To make a complaint about this head of year

[Newfoundzestforlife]

Today in assembly at my child's school...
Child tells head of year that he has foxes in his garden at night and they sound like a child dying. Head of year replies "If only!" Then she apparently smirked at another teacher saying "Yes I did just say that".
My 13 daughter knew how wrong that was.
This head of year has form for saying really inappropriate things, very odd woman, but wishing death on kids? Why work with them if she hates them that much?

Start with Ofsted > 101 > Head of MI5> King Charles> God.....
WILL NOBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!!😭

Oh give up

🤣

You realise teachers have relationships with their students right? They laugh and joke with them.

I see you are an ex-teacher so your comment makes sense. Unfortunately, I have had the displeasure of encountering plenty of similarly smug teachers and ex-teachers in my working life.

This teacher IS stupid and IS in the wrong job.

When I was teaching a long, long time ago, I had many complaints from parents about things I’d supposedly said - none of which I actually said but either made up by the child, Mia heard or misinterpreted. Same with all the other teachers in the school. It’s why I quit. God help teachers these days because it sounds like it’s 1000x worse.

Neither comment would have made me even raise an eyebrow.

I'd like to see the teachers that people with this attitude DO approve of.

You realise almost NO ONE wants to be a teacher anymore, right? It's this or home schooling.

“Its a hard job” isn’t the excuse you think it is. The joke is inappropriate because it revealed the HOY’s underlying, unconscious, hatred of her charges and her job. Hostility from nurses to patients and teachers to students—or politicians to voters—is common (see e.g. the work of Erving Goffman—but that doesn’t make it forgivable. In fact It was more of a freudian slip than a joke. And the HOY knew it . She’s not a goddamned standup comedian. She should have ignored the child’s bud for attention or defused it. Instead she used the child’s inappropriate comment to reveal her antipathy to her job and charges.

Haven't RTWFT, but I interpreted the 'joke' with the 'smirk' (if indeed that happened) as a joke about sex. So the 'if only' was a - lol, it was actually sex/if only/I should be so lucky, kind of double entendre.

I mean, still not great, but within the boundaries of humour between two adults (teacher to teacher), rather than saying she hoped a child would die. To a child.

Anyway. Just goes to show how things can be interpreted, especially when you are not there. The whole interaction sounds a bit odd, tbh.

What job do you do? @pikkumyy77

It really isn’t… 🙄

Anthropologist turned licensed therapist.

But it isn't though. Ex teacher here and you, my love, are exactly why there's a teacher shortage. I knew I'd had enough when a parent came up to my classroom uninvited or signed in, pinned me to my chair and screamed in my face for asking her son to be quiet. Teachers firstly need to be able to do their job without kids opening their mouths every 20 seconds, and secondly need to be allowed to react to those comments how they will. We do have personalities you know, you need a certain amount of presence to stand up in front of 30 kids for 5 hours a day.

If you're easily offended or can't engage in banter, you're best sticking to the back of the typing pool or whatever and letting those who can crack on!

I don't think you understand what a joke is. The HOY made a joke. In a joke, one can exaggerate for comic effect. The teacher may sometimes feel frustrated by children's behaviour, and she exaggerated this for comic effect. Because she is a human and because humour can build relationships.

I feel frustrated by children's behaviour sometimes. But I don't have an unconscious hatred of them, I am not hostile to them and I do not have antipathy to my job or children. I care about them all, and I'm bloody good at my job. I even enjoy it occasionally.

It literally was a joke, though. You might not find it funny, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a joke.

Fucking hell. It must be seriously exhausting for you to be this earnest and serious about everything.

Agreed.

All this indicates is that you are exceptionally literal-minded, not that there is anything wrong with the way the kids described the sound of the foxes.

Not even sure why you'd think 'poor vixen' really. They're not making that noise because they're in distress. They're fulfilling their natural mating instinct.

No I wouldn't report it, it's petty.

I have not said there is anything wrong with the way the pupil described the sound of the foxes. I have said it is troubling that a child would choose to describe the sound of foxes having sex as like a child dying. As for the vixen, to my human ear, they sound as though they are in distress, so I am reacting in my own exceptionally literal minded way.

It's not really troubling, when I've heard fox mating noises outside my home it does sound similar to a screaming child / person in distress. It's a horrible noise.

Why is it troubling to describe it as such and why specifically because they’re having sex when making the noise?!

What's troubling is for the pupil to be talking about a dying child, not the sound of foxes having sex.