messed things up! It’s not a new thing and it definitely shouldn’t be effecting children feeling safe in school.

Whatever happened to the good old schooldays when the most exciting thing was growing mustard and cress or a runner bean in a jam jar with blotting paper.