To expect to be able to directly contact teachers?

[Fallingrain]

Just that really. My school doesn’t give out email addresses or phone number. If we want to get in touch, we have to send a message to the school office. They pass it on then inevitably we get phone tennis because I’m working when they try and call back and they never arrange a fixed appointment to speak. I understand why they do it but in this day and age, I’m not sure that shielding teachers to that extent cuts it any more. I don’t know any other profession where that happens but I wonder if there is some half way house. How do other schools deal with parent/teacher comms?

PITA for parents
Why? Why is it worse sending a message that gets forwarded?

& office staff

Our reception staff forward messages- and can deal with many queries themselves because they are professional and knowledgeable and ace. It’s not a PITA for them - they have the time to deal with it there and then because it’s part of their role.

My secondary school does publish email addresses and I've not found it too bad. I am very strict about not checking email outside of working hours though so a parent expecting an instant reply from me simply won't get one.

We did have an issue once with a parent of a school refuser. There was a plan in place whereby one staff member was the designated contact and sourced work from others teachers and would visit the child at home to pass on and discuss the work a couple of times each week. The parent then began bypassing the staff member to email teachers directly with frequent queries and requests for more work. We only found out because she started to complain that Miss A was fantastic, always replied quickly and sent her entire schemes of work, but Miss B wasn't as responsive...

Apply 5 seconds of critical thinking, OP.

@MountainMert I can't believe how disingenuous you're being. Either you have terrible reading comprehension or you're deliberately trying to act the martry. Either way D- for effort. Literally not a single person on the other thread said teachers should be available 24-7. Not one. They said teachers like every other normal, functioning adult should be able to recieve emails when convenient for the sender and should have the common sense to only read and reply to them when it;s convenient to the teacher. Recieving an email at 2am does not mean you're forced to read or respond to it at the time.

I had an email from a parent with a 2 page pdf attached detailing the two (minor) errors on a self marking quiz I had made. One was that I'd written "put in date order" yet the answer was the other way round. The other that I had allocated 2 marks instead of 3 for a question.

The tone of the message was so confrontational and lines like "I'm questioning your subject knowledge" and "I am alarmed". I had that message at 8.30pm one evening. I didn't sleep that night out of worry. I knew I wasn't wrong and they were just small human errors, but the tone and viciousness of the message was enough to tip me over the edge. I rang her before 4pm the next day. She started off with concern and alarm and then ended the call with "oh I couldn't do your job, I've seen news articles about how bad it is and the pressure". I felt like replying "parents like you don't help". Obviously I didn't.

She should have had her son ask me in the lesson, I would have reassured him that I allocate the marks anyway and manually check things.

This is one reason why parental contact via email isn't a good thing.

@PrivateD00r Thank you, that's nice of you to say. Unfortunately it's happened more than once. People can be very entitled.

@Jennygentle What an idiotic response. Lots of schools do publish email adresses and have absolutely no issues with it as lots of teachers in this thread have said. It might not work in all schools but since it happens in plenty of schools it's obviously not a crazy idea which deserves such a nasty unpleasant response.

Yabu. Because as can be seen from this thread, some parents are entitled idiots. I have two dc and have never needed to contact the school. All the information is always provided If I get off my arse and look. From our class WhatsApp chats it's clear that some parents email the head literally every day for info we've already been told.

Why so parents need to contact the teachers so much? Did our parents have this much contact with our teachers?

I was wondering that. Notes from school to home and parents' evenings used to suffice in most cases, and where there were more complex issues, the parents would meet with the staff by appointment.

@Hercwasonaroll

I had an email from a parent with a 2 page pdf attached detailing the two (minor) errors on a self marking quiz I had made. One was that I'd written "put in date order" yet the answer was the other way round. The other that I had allocated 2 marks instead of 3 for a question.

The tone of the message was so confrontational and lines like "I'm questioning your subject knowledge" and "I am alarmed". I had that message at 8.30pm one evening. I didn't sleep that night out of worry. I knew I wasn't wrong and they were just small human errors, but the tone and viciousness of the message was enough to tip me over the edge. I rang her before 4pm the next day. She started off with concern and alarm and then ended the call with "oh I couldn't do your job, I've seen news articles about how bad it is and the pressure". I felt like replying "parents like you don't help". Obviously I didn't.

She should have had her son ask me in the lesson, I would have reassured him that I allocate the marks anyway and manually check things.

This is one reason why parental contact via email isn't a good thing.

I feel your pain! I've explained to mine dozens of times that for Teams assignments we have to input all possible answers so 'Susie has €30 in the bank, she spends €40, what will her bank balance be' type question means I input: -€10 -€10.00 Etc.

However if they put - €10 (with a space) Teams marks it as incorrect but i go in manually and allocate the mark if appropriate.

Still means I get at least 10 complaining via inbox, some with pics, some asking me to re-send the quiz... and that's for ONE question

The negative numbers PowerPoint I sent out to go with the quiz had 19 slides. I made 1 copy and paste error on an answer. 17 emails about that....

It’s not an idiotic response. It’s very obvious why most schools protect teachers from some types of parental contact. Read some of the responses on here from teachers.

Ive worked in other jobs (many teachers have!) and nothing is like the crazy parent emails. Stuff like ‘I’ve noticed you’ve worn the same dress five Fridays in a row and this is a visual representation of your standards...’ or ‘xxx needs every piece of work and homework individualised’ or threatening to ‘report you’ for a made up event (really want that viewed by others!). Sometimes just pissed rants at midnight.
I stopped giving mine out years ago. Most people are not able to comprehend you cannot deal with that level of correspondence for multiple children/ you never reply between 8:30-4ish because you are actually teaching (I’ve had multiple arsey follow ups from parents over the day for ignoring them).

Other jobs you deal with the people you work with. Teaching is not just those you work with directly, but a whole range of linked persons and social needs beyond the job. Nurses, social workers and health visitors often have contact through a central office for similar reasons. I’ve even had a good paren try to avoid an abuse injury focus in hospital by alleging I broke a wrist (thankfully quickly resolved as impossible, but I’m glad the email they sent whilst waiting went to the office and not straight to me)

@sd249 The issue there is with your school for failing to set out clear expectations with parents with what they can expect in terms of communication and secondly failing to have an adaquate way of alerting you to a positive covid case.

The solution to that isn't for the school to exist in it's own 1950's virtual reality in terms of emails. They're designed to be sent at all hours and replied to at your own convenience. I think almost anyone in any professional job will get emails at all hours, some of them snotty and occasionally need to check them at home and feel annoyed That's just life. If you asked everyone not to email you other than in office hours you'd look absolutely daft.

@Hercwasonaroll

I had an email from a parent with a 2 page pdf attached detailing the two (minor) errors on a self marking quiz I had made. One was that I'd written "put in date order" yet the answer was the other way round. The other that I had allocated 2 marks instead of 3 for a question.

The tone of the message was so confrontational and lines like "I'm questioning your subject knowledge" and "I am alarmed". I had that message at 8.30pm one evening. I didn't sleep that night out of worry. I knew I wasn't wrong and they were just small human errors, but the tone and viciousness of the message was enough to tip me over the edge. I rang her before 4pm the next day. She started off with concern and alarm and then ended the call with "oh I couldn't do your job, I've seen news articles about how bad it is and the pressure". I felt like replying "parents like you don't help". Obviously I didn't.

She should have had her son ask me in the lesson, I would have reassured him that I allocate the marks anyway and manually check things.

This is one reason why parental contact via email isn't a good thing.

Emails like that should be challenged though. If I received an email like that, either I or my senior team would have no qualms in telling her how unacceptable it was to question my professionalism with no grounds.

The other issue that is common that parents can email 4/5 staff members over an incident. When one replies slightly differently it’s used to generate complaints or push against others. It’s hard to have a united voice. Eg a teacher is unaware another teacher has made a change or stopped something for very good reason, then they get another teacher to say it is actually allowed. Say the teacher yesterday has said the child needs to enter the room separately from repeated fighting, but before they have told colleagues in the morning about the change the parent emails the phase leader who confirms they aren’t aware of the rule that is phrased as a way to sound like an plausible miscommunication. Parent then supports child in ignoring the other teacher on basis of email. It’s tiring.

How on earth did parents manage before emails or even telephones?

@winewolfhowls

Well I teach 25 different classes of 25+ children, even a small percentage of parents with queries would generate hours of work. Thankfully there is a system like you describe. (students themselves are allowed contact through certain channels and that takes hours too).

That's 625 children (I think - a maths teacher might pull me up if I'm wrong .

If just 1% of parents raised a query that took 30 minutes to sort out and reply to, that's over 3 hours of extra work.

I did challenge her language and questioned her child's resilience. I professionally said that if this was how she reacted to a minor event, I wouldn't want to see her with something serious. However the point still stands that parental emails like that do unsettle people. Particularly at the moment.

@Jennygentle And yet other schools manage absolutely fine so it's obviously something that can work. So isn't at all obvious. You were being nasty for absolutely no reason.

Obviously it's fine for there to be a barrier to prevent petty, rude or obnoxious emails but if the school is attemting to call OP it's clear that they feel her concern is worthy of a response so at that point there should be a system to just contact directly.

I've had a few difficult parents insisting on emailing and responses at all hours but lockdown caused this to explode, leading to IT actually blocking 3 parent emails to prevent 'escalating harrassment'. Parents were demanding phonecalls if they disagreed with marking but only when convenient at 8pm, sending repeated emails from 8am demanding work when they class was scheduled and assigned bang on 9am (after parents were complaining about having large amounts of work issued at once) and another parent demanding I come to their house because their child wouldn't listen to them or to personally devlier work, when I live over 20 miles from school and another 6 from them.

Thankfully most parents are reasonable, but those that aren't make the job so much more difficult and genuinely cause anxiety and worry.

@SomeHalfHumanCreatureThing

Primary or Secondary?

Primary? No. Would be chaos.

Secondary it's useful for the students to be able to clarify homework etc.

We don’t have time to start clarifying homework- they write it down in their planners and it is on Teams (or whatever portal).

Some teachers will see 180 students a week!

@Hercwasonaroll I'm glad you challenged her. I've known a lot of teachers accept this sort of thing and simply placate the parent or give in to their demands for fear of upsetting them. There's no training for dealing with that sort of thing!

@bridecilla

The same issue here with teams. No matter how many times I tell the kids I manually check it, parents still complain.

@BackBeatTheWordisOnTheStreet it would be wonderful to simply ignore emails we felt weren’t worthy of response, but that would rather escalate things with repeated emails and anger at being ignored. They are responding because they have to!