I’ve name changed.
I’ve hit the point of feeling totally overwhelmed/frustrated/sad/angry and need to vent.
I’ve made the mistake of reading too much news, too many teacher bashing threads on here and now a message from a parent has tipped me over the edge.
During lockdown I’ve worked from home to teach. I have literally done the best I can. I have prepared online lessons of English, maths and one foundation subject every day. I have uploaded in various formats, organised paper work for students who can’t do it electronically. I have differentiated each task I have set. I have uploaded video tutorials and me modelling the work. I have marked every single piece of work that hasn’t been self marking. I upload a personal video message to the page to greet the children each morning and once a week I upload a video of me reading a story/poem or piece of non-fiction that I think they’d enjoy. I give them credits for their work and have tried to celebrate even the smallest of achievements that I know are big to some families. Each child in the class has received some sort of recognition for their work. I have called each family to offer support at 3 times now with extra calls to those who requested I called back . I have sent achievement certificates in the post. I give separate work to my SEN students. I have organised class games and competitions for fun.
This morning I got up and went to do some work and found a message from a parent basically saying that she and some of the other parents feel like I’ve really let their children down. She said they feel I have shown favouritism to one of the SEN children by setting personalised work (the only way they could know about this is to have talked to that parent) and not doing it for their children. She also said that I’d taken the lazy option of uploading work rather than zoom lessons (my school as a whole were not doing these). She said that they were upset that some of the marking comments weren’t personalised with their names which means I’ve copied and pasted. She also complained that I didn’t reply to a message she’d left asking for her child’s log in details for an online learning platform when she sent the message just before 5pm and I didn’t reply until after 8pm (I’d stopped working to have food and see to my children and put them to bed). She went on to call me unprofessional, lazy, unaware of the struggles of families and that as a group off parents they feel I should answer for the damage to their children’s education over lockdown.
I have cried. I feel so hurt and upset. I’ve tried to teach what I would teach in school as closely as I could... I literally don’t know what else I could have done.
I feel like giving up. I feel like just uploading some generic planning from a website and letting them get on with it.
I know I don’t do my job for thanks and recognition but I also don’t feel I deserve that. I feel like I’ve wasted my time...and if they weren’t happy then why the hell haven’t they said before now. I’ve spoken to them on the phone... they’ve had a questionnaire sent from school...
I know it won’t be all parents but I don’t know how many parents she’s talking about...
Would I seriously be unreasonable to step back and reduce my provision...or am I just spirting my dummy out...