To ask teachers if you are scared

[crochetmonkey74]

I'm a career teacher (25 years) and have always loved it.
In the last year, parental complaints over tiny things are very very common, and often aggressive. More and more students are making wildly false allegations. We have had 2 lockdown situations at my school (not drills) for armed intruders. The news today from Ammanford has really shaken me. I actually feel scared for the first time in my career. If you're a teacher, how are you holding up?

I think problems in schools are symptoms of the wider problems throughout society. For so many people today there is a lack of respect for any type of authority, empowered by hand-wringing and weakness from those in authority. Crippling fear of saying the wrong thing and being punished for having the wrong opinion limits your ability to correct behaviour.

It's become acceptable and even popular to have this doom and gloom attitude that nothing matters, everything's in inevitable decline, and there's no hope, which is taken as an excuse to do whatever you like. Why not let people get away with horrible things, rather than standing up to the behaviour while addressing its underlying causes? The world is going to hell, anyway, so who can blame them? Too many have lost all sense of proportion and knowledge of history. They're are all too happy to claim victimhood (because anyone can be a victim, if they look hard enough) and set it all on fire.

I agree with this. All young people hear these days is there's no hope. They get told you'll never be able to buy a house so why bother trying to get a good job. Climate change means you have no future anyway. No matter what job you get you'll never have enough money to live. It's all everyone else's fault. Government. Boomers. Teachers. Covid. Whoever.

If you hear this from birth then you will think what's the point. People on here say that obviously young people will have no hope because look at the state of the world. But surely by just giving up then there really is no point. Why aren't people saying well right now things aren't great but if you work hard and make changes the world could look very different in 20 years. But obviously if no one bothers it will only get worse. Everyone seems to want everyone else to fix things for them. But EVERYONE needs to change in order for change to happen.

I don't think any government can be blamed for children's behaviour. It's parenting.

My db is a teacher, has been for 15-20 ish years. He was assaulted by a 12yo girl (kicked punched slapped etc) because he told her to stop destroying school property in the classroom (which she was doing because she argued with another child). He is a rugby player, so wasn't physically at risk from this girl. He pinned her arms to her sides. Having been physically immobilised, she went with verbal: "I'm going to tell everyone you're a paedo then". Very fortunately for him, another teacher witnessed the whole thing.

It was under the last labour govt.
Blaming the government for students attacking teachers is absolutely ridiculous.

It is 100% parenting, or the total lack of it. People so obsessed with their own phone that they are letting Tik Tok and You Tube bring your their kids.

Today I had a student day he wanted to kill teachers and another mimicking me behind my back to the whole class. Have been sworn at twice today as well. But apparently it doesn’t count because they weren’t swearing about me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is not every kid but the badly behaved ones are starting to get me down to the point where I can’t do it anymore.

The first generation to grow up obsessed with social media are just starting on their child-rearing years. I am profoundly grateful to be old.

Where is the option to bring back the stocks and the dunce caps? I am obviously being facetious but until there's a willingness to use humiliation to sanction intolerable behaviour, then there's no effective sanction that isn't cumbersome, costly and slow.

The whole point of punishment is that it has to be quick, cheap, unpleasant and yes, humiliating. Public shame for violence, vandalism, criminal behaviour and malicious acts. No lengthy investigations, no appeals, no excuses. Misbehave and face the rest of the day being laughed at as a loser.

As a PP said, there's no shortage of qualified teachers. Just a general commonsense decision by teachers that as individuals they are not prepared to do contortions around the arrogance and entitlement any longer.

Social media will make sure the miscreants are photographed, named and shamed. And afterwards, they may toe the line, to avoid it happening again.

Bumping this thread to say that the girl has been charged with attempted murder which suggests she went in on purpose to attack a member of staff.

I heard this on the news earlier. She was 13 years old ffs!