Dealing with teachers who are (imho) bullying children

[derivativation]

DC is year 8. The school was mostly amazing last year but unfortunately we have had a head change head and several new teachers, with several really good teachers leaving.

Several of the new teachers get too critical with the children, saying they are not very clever, that they have no thoughts, their mind is a void, boys are not as good as girls etc. DC is well behaved and so not affected until last week. DC has however stood up for one of the children who was being called stupid by making a light hearted comment. DC was really upset that children were being called stupid and we had decided to try to move school by that point, though it will take a bit of time to organise because of practicalities. But now it has got worse. Last week and today two teachers in classes where DC has done well and the teacher has sung DC's praises (DC does all required homework, does not disrupt classes, puts hand up to speak) talked to DC as though DC had done something very bad and that he deserved to be treated really badly. DC very upset. I strongly suspect that the teachers are intentionally trying to take DC down a peg or two because someone has said they are too much of a smarty pants. DC is quiet and can come across as quietly confident, but DC is not confident at all deep down.

The new head is a chocolate teapot who has brought in a series of changes to rules which appear to be designed to humilate and shame children.

Any brilliant ways of dealing with this while DC has to attend? If I try to talk to the teachers they will think that I am trying to tell them what to do and it will make things worse for DC. If I tell them that DC is in fact not confident and is in some ways quite vulnerable, they will pick on him. I am not joking unfortunately.

I wish I could home school but to set that up would take just as long as finding a better school.

I’m not in a ‘camp’ and would advocate finding out what actually was said by everyone concerned.

There was a classroom of people there-it will be easy to verify. Speak to the head and find out the truth.

"Chocolate teapot" = 'useless' (because the hot tea would melt the chocolate). See also 'ashtray on a motorbike'.

I really really wish parents would have listened to the children- including me- who complained of a bullying teacher when I was at school. I have great parents but I think they wanted me to be resilient, and they thought I was being oversensitive.
Said teacher was a monster. Would get in my face, snarling that I was stupid, that I'd never amount to anything. After a while, he started taking the piss out of one girl because she was from a rough council estate; mocking a boy with a speech impediment; having inappropriate sexual discussions in class, apparently as part of discussing texts. By this point, we thought there was no point reporting his behaviour to parents, as they'd already made us feel oversensitive and a bit crap for complaining about the bullying.

Of course, it came out that he had abused many of his pupils. He never touched me, but the things he said caused me a lot of anxiety and pain- and I am a strong and resilient.

I would talk to the teacher, then make a complaint to his manager if needed. If the teacher started bullying I’d also report that to his manager formally. Pointless keeping quiet about these things, there are teachers who behave badly and they need challenging through the correct process.

my son had a new teacher a few years ago who was nothing short of unhinged. She was on a knife edge and deeply angry constantly. All the kids were petrified. This was in a very middle class village school with few SEN or behavioural issues.

It's not all that long ago since I was in secondary school and there were certainly teachers that bullied certain children. At the time, I suppose I thought that we couldn't do anything about it.

I don't know why it's so hard for some people to believe. There are plenty of unpleasant adults around in our workplaces, and strangely many of them have a pull towards professions where they have some kind of authority.

If your child is well behaved and there has never been bad reports before, why wouldn't you believe them? My mother always stuck up for me because she knew who I was, and that meant the world to me. There was never a reason not to give me the benefit of the doubt.

That doesn't sound great OP. I was incredibly proud of DS for standing up when a math teacher discouraged the girls in his set from taking Further Maths. The teacher claimed that girls typically struggle with the subject and would be better off considering other options. DS put his hand up and said that gender doesn't determine someone's ability to succeed in math or any subject. Telling young people at school they're stupid is a rather dim.

But it’s not the place of a child to get involved in a discussion between the teacher and another pupil. If genuinely upset about it, her child should have taken their concerns to another teacher or a head of year.

It IS rude for a child to butt in on something going on between someone else.

And for your information I was a very well liked and respected teacher who had fun with my pupils but expected hard work in return.

Children do exaggerate and lie, all of them. You realise that very early on when you start teaching!

I would hope that you have gone through your companies complaints policy as you believe so strongly about it.

There are definitely teachers that should not be doing the job; ones that don't care and can be indifferent or low level abusive.

I was at school in the 80's at a comprehensive, and lazy, nasty teachers were common. If they were any good they would have been teaching at a better school for a start.

My child has recently started at the local comp, and I see teachers there that I recognise the traits of from when I was at university as a mature student. They are the ones that struggled to a 2.2 in my fairly easy humanities degree , and decided they would do a PGCE as they couldn't think what to do post degree. No real ambition to a degree,but loved the ' bribes' on offer to be a secondary school teacher in a needed area.

They are now in a job they don't care about and just waiting for the time limit to pass where they have to pay back the busrary/bribe that they took to train up. Rinse and repeat, they quit the industry ( the number of applicants I get for admin jobs in my H.E. establishment from teachers is ridiculous) and the new intake starts the cycle again.

If anyone, child or adult, sees an adult engaged in abusive or bullying conduct towards a child, it is very much their place to “butt in.” Whether the teacher finds it rude is of not the slightest interest. You are not the absolute monarch in your classroom, and the children and their parents are not your subjects or your pets. If you didn’t understand that when you entered the profession, I suspect your boss made it clear to you in short order.

And honestly, if you’re tough enough to talk down to a child, a little rudeness shouldn’t faze you too much. After all, bullying just builds resilience.

The trouble is, none of us know what actually happened. We don’t know exactly what was said by the teacher to the child in question. Children DO exaggerate from time to time so I’d want to know exactly what was going on before throwing the ‘bullying’ term about.
If I was the OP I would be asking to speak to the head and take this higher. It might be they’ve had other complaints and if so, this might be useful information for the head to enable them to take action.

Im just trying to say that my experience of children’s interpretation of events over the years has shown me that they do sometimes embellish the truth when retelling a situation.

You seem to have a real problem with teachers. I’m sorry about that.

Children DO exaggerate from time to time
Let me correct this for you: People DO exaggerate from time to time
Mumsnet is a prime example.

From your posts, it looks as if you are saying that you think that 2 teachers are being quite hard on your DC who is nearly at the end of yr 8, term 1, and that this change has come about since the change of a head teacher who you think appears to be useless. You worry that this is soon going to 'expose' your DC as less confident than they appear.

In the OP you say you are looking for: Any brilliant ways of dealing with this while DC has to attend?

Unfortunately I have very rarely found "brilliant" ways, just ones that need some honesty and grit, and that are not necessarily something that just works and gets you what you are expecting. They're fairly middle-of-the-road. So in all honesty, be prepared for that.

Some thoughts are that year 8 seems generally to be quite an initial shock compared to yr 7 (and year 9's first term has also been a real slog with incessant tests where the classes are most likely to do badly quite a lot of the time, parents been warned that there is a plan that builds on this and to hang on in there, but it has been very discouraging). So it may not have just been to do with the changes.

However, changes do rock the boat. Several new teachers that I remember, have strategically started off deliberately very strict, and looking as if not an inch would be given to anyone (a shock if a student is used to being given the 'polite and clever' card), but then they become extremely good and well-liked. It's just a tough approach to start with.

I also think that pupils of that age group do have a feeling for differences where teachers are being sarcastic, even provocative, or similar, vs. the truly mean and vindictive remarks. Talk about whether your DC does have this sense often. Some things like the sexism may be trying to get people to speak up, articulately, about this being indefensible, even if this is going to annoy the class.
I have been amazed at how my DC now addresses some things at home (politely but assertively), and this is based on a debate/ 2-way style practised at school. Yes, she also has the teenage 30 minutes of moaning about the uniform, the French test, and the assembly video most days, but there is the flipside too. It may be worth trying to find out a lot more, see if you can trust information about any strategy from the school, if you are worried about the effect on confidence, and think carefully about whether there may be value in meeting things halfway, at least for now.

As a teacher, I don’t have a problem with teachers, believe it or not. What I have a problem with is teachers evincing attitudes that bring the profession into disrepute. Also, you didn’t say earlier that OP should be levelheaded and fully investigate what the teacher actually said or did. That I would agree with. What you said was that it isn’t the place of students to interrupt their teacher, even when the teacher is engaged in clearly unprofessional or bullying conduct.

That just isn’t a view that has any place among people charged with safeguarding children. It is dangerous and exactly the kind of attitude that allows abuse to go unchecked for years.

I still don’t believe a pupil should get involved in the moment. It’s not exactly going to help the situation is it? The teacher isn’t going to say “you know what Jimmy, you’re right and I’m wrong. I’ll stop. Thank you for pointing this out infront of the whole class”
If anything, it’s likely to get the teachers back up even more.
If they have a serious concern, they need to alert another member of staff asap. If that means leaving a room to get assistance, so be it.

But we aren’t going to agree on this so I’ll leave it there.

I don’t understand why you’re expecting children to have more composure, restraint and deescalation skills in the moment than a skilled qualified professional. Year 8 makes the child 12/13.

I understand teachers have a difficult job and by and large I support and respect teachers. However I’ve no truck with the idea that they can NEVER be questioned and NEVER make mistakes and there are NEVER wrong uns or incompetence just like in any other walk of life. The idea that children must rise above any bad behaviour from teachers and all children need to be controlled and chastised to enable teachers to maintain control isn’t justified.

OP seems quite reasonable and was seeking advice to manage a situation amicably no idea why it’s brought out such defensiveness and authoritarian attitudes.

If you read my post you’ll not see anywhere where I stated or implied that the child should ‘rise above it’ or be chastised. I’m just explaining why the teacher may have reacted badly to being challenged.

But I have read your post, what you’ve said is

“I still don’t believe a pupil should get involved in the moment. It’s not exactly going to help the situation is it? The teacher isn’t going to say “you know what Jimmy, you’re right and I’m wrong. I’ll stop. Thank you for pointing this out infront of the whole class”
If anything, it’s likely to get the teachers back up even more.
If they have a serious concern, they need to alert another member of staff asap. If that means leaving a room to get assistance, so be it.”

You are putting the emphasis on how a child intervening in the “wrong” way could put a teachers back up, and what the child “should” therefore do instead. I honestly dont understand why it’s relevant if the child could have approached things in a better way if the issue is whether a teacher is bullying a child. That’s the issue the OP is trying to get to the bottom of, so I’m afraid it does look like you’re trying to make excuses for what happened.

The points about rising above poor behaviour and being resilient has been made by others so I wasn’t directly addressing you more the attitude that’s pervading on this thread.

My children have assemblies about not being a bystander when someone is being bullied, including all. So what they actually mean is just for everyone else, if you see a teacher doing this you must be obedient and not butt in?

Here is the thing, (and I have done this)
If a pupil was being told off by me and someone stood up for them.
I have stopped the lesson and turned it in to a discussion.
Asking various questions

What do you think that I am doing?
Why do you think that I am doing that?
Should child A have been doing what ever they were doing?
Have they been given a chance to change their behaviour?
Should they have changed their behaviour?
How should I improve my response?

I was also told off by management as the parent had complained about it.
My response was, "I did what you told us to do in the training the night before."

Whatever happens in these situations some people will always see the teacher as being wrong.
Sometimes they are wrong
But here is the thing that will shock some off the posters, sometimes the children are wrong.

I think that is a great way of dealing with it though so that's a shame that the parents complained?

Believe me, I don't think my children are always right and I am an advocate and supporter of teachers. I think that it is a thankless job at times and not one I could do.

My DC have had wonderful teachers so far but I am not naive enough to think that teachers are perfect, are never bullies and all school policies are right and for their own good.

Just to say I’m in the same camp as Baked Potatoes. I have the kids with “pleasure to teach” all over their reports. However I’ve been a bit irked on OPs behalf that the sway of this thread is that the child is lying, the parent is a trouble maker, teachers can never be wrong and practice can never be questioned.

I’m not shocked if children get things wrong because they are children. I am shocked that so many teachers think it’s wrong to ask questions if a child feels bullied by a teacher.

Yes. They responded by cutting even more floor staff to escalate the problem xD

From memory the complaint was that I had "shamed" their child in front of the class, A word that is/has become far to over used.

The school also told me off for wasting "learning and teaching time".

Teachers know full well that some teachers bully, Some teachers even bully their colleagues.

But some children lie,
Some children misunderstand
and some children mis remember things.
We all do but that doesn't mean that what the child says shouldn't be investigated.

The problem that teachers have isn't that they don't believe that it shouldn't be followed up, its that they don't have time to follow these things up and often when they pass on the information no-one does anything with it until the teacher brings it up again, (normally because the parents have complained).

As a tutor I was quite liked by parents because I followed up the pastoral side of my group. The HOY/House/Communities used to think that it was great that someone was actually following things up, but very rarely did anything get done as there are so many issues to be sorted.