Teachers who have watched 'Adolescence'- what are your thoughts?

[Fstt1978]

Had an interesting experience this week after watching this at the weekend

sanctioned 4 boys this week with a demerit each - for pushing and shoving in the corridor- swearing loudly and generally being gobby to me.
All 4 boys parents have written emails to say it's unfair/ I'm picking on them etc etc. As it was 4 of them- none of them can be singled out.
We also have a boy caught on CCTV physically assaulting a much younger student unprovoked - it is categorically an assault- with the victims parents pressing charges. He has been permanently excluded and his parents have instructed a solicitor to contest this.

What is going on with parenting boys? Girls sanctioned rarely have parents like this - this is NOT a goady thread- I am genuinely really interested , and open to discussion about it

Same for me. Never noticed a gender split in parents being difficult.

This! My oldest was adamant a teacher was ‘picking on her’ and singling her out. Given my daughter’s attitude at home and how she was speaking about the teacher, I said I’d speak with the school. Her guidance teacher was absolutely brilliant and said he knew about her issues with the teacher and apologised etc. I asked to speak with the teacher cos I wanted to get her perspective, lo and behold it transpired my daughter was showing off infront of her class and being mouthy. Her teacher seemed genuinely shocked I wasn’t mad at her and wanted to understand what went on.

Now my daughter and this teacher seem to have a much better relationship.

I think nowadays kids do get away with too much in school, I’ve seen my daughter manipulate the system in it to her advantage.

Totally agree - when discussing AI my dbro said his.maim worry is.loss of competence - just rely on a Google search with no grounded knowledge! Crazy imo

Which is? Does the policy require talks being given to children about the benefits of good behaviour, expectations in relation to showing respect to all others all the time, anti bullying, guidance, support, dangers of porn, healthy relationships (ie against incel type thinking) motivation for the future, helping children find their passions? How often are these talks given?

What did you think about the fact that the detectives in the drama described the teachers at the school as apathetic, not dealing with bullying/online bullying effectively, not being aware of emotional problems of the children, could you relate to that?

These are genuine questions by the way, not intending to score points, just interested in how you see things as you started the thread.

Yes - I'm at a good school and am a lifelong career teacher- definitely not apathetic - my school is proactive and has forward thinking policies and student voice groups
I think the best school with the best policies still feel like they are fighting a rising societal tide though

The things you have listed wouldn’t be a part of the behaviour policy but different aspects of school life. In most schools:

• talks being given to children about the benefits of good behaviour - these would be given in assemblies, by form tutors or by individual teacher as and when needed
• expectations in relation to showing respect to all others all the time - these would be embedded into the school rules and form a part of the behaviour policy
• anti bullying, guidance, support, dangers of porn, healthy relationships (ie against incel type thinking) motivation for the future, helping children find their passions - these would be a part of the PSHE curriculum, not the behaviour policy

the detectives in the drama described the teachers at the school as apathetic, not dealing with bullying/online bullying effectively, not being aware of emotional problems of the children
This hasn’t been my experience in any of the schools I’ve worked in. However there is only so much teachers can do. Unfortunately we have no magic wand to wave to eradicate the ills of society.

A big problem is that there are not enough outside agencies, and schools are left having to sort out most of societies problems, and they are stretched too thinly and funded badly.

very very true

So I feel as though you are trying to say "well yes, we do all those things obviously". But at DC's school, yes these things form part of policies/curriculum as you say, but there has not been any talks at all to the whole class in the last two years covering any of these subjects. There may be the odd utterance in assemblies, and things are sometimes skimmed over in the relevant class, and individual children are sometimes spoken to about behaviour, but very very little. It isn't nearly enough. Children of this age, dealing with a fair bit of crap at home at lot of the time and with appalling influences in their faces at every turn could do with these sorts of talks - emphasising all these points - on a daily basis. With a lot of emphasis. And positive comments made continuously throughout the day. So why isn't this happening? Why isn't there more provision for helping kids catch up with/understand their work?

This thread is to do with what teachers have to put up with - but think of the sort of futures they are going to have, without any real guidance or support.

Unless schools do this as a matter of course, nothing will change.

My school, incidentally, gave a lot of motivation and guidance talks (all those years ago).

You say that you think that your school is proactive and has forward thinking policies but this entire thread is about the appalling behaviour you feel you have to put up with - so there is some mismatch here - it sounds like more is needed, though I also think that more direction needs to come from the government about how best to deal with teens today.

Teens should be finding their passions, learning, excited about the world and their futures, even if it gets messy once in a while. How you describe the kids who behave badly is tragic. It sounds as though their behaviour is dreadful but at the same time they are getting no guidance or support from anywhere. Behaviour is communication with all children, including teens.

@opendoorsopening this is true but there’s only so much schools and teachers can do if they don’t have the support of the parents. They can’t provide them interventions without parental consent and if the parents think there is nothing wrong or are worried the child will say something that will reflect badly on them then they aren’t going to encourage the child to engage.

They have loads of support in school, outside help Is almost non existent. Parental contract with school is eroded. There's only so much we can do.

I wasn't talking about interventions actually - i can why interventions might not be well received.

I am talking about simply giving more guidance and support and motivational talks to the children on a daily basis. Kids of this age need things hammered home, the same points repeated again and again, and eventually it starts to have an effect. You can get boys and girls who are top of their classes yet still in terms of emotional intelligence they need these things hammered home. And most of the worst behaved kids are badly behaved because they are failing at school work and need help with it - simple straightforward help - not formal interventions.

Schools are engulfing teens with petty punishments which are counterproductive and sometimes damaging and creating trouble - this shouldn't be happening.

Schools are not spending time actively and consciously guiding and giving support and being motivational, hammering the messages home, daily basis.

Not enough time or money is spent on giving teens 1:1. This would not only help with school work, the teen would benefit from the attention - they might complain initially but they would respond well after a short time. It is beyond shocking the lack of basic illiteracy and maths skills in many teens, at the very least.

I am not suggesting this would be a silver bullet right now on its own -the problems go back to primary and there are many other problems - but get those three things right would make a big difference.

Unfortunately as we all know it depends on each teacher and how they respond to the language and behaviour day to day.
What are the real consequences for bad behaviour or language after a while it will just become noise.
I did hear a radio show about a charity getting into a nursery to teach kindness and apparently that can dramatically reduce abuse later on.

I have seen, twice or three times, in the last few days a statistic that shocked me a bit. Which was... every single day of missed school, over a lifetime, ends up costing £750 in lost lifetime earnings. I have no way of knowing whether this is truthful, but it is quite a powerful statistic.

There are a few posts on here, saying they don’t recognise the behaviour on the show, and tell us all that their children attend private schools. It’s really quite irritating and not sure why they are bothering to post? The school in the show was clearly a state school. 🙄

If true, I would suspect its heavily skewed by those who missed 2 or 3 days a week for years and never got any qualifications.

I find it hard to believe that taking two days off in Y4 to get to a cousin's wedding will have much of lasting impact at all, if any.

The odd day or two off for a wedding is probably not the issue, but regular truancy is. And as a taxpayer, I am reluctant to supplement the benefit payments that might be demanded of me to make up the shortfall over a very long period/ lifetime.

There was a graph in about 2021 of the impact of school closures on lifetime earnings. The UK had one of the longest school closures due to Covid in Europe.

Do you work in schools?
I think we are doing a lot of what you say here

Someone upthread suggested that mums of boys would know more than teachers. As a mum of boys there is just the incredible amount of energy they have (even before they are born) just non stop running around. Anyone who helps at scouts can see the sheer physicality of little boys - and that is before any testosterone kicks in.
Friends who are teachers feel they would like to send boys on a long run before they try to start teaching a lesson.
Where does that energy go if they spend so much time in their bedrooms at a screen.

Not according to your earlier posts, and most threads like this on MN!

Do you work in schools?

I am not sure that posters who are not teachers and only have anecdotal evidence from their own DCs schools can comment that just because their school doesn’t do something it means no others do. The recent thread about publishing surnames and the threads about the emergency lock down drills show just how different schools can be. My sons high school has weekly assemblies that they discuss these kinds of issues in and they also have a PHSE day every term (the last one had young male offenders in to talk about how they ended up in prison, the one before that had athletes from the para and special olympics to talk) that includes different workshops to explore. This kind of thing should be across the board but I think things differ hugely depending on geographical factors, SLT, LEA and so much more. As parents we should be working with our schools to support or children to succeed and I think everyone here is fully on board with that.

They did have a troop of Chinese dragon dancers in that ended up closing the school though. They were throwing out fruit and veg to invite prosperity for the new year. It descended into chaos and one boy got knocked unconscious by a full head of cabbage. 😮