Parents V Teachers

[shoogalypeg]

Whilst I do have some sympathy for teachers in this current climate I can’t help but feel that if you can’t handle the heat then get out of the kitchen, which they’re doing in droves and this leaves mostly hardened, jaded individuals who have no business working with children.

I guess this leads onto a really important question:

What can parents do to improve things that doesn’t involve ignoring unprofessional behaviour from teachers?

YABU - cut teachers some slack/parents are powerless to change the system
YANBU - as a parent I’m worried AND feel I have a part to play

(if neither of the above options fit then please elaborate below)

Nobody has said that actually, the only response about it was yours and you misread it (embarrassing!)

The people doing the verbal attacks on here aren't parents btw. Because it's one way. We get told that we are the problem and don't get to reply.

Also personally...

I'm a problem parent
Feeling like an inconvenience is my problem
My line of work makes me unable to grasp the required professionalism.
I'm intrusive
I'm demanding

For offering suggestions when directly asked to.

If you're like this to parents who have ideas put forward to be helpful in good faith then you're part of the problem too. I hope you aren't like this in the classroom.

I sit on an Excusion Panel at a Local school.
The teachers are mostly absolute bloody Heros and have to deal with so much before they can even think about actually teaching, which is presumably what they actually went into the profession to do.
In every single case I have dealt with the parents are the problem or as a minimum have greatly contributed to the problem.

Ok, I have skin in the game.
I taught for the best part of 20 years, and now I lead teacher training in a specific subject for a very large provider. I also have two children of school age.

In my previous post, I listed what I believe parents can do.

Here are the other factors I believe would help solve this crisis:

1. Increase teachers' pay and be absolutely clear on what tasks they are expected to perform.

This would attract high quality trainees and reduce workload. Teachers need to be planning, delivering lessons and carrying out meaningful assessments. They need time to develop their knowledge (both subject and pedagogy).

1. Funding needs to be focused on reducing class sizes. I am aware of the research saying this has no effect, however anecdotally I would disagree. I think further work needs to be done on this.
2. There isn't a limitless pot of money. Schools should not have to be responsible for pupils' mental health, beyond managing workload/resilience. They should not be responsible for feeding pupils breakfast. A huge bag of porridge oats is not expensive. If people cannot afford to feed their children, which should come first before anything else, including feeding yourself, then social services need to help. Primary schools should not be responsible for teaching teeth cleaning and healthy eating. Parents need to do this. All resources should go into teaching and learning and reducing class sizes.
3. Schools should not be judged on attendance and they should not be judged on exclusions. If you disagree, spend a few years in front of classes. You'll see some children's education and futures compromised because of these policies.

They should obviously keep an eye on attendance/safeguarding and report and concerns but they need to focus on their core business of teaching and learning.

What has happened is that parents get a wealth of information from schools about their child these days, far more than they ever used to. And it's still not enough, they want a handwritten personally tailored comment 'to work with'.

Parents at my school can now see every single lesson their child is late to, what detentions they have and for what reason, housepoints, isolations. Still not good enough.

Often it's not just bad parents it's a horrible SLT.

Thanks - but you still haven't said what we, as parents, can do, to improve the situation for our own kids. I can't control government education policy or even influence it (other than my vote), but what i can do is support my own kids needs and engage with school but teachers make it very clear they hate being bothered by parents and we are just a nuisance for daring to hope our kids gets 5 min of attention even once a term. It's shit.

I try really hard to work WITH my kids schools rather than being a thorn in their side but literally even sending a polite email asking a question has you marked out as a pain in the arse and teachers either ignore it or you get frosty responses etc.

My kids get zero appreciation from teachers for not causing all the aggro they just get mostly ignored because they aren't disruptive.

I don't see any of that. I get a green point or a red point. Sometimes we get them when our children aren't even in school and they won't take them away.

Plus anyway it's not personal. It's not a criticism of teachers to ask for information. Do you think parents are asking for that to be rude? What's the issue here exactly? Why is this such a contentious topic for you? If kids are so bloody awful these days then we need to know what the problems are. That's all I'm saying.

Teachers are saying they want more from parents. I'll give you an example of one of my classes:

They are late to school if they turn up. They are late to lessons. They don't do homework. They seem to spend their weekends drinking and partying.

We had parents evening. Barely any of the parents turned up.

I would quite like those parents to do more. They don't need any more information from me.

If your child is getting red marks 2-3 times a week, why don't you ask them what's going on and tell them to pack whatever it is in and stop getting the red marks, or you'll confiscate their X-box?

I'm a parent. I've had 2 children go through primary and secondary school (youngest is year 5).

I think that most of the teachers are doing a fantastic job and doing their very best. I have known of a few terrible ones who really shouldn't be in the job.

My observation is that a lot of the parent's behaviour is absolutely despicable and it rubs off onto the kids.

There are a lot of parents who simply cannot be arsed to parent and do not want to work with their child's school or care about their children's education.

I agree with you on this but you say that teachers can protect themselves, which is untrue.

Even as a teacher that doesn't teach a core subject, we still get pupils that do not want to be in the classes that we teach.
Often because we are bottom progress 8 bucket and are worthless to the school in the league tables so we get the pupils that either don't want to be in school, or the SLT don't want in other lessons where they can cause considerable damage to the school's level in the league tables.

Then you have to remember that even though core subjects often get streamed at GCSE level they still have these pupils in them.

And yes SLT and head teachers will use these pupils are part of a campaign to force experienced, expensive good teachers out of the profession.

My children don't get 2-3 red marks a week, read my posts again, that's the number for feedback generally both good and bad.

As I have repeatedly said my children are well-behaved and I've never been called in about behaviour. They're good kids and I'm a good parent. I go to parents evening without fail and get "DS/DD is doing fine, no concerns". If I have questions or DD has said she's struggling with something, there's no time to raise it. We have 5 minute appointments which overrun because the teachers are spread over a massive school and you have to find the room they're in which takes ages. All this means the teachers are fed up and want to make time up so they can go home. Fair enough but not hugely rewarding for anyone.

My kids don't have an XBOX. My son has a PC but I can't confiscate that because he's doing an extra iGCSE from home on Computer Science, because school couldn't find anyone to teach it and it's what he wants to do. Not that I need to confiscate it, he's a good kid.

As I have repeatedly said my children are well-behaved and I've never been called in about behaviour. They're good kids and I'm a good parent

Then 'teachers want parents to do more' isn't about you.

I know the account you mean. Sharing made up little stories about pupils being banned from taking in sanitary products from home and having to buy them off the school.

I think a huge part of it is the mental health crisis .
I am a teacher and a parent, as are many of us, so it's not an us Vs them.

I get a lot of contact at school which is along the lines of
My child is very anxious
My child is withdrawn at home
My child is having panic attacks
My child can't cope in lessons
My child perceives that you mean X Y Z when you actually said...

Then I might put into place a counsellor, perhaps. An exit pass. A pastoral support plan. A daily check in. I collect them from the car and bring them in, feed them breakfast, make them a hot chocolate.

Still it is not enough. 'My child is suicidal/ my child is deeply unhappy AND WHAT WILL YOU DO'

this is entirely unmanageable for us. We are not trained mental health practitioners, nor do we have funding and resources to offer more and more. But there is nothing else out there, so they rely on schools. Then of course it's teachers as well as parents worrying at night about the children.

So I'm not qualified to speak on the matter? I get called all sorts and told to shut up? Okay!

I wasn't talking about my own children, I was saying that there's a lack of contact between parents and teachers and that's perhaps some of the problem. It's hard to work together on something when you can't contact the other party at all and a simple suggestion like having feedback that's useful words is treated like I've asked to move into the stationery cupboard to watch lessons through the cracks.

I find this strangely reassuring - not the bit about teachers being bullied obviously!

But the bit about streaming so well behaved children who want to learn are apart from some of the bad behaviour. It helps some children who are in education now and parents who have no influence about other families parenting or education reforms which take years to be agreed and rolled out.

If streaming is based on academics then children with learning difficulties are further disadvantaged by being lumped with children with poor behaviour which is awful.

Yet in the 'good old days' there was even less communication between teachers and parents.

If you have read the many threads on communication between school and home , you will know that it swings from too much to too little.
Too detailed to not enough detail
Too often to not often enough.
Its not something that schools will ever do right.

I think you should train to become a teacher and tell us how you found life "in the kitchen".

It is often (but not always) a problem that the pupils with a learning difficulty are also in classes with those that cause the most issues, but then these classes are much smaller and will (if possible) contain TAs etc. giving more support.

Many children are badly brought up, yes. They spend too long watching fast paced addictive content on TikTok and Youtube. They have no hard boundaries and no resilience. They are not talked to by their parents and don't understand conversation.. However the kids I could cope with! It is the parents that are the problem.
In our school , parents cannot directly email teaching staff and the vast majority of nonsense complaints are dealt with by an admin staff and never even reach the teacher.

So you don't want to talk about it. Fine. No need to comment then.

I don't think there were good old days, when I was in school there were plenty of problems. Children weren't believed when they had board rubbers thrown at them, and I had a teacher myself who used to humiliate me for laughs. Perhaps our generation, having lived through their own bad experiences, are less quick to take the teacher's word for things as a result?

But either way if you have a parent who is trying to be constructive and engage and you respond by questioning their parenting and their children's behaviour and call them intrusive and demanding, then working together falls down quite quickly.

Just read the link. It's a slip up made in frustration and exhaustion. We are only human and we all occasionally say something we wish we hadn't, that we know was inappropriate but once it's out all we can do is apologise. I still burn with embarrassment at the time a ' XX could you just shut up for one minute?' slipped out of my mouth when I unfortunately lost patience at a hugely disruptive child who made my life a misery.

So how do you deal with it? You ask your daughter if the teacher apologised for her poor choice of words. I assume she has. Next, you tell your daughter that you are very sad that she had been mean to this other child and you never want to hear she has behaved so unkindly again. Lastly, you teach your child to respect her teacher who has her best interests at heart and is doing their best to provide a good education in not the easiest of circumstances (unmanageable workload, unrealistic expectations, boring, over-stuffed curriculum, no resources, no TA and poorly behaved children whose parents hve not taught them to respect their teachers.

Lastly, your can't stand the heat comment is massively derogatory. Most people would want support for someone who is suffering burn-out or poor mental health through work stress.

If you read back I haven't said anything like your final paragraph, I am happy for you to apologise, but I won't hold my breath.

All teachers are generally happy to have constructive discussions, although many of these go down hill very quickly,

As for board rubbers etc. being thrown around etc. I can assure you that much of what the older generation teachers isn't permitted and for board rubbers to be thrown you would have to be mid forties plus, and that is being generous.
I am also sure that "bullying" of pupils by teachers happens but it is investigated and is often what will be classes as not meshing or a clash of personalities..

So you don't want to talk about it. Fine. No need to comment then.

If this is your response when you don't get what you want as a reply, its easy to see where your children will get it from.

I was replying to you in my first and second paragraph, what follows is a general commentary how the thread is going. The things people are saying to me are mad and hugely unfounded. I will apologise because that's not clear, because while you would love me to be a dick I'm not actually, I've been reasonable and yet had all sorts thrown at me.

I'm 43. I was bullied by a teacher, who knew I was unpopular and struggling at the time. I remember one time when we were in a refuge after my mother was beaten up by her boyfriend, I explained why I had missed school that week in front of the class, I told her because she left me no choice, despite not wanting to say it in front of everyone, and her response? "I wish I had a life as exciting as yours." She humiliated me regularly. I also had brilliant teachers, but some were nasty and that was absolutely true and not a personality clash.

I also had a teacher who threw board rubbers, I wasn't hit personally but other kids were. In my primary school a teacher shoved a child and he fell into a radiator breaking his nose. That teacher did lose his job, but the ones in secondary school could do what they liked.

My children, for the umpteenth time, behave well. Yes they learnt some of that from me. I didn't want anything from you personally, but you clearly had nothing to say about my views on improving communication so I don't know why you quoted me.

I'd answer all of the above and then some.

I think most of the time it's parents, teachers, and community pushing against national and local government structures and academy trusts for academies. Schools are being asked to do everything to fix all social problems children and their families (and sometimes employers and the justice system) face on a shoestring and a prayer, while also being agile enough to change at the whims of the powers around them. Teachers should be cut some slack, though I don't think that includes ignoring clearly unprofessional behaviour. I have had a word with a couple teachers around this, thankfully that was enough to ensure appropriate apologies and no further issues.

For many teachers, that also includes the whims SLT. Sometimes those whims are coming from pressure and whims of the LA or academy trust, sometimes it's their own ideals that develop from unrealistic expectations. SLT often, to get into that job, have a particular attitude towards work that isn't healthy, IME, and sometimes don't get that it isn't sustainable nor is it a moral failing to not be doing 10-12 hour days all the time. It's true of many similar professions.

I've been the worried/active parent, I've been part of parent consolations, used to go to every parent event (stopped last year when it was a 5 minute meeting with form tutors, when it takes me an hour to get to the school), been a parent governor for years, was the first one to actually challenge a policy to make it go to vote/rewrites because it was horribly inconsistent and clearly copied over from multiple other policies, but never edited to be one coherent document and I still view us as largely powerless to change the system as parents. Schools have so many other metrics they're measured by, anything any individual parent is saying is a whisper in the storm. The time there is a big part of the life of the child, but they'll leave and the school moves on.

I've two kids out of school and two more getting close, and I'm still not sure what parents who aren't spreading shite on social media and have children who are behaving and happy to learn can do that would improve things for teachers as parents. Even working within wider consultation and connected areas can feel pointless, either due to the lack of resources to do anything or the whims of a headteacher / trust lead / government official.

I don't think it's helped when it's framed as all parents or all teachers. Some in any group like that can be great and some are assholes who have an antagonistic view towards others. I've sat in meetings with the head of Education Welfare where I am and heard her infer parents are dim and openly call parents who contacted the LA for help arrogant, even quoting from emails of parents asking for help to somehow support that I can see why parents might think falls under Education Welfare, but sadly doesn't (mostly to do with children with additional needs). Things like that are part of why I stepped away from being so active in schools - it's so draining and when you run into those that are antagonistic but powerful, it does make you feel like what's the point & carry on supporting just your own kids at home.