Teaching

[Sallydimebar]

Am I being unreasonable to think teaching is on its knees . It’s a job soon enough no-one will want .
Was having a conversation with SIl , her best friend has decided to quit this year she’s had enough . Teachers are leaving Ds secondary school in doves it seems .
There seems to be a endless stream of supply teachers and just heard his favourite English teacher is leaving a Easter .

Seen today some parents protesting outside a school as it was stopping pupils using toilets during lesson time , it’s a story I see time & time again esp about toilet use and i just have to ask do parents know that kids meet up in toilets to vape, Snapchat ect so unfortunately can’t have a endless pass on toilet use as classes would be half empty and seniors would just be going round all day getting them back to lessons .

The point I’m making is being a teacher in today’s society is a really tough job and parents just don’t give enough support in getting behind Childs school . I would love those 50 parents there today to maybe go and spend a day in the school and see why toilet passes are needed and how hard it is at best of times to engage a class of 30 12-14 yr olds or 15/16 yr olds .

Listening to Sil friend who’s a really good teacher feel so deflated and unhappy is sad .
Also the teacher who committed suicide this week the day before she was due in court for catching pupils hair while confiscating phone, leaving a husband and 2 daughters devastated as well as many colleges.

@Tekkentime , I agree. So many talented and dedicated teachers who just want to impart knowledge, teachers who really care. If you don't want to listen and learn, leave !
I so wish that could happen.
@Bluebell2025 , I left 5 years ago, aged 51. I loved the actual job, I was really good - but nothing was ever good enough.
Looking back, I was managed out, but I wasn't bothered. I'd been planning to leave for at least 5 years. I had a plan in place - financially.
I'm now a cleaner. I love it. Some weeks I do 7.5 hours, sometimes I do 20 or 30 ( it varies due to us only being a small team - cover, etc), but I don't mind because I really enjoy it.

I don’t know the answer. But let’s start from the position locked and blocked toilets are not it. And liaise with parents. Maybe we together can deal with a solution that works.

Nothing works. That's the problem. Teachers don't actually want to stop students from going to the toilet if they genuinely need the toilet. How is liaising with parents going to help?

If students know they can get out of lessons for 10 mins by asking to go to toilet, then lots of them will. Not just the ones who will use that time for vandalism, vaping, drug use, bullying etc, but anyone who fancies a chat with their mates rather than getting on with their work. Cue tons of kids milling around the school site causing trouble and disrupting lessons.

So what do you do? 'Use your discretion' - i.e. only let the ones go who seem convincing enough about really needing to go? How hard do you think it is for a teenager to sound convincing? Not remotely. I wotk in a really good school with mostly very well-behaved girls and it's still a problem.

Last week I was spat at, sworn at, kicked and threatened with the police. Similar things happen most weeks.

I teach KS1 in a mainstream school.

I work in sixth form now and would never go back to secondary. I would rather do minimum wage than go back to the stress of that. Sixth form used to be an amazing job but even that now has been badly affected by cuts, workload, relentless targets. Genuinely love the teaching though.

Maybe the protesting parents could organise a rota to supervise the toilets, write everyone's name down as they go in (though they'd need some way to ensure they didn't get loads of "Ben Dovers", then go in and check the toilets afterwards to see they hadn't been vandalised.
Vandalism is a bigger problem than vaping in some schools, sanitary pads used to block sinks or toilets and make them overflow.

I'm also the same been kicked, spat out, had my face scratched etc I teach Reception. Nothing gets done and it's implied it's your fault. The child has some playtime with a learning mentor and comes back eating a biscuit. It's also no wonder great T.A's are all leaving in droves who is going to put up with that for just above minimum wage.

Parents who admit that they have no idea how to fix the problem but want to be “liaised with” anyway are a huge reason why teachers leave teaching. You’ve admitted you have no idea, can’t help and don’t intend to - so why should teachers waste their time pandering and appeasing you instead of actually doing their jobs?

Even with the best intentions in the world, the apple doesn’t tend to fall far from the tree. If a kid wants to go to the toilets, have sex, smoke and fuck about then 99% of the time, their parent doesn’t give a shit. If a parent has a sensible attitude to keeping their child in lessons and encouraging them to use the toilets at break if they can then 99% of the time, their child isn’t the one asking to go.

What people looking for a solution are missing is that unless certain children are allowed to go to the toilet in a way that permits them to do what they actually want to do (miss lessons, chat to their mate, smoke, take photos etc) then they’ll go home and whinge to their parents that the rules are unfair, whatever those rules happen to be. They rarely want to go to the toilet to use the toilet, they almost always want to go to the toilet to fuck around - they’re upset that they’re being prevented from fucking around. There’s no solution that can fix that because there is no crossover between them wanting to fuck around and the school preventing them from fucking around.

Toilets locked during lessons has been a thing since I last taught in secondary in 2012! It's horrible but there is no good solution in many schools unless they employ security guards to police corridors/loos and that would be more prison like and vv expensive. The truth is that for every one genuine toilet goer there will be another kid who wants out to bunk off, vape, hang out in the corridors opening classroom doors and cause chaos all through the building. We all think our kids wouldn't do that but many, many do. Children with specific needs will be accommodated.

Those pictures of the gates locking the toilets are shocking.

The general reaction that it is the school that's the problem, that they have installed expensive gates for no reason, that there must be another solution if only they consulted parents about it (who generally know fuck-all about what it's like in schools) is depressing.

You’d hope this stops as they get older - it doesn’t. I taught secondary school and 16yo are still spitting, hitting, kicking, throwing things and screaming. Parents don’t care. It’s reached the point where parents were asking me to discipline their child for things the child did at home (“can you please give X a detention because he hit his brother this morning?”) - it should be the other way around!!

When I was at school, we had them when I joined in 2007 - I can’t imagine they were the first because behaviour was generally very good. I don’t recall ever asking to go and I only know they were locked because a friend had a key for one (presumably for medical reasons but I never actually asked why).

MudandPuddle
😂Prison like conditions! Yes, I am sure your are right. I remember being a student at a school where I was expected to not play o my phone in class and where I was meant to arrive on time and be polite and listen to the person conducting the class. It was torture, very much like I imagine it would be to be locked up 24 in a cell alongside violent individuals.

Well if you start from the position ‘nothing works’ guess what? nothing will work.

I would liaise with parents who have taken an interest in trying to sort it out. You may find that some parents work in similar institutions that handle it differently.

If I started from a position of nothing works I wouldn’t be able to run three separate businesses and be studying for another career

it sounds defeatist to start from the ‘nothing works’ position to me.

This!

in my day (the 80s and 90s) you would bunk off by leaving the school grounds and sitting in the woods during geography, now children are not allowed to leave the school grounds so they bunk in the toilets FACT

if something happened to me whilst I was bunking in the woods the school wouldn’t have been blamed. In fact when the school rang my mum to say I was not turning up to lessons it was me that got B*locked by my parents . My mum apologised profusely on my behalf for causing the teacher to have to take time out of there day to deal with me.
Nowadays if that occurred parents would be reporting the school for safeguarding and blaming the teachers for not engaging me enough to stay in there lessons

I don’t know what your issue is. But I’m not going to not liaise with a school that thinks my bleeding daughter should suck it up. I’m going to liaise with them because blocked and locked toilets are not appropriate and if they don’t want to liaise well, I will become one of ‘those’ parents.

I hear nothing about not being able to go to the toilet till it’s her period so yes I will liaise. Just imagine if we all sit saying nothing can be changed. Black people would still be slaves, women wouldn’t be able to vote (or be educated), section 28 would still be in effect. Nothing you (in particular) has said makes me think this should not be addressed. In fact stupidly, I realise I’ve left it long enough.

So teachers especially the good ones I don’t want you to quit I want it to be easy for you to do the job I have always backed up teachers. Just this issue is ridiculous that affects children.

And if kids want to truant locked toilets won’t stop them. I used to know a girl who was on top of the pops more often than she was in school. You can lead a horse to water after all.

@Imnoonesfool I think you’ll find the reason why children are not allowed to leave school grounds is simply because schools were blamed when kids bunked off and got themselves into trouble. These rules didn’t happen out of nowhere. Children have not changed. They just push the boundaries in the confines of where they are.

@VanillaSox I am sure you are right that the lack of funding for schools over the past 13 years is not to do with the Tories, also the constant meddling from government and shifting of goal posts, that isn't anything to do with the Tories.

Plus ca change and all that. I remember when I was at a (very selective and well-respected) grammar school 50 years ago, and the toilets were a fug because of senior pupils dodging in for a smoke during lessons. Our teachers cared not a jot. They taught the lessons, and as to everything else - it was simply ignored. Every so often our prefects were ordered to have a clamp down, but as they were guilty too, it didn't make much difference. The biggest difference now is that the parents get involved - back in the day, they just left the school to get on with it. Now I'm not saying it was better then (it wasn't), but I am saying that it's not a new problem. The big question is, why hasn't it been properly addressed in all this time?

I have noticed in some U.S. schools that there is a toilet suite attached to each classroom.

It's not particularly teachers fault per se, it's more the system. Massive schools, massive class sizes, zero tolerance discipline- it's more crowd control than teaching at secondary schools. There would not be half the issues if schools were much smaller with class sizes of 15, say, kids were treated as individuals, not like untrustworthy convicts about to do something else wrong, and if secondary education were properly funded and teachers were allowed to actually use their professional judgement and not just tick boxes.

Locking children out of toilets is bloody disgusting, whatever the reason. As is the total lack of privacy in the way many secondary school toilets are designed.

No wonder a third of 15 year olds are persistently absent from school. Most schools are bloody appalling, I wouldn't want to go. Kids are being completely failed at the moment. As a parent of teenagers I've seen things go so rapidly downhill since we have had a conservative government.

www.theguardian.com/education/2023/feb/10/third-of-15-year-olds-persistently-absent-school-england

I would liaise with parents who have taken an interest in trying to sort it out. You may find that some parents work in similar institutions that handle it differently.

Because no headteacher has ever thought of talking to headteachers from other schools? Have you any idea how patronising you sound?

I teach maths, and I do my best to make sure that my lessons are engaging, interesting, motivating and purposeful. My students are really important to me, and I invest time and effort into getting to know them, building positive relationships and supporting them to do well - I want them to be happy, secure, learning, motivated and progressing.

I'm also aware that given the choice, probably quite a few people would prefer chatting with their friends, playing on their phone, going for a walk... to double maths. It isn't just the subject; it is also the need to put pen to paper, to think hard, to follow instructions, to exert oneself.

Learning can be difficult, it can be uncomfortable, it can make you feel vulnerable - and these aren't necessarily bad things. Staying within your comfort zone feels safe. Trying something - saying a sentence in another language, writing an essay, experimenting with a new medium in art - carries with it the risk of failure and getting it wrong, and this can feel incredibly scary. It is easier not to do it.

We need to allow children to experience the hard bits of learning in a caring and supportive environment, so they can see this as a necessary part of the process, but only a part - it is a stepping stone on the way to success.

Massive schools, massive class sizes, zero tolerance discipline.

Most schools don't have zero tolerance discipline though. Quite the opposite.

So, you want to liaise but you don’t want to liaise? This could not be a more perfect example of how parents are the problem. Genuinely, why do you think you get to make the rules when you have no experience or insight into the problem?

Your DD’s problem is exceptionally easily solved. One phone call “DD has very heavy periods and soaks through her sanitary products within the length of a class. Please can she have a toilet pass to allow her to use the toilet during the lessons to change her sanitary products and not overflow?” “Yes, of course, she can collect the pass from X tomorrow morning”. Job done. Every school has toilet passes for those who need them - but keep in mind how many girls try to get out of PE every single week because they’re on their period. Toilet passes would only ever be denied if the school are absolutely certain that the child is lying.

Your DD doesn’t need every child in the school to be allowed to wander around all day in order for her to change her pads. Exceptions to the rules are made for children who have exceptional needs.

Not one single person is telling your DD to suck it up. You’ve had to imagine that I have a problem in order to be offended - exactly like every other problem parent. There are mechanisms for students with actual need - that mechanism is not to just allow every other student to miss lessons, cause problems and (to be frank) put themselves and others in danger.

I do think children should be able to go to the toilet when they need to do so, and always let them go in cases of medical need/body language indicating it's really pressing/sensible pupil asking.

With pupils who perhaps look as if they are seeking to get out of work, I offer to let them go but make up the time at a mutually convenient time at break or after school, so they don't miss out on learning. It is ASTOUNDING how many of them then decide they do not need to go.

This. Many schools have near-total tolerance because they can’t actually do anything. Once students realise that the school have no actual power, they’re home free. Schools cannot do anything.

Kid refuses to go to lesson, what can a school do? Give a detention? The kid won’t turn up. Escalate it? Kid ignores you. Kid wants to sit on a bench in the corridor all day, school can’t stop them. Phone the parents? They do not care. The kid can’t be removed, there’s no other place to send them, the parent won’t engage.

Even the strictest behaviour policy in the world that consistently and thoroughly enforced can’t actually do anything if a student is entirely non-compliant. With parents constantly bolstering badly behaved children, they have no reason to behave. It’s so unfair on the children who do behave and have their education jeopardised and who are bullied to fuck by little angels who are having their human rights violated by rules.