Teacher sacked for teaching a TikTok dance

[mammabing]

Posting here as I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

https://apple.news/AmOGKR_ELSLqutPF2Sv4saA

I get that if she knew they had accounts she should have reported it but surely it’s the parents who are responsible for any social media their child has? A lot of the dances on TikTok are innocent enough so why should she lose her job? Surely further safeguarding training would suffice?
Also I thought the content itself wasn’t age restricted, just signing up to the site?

YABU - she should be sacked
YANBU - she should have kept her job

and an investigation into her conduct found ‘a number of small things which put together make a bigger concerning picture’.

Personally, I think this is insane. In my DD’s class, in year 5, she was the only one who didn’t have TikTok.

This makes more sense.

There are a LOT of bigger issues in education though, imo

It’s interesting that those things aren’t reported though. But I guess potentially valid reasons for firing someone wouldn’t make an interesting news story 😂

the devil is in the detail

and i suspect if we were to know the full story - there would be a lot more to it

I think it's probably an Al Capone tax type of thing. They knew they could get rid for this, so they did but there was a lot more.

Stories like this are always more than they seem/we know.

Quotes from

The hearing was told that after the summer holidays, it then emerged that Miss Rogers had also been sending 'borderline unprofessional' messages to one of her students and her mother through Dojo, an online platform used by the school.

Included in the extensive messages was Miss Rogers sending the pupil a photo of her nails and telling her mum 'Bless her, I just love her' and 'Send her my love'.

EJ Butler said: 'She referred to [the pupil] as 'sweetheart' and did nothing to discourage the communication which she knew came directly from the pupil as well as her mum.'

Soon after these messages 'came to light' in September, the teacher was suspended.

An investigation ensued where a number of 'allegations' were investigated by the school.

Other articles report she told at least one child via classdojo that she loved them, which really isn’t appropriate

Oh wow, that makes a lot more sense

It's interesting that it was 2021, and she'd been there since Sept 2019 - which suggests that she was probably very inexperienced in a classroom, particularly when you factor Covid into the situation. The school will have closed 6 months after she arrived and I wonder if she was just qualified. I do wonder how much training in safeguarding or proper teaching experience she'd had altogether. Covid didn't just affect kids, it also interrupted teacher training/ECT teachers being properly supervised and getting the help they needed.

I know many, many teachers are also saying that there is such a recruitment shortage now that it's just about impossible to 'fail' a PGCE student, however dire they are and that doesn't surprise me.

Interesting you say that about PGCE student not failing Greywitch2
We had a PGCE student working in our school who was reported as they had replied to a student in their class via social
media. The university did nothing, not even a warning, however our school suspended them with immediate effect so they technically failed the placement.
Thankfully they dropped off the course as the university let them continue.

I've read as much about this as I possibly can.

I definitely feel like there had to be more than this.

Dojo is not a platform that you would use if you were up to no good because the school can see everything. You can't message the children on it, only the parents.

You do get parents who will dojo message you about things that they shouldn't. I once saw a family when I was walking my dog and the mum started messaging me about dogs and did I think getting a dog would be beneficial to their child as he was an only child.

I can really imagine a parent commenting on your nails at pick up and then messaging you saying how they or their child liked them and where do you go etc.

I definitely don't CPOM every child who mentions they have been watching dancing on TikTok or playing fecking Fortnite because if I did I would never get anything else done. I do say 'that's not something you should be doing' and that sort of thing.

I'll be doing it now though!

I feel for the teacher in this. Very new. Impacted by Covid. I used to call dc in my class sweetheart, my lovely etc.

She’s got a warm, nurturing style of communication and hasn’t learned that written communication should be more formal. Dojo isn’t FB messenger.

However, I suspect she was underperforming in other ways and this was the way they chose to tackle it.

To be fair, if you aren’t a teacher or in a position with safeguarding, you wouldn’t notice the two hints in the passage.

It reads very much as if it’s about dance and TikTok.

The few things mentioned are very inappropriate and the teacher sounds clueless with no professional understanding of boundaries.

Why bother when I have mumsnet to educate me? 😂

I feel for the teacher too. It’s sad that a female teacher calling a little girl “sweetheart” is seen as inappropriate. My nine-year-old’s teacher has called her “honey” in passing before - like, “No, honey, put it over there.” I have absolutely no issue with it.

EJ Butler concluded the school’s investigation into the TikTok allegation was ‘flawed’ and as a result the allegation itself did not result in ‘gross misconduct’.
However, the tribunal found dismissing Miss Rogers in relation to the other allegations was the ‘reasonable response’ and her claims were not upheld.

so not only was she fired for other matters ,the tik tok thing was held NOT to gross misconduct.

Details of the case are here
https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions/ms-g-rogers-v-diocese-of-southwell-and-nottingham-multi-academy-trust-2601454-slash-2022

she overshared information about boyfriends and her ectopic pregnancy and formed inappropriate relationships with a couple of pupils.She seems to have significant mental health issues too.

It’s completely different to the newspaper article then.

Pretty complicated and messy.

I remember feeling so adrift as an NQT, but that was donkeys’ years ago.

If PTSD is impacting your classroom, I don’t see how you can continue. There are limits to adjustments, I’d think.