To think “fuck it” to home schooling after this?

[Justgivemewine]

So we do ds2’s, year 7, maths homeschooling, ds2 is quite able, so he gets most of the questions right ( they mark themselves) but we had some stress trying to get a couple of questions to match the answers provided by the teacher as one answer was blatantly wrong and another question we aren’t sure about either because it was stuff he said he hadn’t covered yet. Even so, he gave it a go but couldnt match the answer given. Turns out that answer given by the teacher was wrong and ds2 actually been right all along.

Other maths questions are apparently a recap on work already done before lockdown but ds2 claims “but we havent’t done this”, me being a maths bod try to explain it to him, much frustration on both sides as unknown to me at the time some of it’s a totally new concept for him.

Later (ie after the work was due in) we get an email from teacher, admitting errors in answers, and explaining later questions are actually year8 stuff that they haven’t covered yet in year7 and with explanations how to do it.

Wtf, if they are giving questions from year8 to year7 students, how about a bit of warning beforehand before parents get superstressed. Maths is my thing anyway so trying to explain concepts you think your child should already know (Because the teachers say it’s a feckin recap)is doable, but not everyone is a maths bod. Some parents might ace the english or art homework instead, mine don’t stand a chance 😂

Lots of unnecessary stress and upset could’ve been avoided for everyone.

@seltaeb But the teacher is a HUMAN BEING!! Human beings make mistakes! Even Stephen Hawking made mistakes ffs! Everyone does - doctors make mistakes, engineers makes mistakes, politicians make (lots of!) mistakes - even with their Oxford degrees!

Have you never, ever in your entire life made a mistake? (even a very easily rectifiable one like this one?)

What a punishment for that teacher refusing to educate your own son in an international emergency is.

I was forced into homeschooling my child when he was 14.

It was something of s nightmare but here’s some advice. My son detested school despite seeming very bright. Here’s some advice...

1 You know your child and how they learn, you can teach your child in a way that suits them exactly. If your child is physical you can teach while going on a walk, if they want to work in a particular area relate it to that.

2 If your child disliked school and loved being at home home is no longer their safe space. This is a big problem because your child will resist doing anything vaguely school like at home. Be gentle, have empathy and don’t punish. Explain how school is for them not you. Also discuss how learning at home could be better and more fun than school.

3 Suddenly it all gets personal. The poster is proud of her maths skills so when her child isn’t interested it’s personal. Remember your child is an original who are good at different things so just help them get over their difficulties and celebrate their talents.

4 Use different sources and be imaginative.Write cartoons, use YouTube and help your child learn in a way they get on with.

5 Homeschooling is tough on everyone.Teachers and parents are suddenly asking kids to learn in a different way and parents are asked to jump into the teacher role as well as the parent. This is a nightmare for kids and parents. I’m not surprised parents and kids are having problems.

Who said parents have to home school during lockdown?I haven't read anything anywhere ever that said this. You aren't home schooling. You are parenting. It seems to me many if you are way overparenting! These are extraordinary times. Give your children some autonomy. Give them some ownership of their days. Get on with your own stuff. Get them involved in helping with the practical work of running the household/garden. Get them contributing to your real lives. Especially if you are also wfh. Let them prepare and cook meals, bake, stock take food cupboards, cut lawns, weed, clean the house, do the washing, plan and carry out a physical Ed programme, write a script for their own drama, I don't know. There's a million things your children can do. Let them.learn life skills out of this extraordinary situation. Children are capable of so much more than we give them credit for.

Hmmm this sounds extraordinarily like an issue my own son of the same age had ...
however it didn’t cause undue stress etc because I live in a world where a mistake on a piece of paper really isn’t a big deal.
Also the school are ridiculously wonderful and have shown great care towards the children.
I feel so bad for the teachers, it must be horrible .

Suddenly it all gets personal. The poster is proud of her maths skills so when her child isn’t interested it’s personal

That's very true. My maths teacher DH helping my two with their maths has always led to tears and tantrums (and that's just him!)

YABVVU. The teacher, like all of us, is on a very steep learning curve. None of us have ever lived or worked like this before. People make mistakes even when they are doing something familiar. We are all going to make even more mistakes because this is all new to us.

Your learning from this might be that if your son tells you that he hasn’t covered a set topic, accept that he is telling you the truth and you should teach it as you would to a complete beginner. This won’t do any harm even if it is actually revision of something he has forgotten.

And remember that the main skill a good teacher needs is to be able to teach. Sadly this doesn’t always go hand in hand with being organised or an efficient administrator. I say this as a one time school admin manager. Whilst I was constantly in awe of what teachers did in the classroom and know I would be completely incapable of doing their job, I did sometimes marvel at some of the ancillary parts of their work. Luckily that’s what I was there for - to pick up that slack.

I feel so bad for the teachers, it must be horrible
To be honest, most people are very reasonable and understanding. If they've got queries then they ask them reasonably. We're all learning new ways of working and the vast majority of people understand that. On here there's some totally reasonable parents asking questions, getting advice and plenty of teachers willing to help and sympathise with many of the issues of academisation, lack of consistency.

Just like a vocal minority would be calling school to complain over anything, sit on Mumsnet telling other posters to demand meetings with the head over anything and so on in normal times, in these unusual times it's a vocal minority who take to Mumsnet to complain about tiny things safe in the knowledge that the inevitable pile on will start (and then some will turn up claiming nobody is allowed to criticise teachers 😂).

@TheoriginalLEM
You know you must never say a word agai st a teacher on mnet.

You have been here long enough to know that isn't true.

So a teacher makes a mistake and everyone leaps to their defenc. Wonder if they'd be so forgiving if a doctor screwed up? After all they are human too.

Rosebel

The Strawman argument.

That ss where you want to go with this?

Oh ffs. Look, these are unusual fines to say the least.
Schools have to be seen to be trying to provide an education, but most parents aren’t teachers. It’s crisis management really not homeschooling.m

All the info for your child’s syllabus can be found on Google, have a go at the work, if it’s wrong that’s still part of the learning process.
Your child’s mental and emotional health is important so stop making it all a big deal and blaming schools for everything. 🙄

So a teacher makes a mistake and everyone leaps to their defenc. Wonder if they'd be so forgiving if a doctor screwed up? After all they are human too

What a truly moronic, stupid comment. Tiresome to the extreme. Please just fucking think about what you just posted.

This is maths aimed at 11/12 year olds?

@LolaSmiles No I didn’t mean coming under fire on here .
I meant trying to work at the minute , whilst also managing home life.
Worrying about the pastoral care of pupils who haven’t engaged at all.
Not knowing if you’re doing too much or worrying you’re aren’t doing enough.
It’s just crap.

So a teacher makes a mistake and everyone leaps to their defenc. Wonder if they'd be so forgiving if a doctor screwed up? After all they are human too.

This has to be one of the stupidest comments I've ever read. I come from a family of doctors and yes they do mess up occasionally - fill in a form slightly incorrectly etc. However when a doctor is making life or death situations they're not working from home, trying to juggle their own childcare issues while simultaneously doing loads of completely new aspects of their job at the same time. If someone is making life or death situations they give that decision 100% of their focus and we create an environment for them which enables them to do that (this is why we don't have toddlers running round operating theatres and we don't expect surgeons to answer emails while also performing brain surgery).

Setting some maths questions for Y7 is much less important so obviously it's more likely mistakes will be made. If you want everything done 100% perfectly then you'll have to massively reduce teacher's workload.

Wonder if they'd be so forgiving if a doctor screwed up? After all they are human too

Doctors do make mistakes all the time, like all humans. It's understandable. However, it can also have very serious, potentially life-threatening results. Forgiving a doctor who's made a mistake which resulted in death or life-changing problems for someone you care about would be very difficult, even though mistakes are understandable.

If you actually think that people's reaction to a teacher making a mistake on a piece of maths work should be comparable to that, then you need your head examined.

Dc is a secondary teacher and I am a TA in a primary school.
Dc is currently setting work for their year 10 and 12 tutor groups, monitoring the work set in their subject by other staff for the other year groups (dc is HOS), ensuring all work is accessible on mobile phones as this is the only internet access many if their students have, answering queries from students, parents and staff. Working on predicting grades for gcse and a level students. Because their school is in a deprived area, with a lot of vulnerable students, dc is also in phone contact with every member of their form at least once a week. This is in addition to trying to work with colleagues to find a way to ensure that those students who are due to sit gcse and a levels next year, will somehow not be massively disadvantaged by the current situation. I know that dc is working at least as hard as usual, even if the work is different. So if a teacher makes an error, which we all do at times, rather than call them out on here, either bring it to their attention kindly, or accept that mistakes happen, especially when tines are stressful and they too, are trying to get used to a new way of working.
FWIW, a friend contacted me yesterday to ask about a maths question and answer in a maths workbook she had bought for her year 6 child. The answer given by the book was incorrect. So, I'm sure that if an incorrect answer can find its way into a book, it can certainly happen when a teacher is just doing their best for their students.

Tesco forgot to give me a whole crate thing with my click and collect this week, meaning I had to drive back and queue up again for it.
I managed not to moan at them or criticise Tesco workers everywhere. They were working under unusual conditions and got stressed.

@Justgivemewine, you are massively overthinking this. Secondary school teachers are setting work for many classes right now. Making a mistake can happen when they are putting the work in the year group folders online, trying to keep up with their working day and deal with whatever they have at home, going in to school on their rota'd days maybe.

Your son tried the work, couldn't get it to work and should have simply emailed the teacher himself to say he couldn't get X or Y question to work because... showing his working out and asking for help. Park that piece of work until the teacher comes back to him and move on.

It really is that simple. Instead, you've stewed over this to the point it is causing you to vent at stupid o clock in the morning. Fine to vent on here but I hope you haven't messaged the teacher in the tone that your post comes across - accusatory and challenging. Your son might be quite able at maths, but I wonder how much of that is because you appear to be giving him a lot of input with it - understandable if it is a subject you are good at and enjoy. But you are not helping your son with basic problem solving skills of going to the person who has set the work when he cannot get the answer to fit what is expected.

then his teacher asked him to try the Cambridge Math Challenge which they do in high school. It's completely irrelevant to him, and not whatever maths they are teaching at school.

Oh this makes me sad. A parent can’t immediately see the utility of the maths challenge and therefore the teacher must be wrong to give it to him?

My DS whizzed through his maths work yesterday so I gave him a junior maths challenge paper to do. He loved it and even brought it to the dinner table to keep working on.

Such a shame that people put maths in a little box of ‘school curriculum only’ where they wouldn’t dream of shutting down slightly different science or history work.

No my comment is true. Is it fine for the medical professional to mess up? Or is it only teachers who are exempt from any blame?

YANBU. Homeschooling is going terribly here as well. We’re happy to pay the fees, we know the school has costs to pay but expecting us to then go and spend time teaching our children on top of that is simply asking too much.

Rosebel was it fine for the tesco workers to mess up my order? Should I have complained to the manager, or made the workers day a bit worse than it already was? He apologised, I said don't worry about it.
How much different should the teacher's situation be?
Doctors - well messing up with a diagnosis or with an appointment time? There's obviously a difference. If a teacher forgot to submit exam estimates - well that's a big deal. Getting a piece of online work wrong? I'm sure she's mortified already.

Is it fine for the medical professional to mess up? Or is it only teachers who are exempt from any blame?

What a stupid question. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. When the consequences of mistake-making are serious, it’s important that processes are put in place to try to catch those mistakes as much as possible.

My GP once prescribed my DD a much too high dose of a medicine. It was fine because the pharmacist caught it. Because it’s acknowledged that mistakes might happen these things are double-checked as giving the wrong dose is serious.

Giving the wrong answers to a Y7 maths exercise during a global pandemic is obviously unfortunate, but these things happen.

I expect that even Rosebel has fucked up at work occasionally.