Being made to sit on the floor

[MandaLo]

I'm genuinely interested to hear what others thoughts are on this.

DS10 is in a class with a teacher new to their school. She's very young but seems quite pleasant when I've spoken to her.

He told me last week that as a punishment for talking the teacher is making children sit on the classroom floor for 30 minutes each time. It hadn't happened to him though.

Today he came out of school to say that he'd asked the child next to him what book they'd chosen from the library and was made to sit on the floor for half an hour. He wasn't massively upset, just said that his bum went numb from it.

I've never come across this before. DS said some children are constantly on the floor. Does this sound ok?

Anyway, long story short, any 'punishment' should be fitting to the situation. I can't imagine many times sitting on the floor would relate to the misdemeanour. Maybe if a child was swinging on their seat or something, but then they should be given the option to stand instead.

I’ve also been a primary teacher for many years (in the UK) and believe firmly in natural and appropriate consequences.

I have a class of ten year olds this year. We have a large carpet/rug in front of the board. At this age, sometimes I ask them all to sit on the rug; and sometimes I give them the choice to sit in chairs, or on the rug, whilst I am actively teaching a lesson. Most like the novelty of staying in chairs, but many find it distracting because they have pencil cases to play in, water bottles to fiddle with, or neighbours to talk to. Some children choose to sit on the rug where they can see and hear more easily.

If someone isn’t paying attention mid-lesson, I’ll simply say, ‘Jimmy come and sit here, in front of the board, to help you concentrate’. Then I’ll carry on teaching. When it’s time to go and do something written, or to collaborate with peers, they go back to their desks.

I don’t see it as a punishment or public shaming; I move a child to the floor at the front of the classroom to help them to engage in the lesson because they are not managing to do that by themselves. Some children find they are asked to sit by the board repeatedly because they distract others and need more help to focus. I’m not punishing them, I am meeting their needs and the needs of those they might be distracting so that everyone can learn. Children are more secure in class when there are boundaries to keep everyone safe and focused. They need to be applied consistently to everyone to work.

OP should just ask the teacher what is happening for clarification. I’m always happy to explain my methods to a parent.

Check the school’s behaviour policy. If it is not listed, then complain. The children who are punished more often are usually those with ADHD or other neurodiverse conditions. Constant public humiliation can be traumatising for them. I’m a teacher and would not like it if this was done to any child. Public humiliation is bullying, not behaviour management.

Is this a joke? Kids sit on the floor all the time

Over reaction

It’s hardly dunce hat and cane 🙄

But the kid will not tell the parent he could not keep his trap closed for the whole lesson, he will however say that he only said one thing and got punished straight away...

I bet that’s not on the behaviour policy. It’s meant to belittle children and show authority and power. I wouldn’t be happy with this AT ALL and id be emailing the head.

I remember a teacher using a similar technique on me - I was not the one who was talking - I was too petrified of this teacher to open my mouth in her class. But she had picked on me and humiliated me several times in the past. After she had attempted to shame me by making me stand outside her class, she demanded an apology - very loudly - in front of the class. I had right firmly on my side and I looked her square in the eye and refused to offer an apology. Best thing ever - she wasn’t scary, she was a pathetic bully - she stopped picking on me after that. Improved my well being instantly.

Jeez, what an overreaction, its just sitting on the floor, i think its a VERY VERY mild punishment, letting the child know they have done wrong.
Think back to being whacked with rulers over the knuckles and on the palm of your hand, think back to the cane, to the board rubber being thrown at you, which is what it was like when i was at school, im NOT saying it was right but the teachers mostly had the respect of the class and was listened too, i know we have moved on and are not in the dark ages now, but there HAS to be some form of reprimand for not listening, and talking over the teacher.

It’s shaming - it’s not a mild emotion.

Imagine standing Infront of a class and the same children are ignoring you and chatting.

Once they are on the floor they shut up and are listening, therefore learning and you can get on with her job.

The children who don't chat therefore are rewarded by sitting on their chairs and being allowed to learn without others being rude and interrupting the learning.

Trust the teacher. By Autumn 2 term those children will hopefully have learnt that it is not ok to talk in class!

If your son wants to know what library book his friends have got, then he can ask them in his own time. Not during lessons.

He’s 10 so not that young a child as some teachers are saying. They wouldn’t do this a year on in snr school. If you email the school admin with the title “question for miss x” and just say you are concerned bc it made your child very uncomfortable and other children seem to be constantly on the floor so not sure how effective it is. Could she make a minute to talk to you at drop off etc. Then it’s seen by reception and will get looked into and observed (or stopped if not ok) It’s a bit passive ag but you aren’t going behind her back, but also aren’t just asking just her, for her to say “it’s fine” and it not go any further.

I suggest you have a chat with the teacher. She won’t be offended at all if you are polite. You need to try and figure out what happened - is 30 mins accurate? Was the chat literally ‘what book have you got?’ Had the children been asked to complete a task in silence (eg writing) so other children could concentrate? What was the rationale for bringing a child onto the carpet? Children coming onto the carpet to be nearer the teacher is routine in primary schools - it can improve focus, and is not generally seen as a punishment, although it might follow on from some chattiness. If this is literally a 30 minute punishment for saying ‘what book have you got’ it is not OK and you should speak to the head of the class teacher won’t back down. Another possibility is that this is a young teacher relatively inexperienced who is having trouble settling the class, trying lots of strategies, and your child has been caught in the crossfire. An element of understanding should be part of the mix, but if this is a standard punishment, it should be explored further with the class teacher in the first instance, and if necessary the head teacher thereafter.

I am just curious. Are you a teacher?

If it was your son or daughter talking over a teacher and disrupting the learning of others, what would you deem to be a suitable punishment that you would be happy with?
Genuine question

I’d expect them to be reprimanded of course I would. I would also expect them to be held accountable following the behaviour policy. I’d that meant leaving class and going to slt then so be it. But sitting on the floor is disgusting. It’s akin to standing facing the wall. If the teacher can’t use successful behaviour management strategies without resulting in making pupils sit on the floor for thirty minutes, then she clearly needs support. This will spiral quickly and she will struggle to gain and keep respect from the class. How on earth can they be expected to write (and I mean with the high expectations of handwriting, SPAG etc) properly?

I doubt it.

For those who have repeatedly mentioned the behaviour policy, in my school, the behaviour policy states

Warning
Miss 5 mins of break
Continue this to a max of 15 mins (whole of break).

If they end up going into missing lunch too, we phone home.

There are some children who would be onto a phonecall home by 9.15 every morning! If we stuck doggedly to that.

We're also expected to use our professional judgement to intervene and prevent it from getting that far. So no, not every little thing will he detailed in the behaviour policy.

For some children, the first warning is enough. For many more, losing 5 mins of break is enough (and they can earn it back of they manage themselves for the rest of the session). For some children, it is preferable to move them than take all their breaktimes off them every day for talking! And kinder.

Some children will ask to move to they're not tempted to talk. Some are just chatterboxes!

I give some of my 'persistent offenders' the choice of where they would like to sit instead to enable them to manage themselves. That can work.

Whether it's humiliating or not depends on how it is done. I don't move children as a punishment unless they are being persistently unkind to others. I tell them that, at the point their friends are asking to he moved away from them so they can work, they really need to be thinking about their choices. If children are telling me they can't concentrate because a child is talking and are asking to be moved, what am I supposed to do? It's easier to find space for 1 child who is talking than 5 who are being disturbed by them.

Because whatever you think about moving children, it doesn't do their self esteem much good when 5 other children are asking to be moved away from them because they won't stop talking either.

Same

If warnings don't work and they continue to disrupt the class, moving a child to the carpet at the front of a room for a lesson can put a stop to it.

It's about all the children in the class, not just one.

It's an anonymous poster's account of a child's account that it was 30 mins.

Children exaggerate because they've misjudged time; posters exaggerate to make a situation sound worse than it was.

The pace and structure of lessons is such that, even if I wanted to make a child sit on the floor for 30 mins to work (I wouldn't), I would not have a 30 mins straight period of time in which to do it!

So it's highly unlikely that it actually was for 30 mins.

A child who is removed from class is actually isolated from their peers. Either they sit at a table alone outside the classroom where everyone passing by can see them (arguably more humiliating), or sent to work in another class (also arguably more humiliating) and where they don't have access to either teacher support or available resources.

It’s an interesting thought experiment to ask what issues would be raised by an adult doing the same thing, as it might create some new insight. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the circumstances of adults and schoolchildren are completely interchangeable. For instance children who fight on the yard are rarely sprayed with MACE and hit on the back of the legs with truncheons. If a group of 30 adults came each night to ‘The Mousetrap’ and talked so loudly across the play all the way through, they would eventually be asked to leave. With school children, this is called exclusion which is rightly seen as a far more serious consequence than being asked to move to the carpet to improve concentration. I get the impression that understandably (why would they?) many posters here don’t realise that carpet time is an integral part of primary school teaching which is rarely if ever seen as a punishment or a humiliation , and wasn’t seen as such by the OPs child, who knows that children routinely sit on the carpet in the classroom. I am not offering an opinion as to whether this teacher was right or wrong, which would be much easier to determine after speaking to her. I am merely suggesting that some caution is required when drawing conclusions from a thought experiment in which an adult is substituted for a primary school child.
I have to say that the OP has raised a perfectly sensible question in the mildest of ways, and in general the responses have been thoughtful and helpful. If some are ignorant about school life, isn’t the hope that they will understand a little more by engaging in reasoned discussion?

I think what you do is just fine, that's very different to just sitting on the floor for 30 minutes because you were talking. But then we don't know if that's really the case or what the purpose behind it was, hopefully a chat with the teacher will shed some light 😊 I was imagining kids just sitting on the floor for half an hour not doing anything, but I might have just interpreted that wrongly.

Im a teacher and it does seem unusual but I would ALWAYS get the other side of the story before taking any other action. We have had parents furiously phoning the school with versions of events that were very far removed from reality. With younger kids it might not even be deliberate, but always worth checking what actually happened first.

I am a teacher and move children to the carpet all of the time. Sometimes it is for group work. Sometimes for my main teach. Sometimes because a child is disrupting others and my classroom is too small to move them anywhere else. What should I do? The other 31 children in the room all have their learning disrupted by children shouting out etc, so I need a quick way of dealing with it. What else should I do?

Same

All the moaning parents need to be demanding proper school funding, decent size classrooms, smaller numbers of children per class, more grownups and more support for children with special needs who have all been pushed into mainstream schools without adequate support. Not complain that their little disruptive darlings are being held to account for actively hindering the learning of all the other children in the class.

Being moved to the front of a primary school classroom on the carpet to finish/complete a lesson or do group work isn't 'humiliating' or 'demeaning'; it's a reset button so they can remember what they're supposed to be there for in the first place (learning) and a chance to let the rest of the class get to hear and complete the lesson in progress without additional disruptions. Hopefully, sitting at the front without someone to talk to or make easy eye contact with nips the poor choices in the bud and everyone, including the disruptive student, gets on with the lesson and their work at that point.

The next step is to presumably be sent to another class or into the hallway, and if those steps don't work, on to a member of SLT for a conversation about their behaviour/attitude.

No it’s not, that should have been a reply to the post saying it’s illegal!

I teach 10 year olds- if a child is repeatedly talking whilst I am delivering the input, I ask them to sit on the floor in front of the board whilst I finish teaching (to help them and the children that were around them to concentrate) but send them straight back to their table once I’m done with the input. 30 mins however is not ok! There should be a behaviour policy in the school that the teacher should be following. You may be able to find this on the school website. If not, speak to the teacher directly or take it up with senior leadership as this needs nipping in the bud.