Dd(12) teacher irresponsible/put her at risk

[hereslooking]

Want to gauge reactions on if I’m being unreasonable regarding incident with Dd(12) and teachers response and what I should expect to happen.

At lunch there were some older boys outside where her and her friends were and one of them threw anothers bag up on to the roof of an outbuilding. DD ended up volunteering to be lifted her up onto the roof to get the bag off and when she was up there a teacher walked past and saw.

She was asked who helped her up and she lied and said that she climbed up on her own to avoid getting the boy in trouble as well. She obviously told how dangerous and stupid it was to be up there and if she fell how she could end up seriously hurt. All the boys offered to help her down safely and dd said that she did want want help/ didn’t want to jump on her own.

The teacher then made all the other kids leave and said she was waiting there untill dd got herself down, which she did and managed to not hurt herself.

Dd was expecting to be given a detention or something or to called out of class and spoken to further all afternoon but nothing happened.

AIBU to be annoyed? I think the teacher handled this terribly and was irresponsible to force dd to jump down

I think there is a balance. Not all teachers actions are commendable. I feel for teachers in general. But the mass response of ‘fuck around and find out’ to one preteen child who (on the basis of what we know) made a bad call really isn’t a great look.

FWIW I’m an NHS doctor in GP and A&E. I’m familiar with the crap the public can deliver. Far too familiar. It still doesn’t justify closing ranks if a colleague behaves poorly.

Same for me in my day.
There absolutely wouldn’t have been any question of wanting to blame the teacher for their actions in this situation.

I don't know why anyone comes on here and says a teacher did something wrong. There's never any sensible discussion or weighing it up etc., this is MN, a teacher can NEVER do anything wrong (particularly if an OP's child is female). I almost think it would be better if MNHQ just banned any threads mentioning teachers. Or had a pinned message "Just in case anyone is even thinking of saying a teacher did something wrong, go fuck yourself. HTH."

I would check first just so you know exactly what height are we talking about and then if you still deem it unsafe then yes, surely it’s worth a talk with the teachers.

Yes, we all know DD shouldn’t have lied, but that doesn’t merit risking her safety (provided the building was actually unsafe).

Maybe she didn't get any punishment at school as the teacher later realised he should have got a ladder or gym matt etc especially because she had asked for help getting down. However, your DD, did something stupid and has lied. Maybe she's lying to you about asking for help getting down, you just don't know. In those circumstances I wouldn't be kicking up a fuss.

I have a DC who has got up to all sort of trouble at school. I have learnt there are 1) Always 2 versions of the story and 2) Sometimes they don't tie up. 3) Teachers can exaggerate as well as kids. 4) Is it a hill to die on. 5) Why can't my DC just behave!

Probably the teacher had strong suspicions that the boys were involved in her being on the roof and felt that she’d probably learned her lesson after the incident so didn’t warrant further punishment in way of detention etc.
He took her at her word that she got up herself as she adamantly refused to tell the truth.
He’d have presumably been in the wrong and you’d be annoyed if he’d accused her of lying. So he was a bit between a rock and a hard place.
not sure what he could have done- he couldn’t help her down, he’s not allowed to touch her. He could hardly have year 10 boys manhandling a year 7 girl- that would set up a potential minefield for accusations of inappropriate behaviour.
Teacher was there and will have weighed up the height of the roof against her hanging down by hands and dropping the remainder. If it’s anything like our wooden hut buildings, the drop height wouldn’t be more the a couple of foot, no higher than they jump from apparatus during PE.
if you’re really concerned go and see the building yourself before you make your judgement on if he was wrong

Please don’t ever work in education.

Even if she did get up there alone why does it mean she can get back down? Cats often cant manage it 😆

How do you know? She’s a liar.

You’ve clearly not read the same threads as me.

@IWillAlwaysBeinaClubWithYouin1973 yes, it's the same on any thread criticising dogs.

I know a lot of secondary teachers, and I don't know one who would encourage 15 - 16 year old boys to put hands on a 12 year old girl, whatever the circumstances. I'm surprised that this is acceptable to you, OP

Or maybe they could have flown up like Batman to get her 🙄

So a Y7 girl was talked into being lifted up on the roof by some Y10 boys, and then didn’t feel able to tell the truth for fear of getting those boys in trouble. There is a massive power imbalance in this situation that would be my biggest concern, and the teacher should have spotted that immediately. A Y7 girl is hardly going to climb up on a roof to rescue a Y10 boys bag on her own volition. They should have come forward and told the truth to protect her, but they didn’t. The teacher fucked up, but that’s far less worrying than your daughter being put upon by a bunch of older boys.

As a teacher, letting the older boys help could absolutely not allow that. Not just in case one of them got hurt. What if they touched your ds inappropriately while helping her? The teacher didn’t know they helped her up. I imagine if the teacher had of said yes to the boys helping, how was she to know that they wouldn’t do something? I bet the op would have plenty to say if he daughter was assaulted by them when the teacher said it was ok.

i would have probably told the boys to go find another teacher to get maintenance and a ladder and waited.

poor teacher. I bet they were sorry they chose that path that meant they had to walk past all this happening.

I think the teacher could not have allowed the boys to help as it could have caused injury to more than one person, if she fell awkwardly and knocked one of them to the ground and he bashed his head or something like that the teacher would have all sorts of problems.
I wonder if the roof wasnt that high from the teachers perspective and the teacher judged it would be best if she gets down if she can. If she was unable to then they shoukd have got ladders and the caretaker. In fact this whole situation sounds like a liability and the teacher was probably just glad noone got hurt.

There is absolutely no way I would have got some lads to get another child down off the roof of a building when she had got herself up there. If, as she alleged, they hadn’t helped her up, they had nothing to do with it. You can’t just use other children as a resource.

I think the teacher had to either call the fire brigade or let her get herself down.

Not being in trouble at the end of the Easter term of year seven isn’t that much of an accomplishment!

I’m glad your daughter is okay. I have a 12 year old and I’d be furious with her for getting into this situation. Can’t quite see what the teacher did wrong - best thing to do is get rid of the older kids and make sure your daughter gets down. I wouldn’t want a teacher telling older boys to touch my child anyway to be honest - just seems an unfortunate incident all round and hopefully lessons were learned. The most important thing is that she was okay and she didn’t get hurt so the teacher was actually correct in her risk assessment.

The stories my daughter bring home from high school are unbelievable so not sure something like this would warrant a call or they’d be on the phone all day.

Nothing happened. Your DD is safe and sound. What's the problem @hereslooking ?

Another thought. The boys help her down and she says they hurt her or touched her inappropriately.

the teacher was right. Teach your daughter not to lie!

She's a child, it's par for the course that she'll make stupid decisions. The adult teacher doesn't have any such excuse for exacerbating what she herself said was a dangerous situation. She put making a stupid point ahead of safety.

The teacher is usually the adult in charge so of course they're held to a higher standard than children.

I think she wouldn’t have wanted your DD being touched by boys tbh OP. If DD had told me that story I would have pointed out that the boys could have got the bag themselves so why they felt the need to shove a year 7 up there is beyond me and they aren’t her friends. Secondly, don’t be so stupid again.

It’s fine nothing happened and it’s a lesson to your DD, it’s never good to try to protect your child from every consequence. I would have expected the teacher to have a word with the boys after, they are older and shouldn’t have sent one of the little ones up there.

Actually, again, thinking back, the response back in the day would have been, someone fetches a ladder from the janitor, and one of the boys climbs up and gets it, with another holding the bottom of the ladder. Because that's how you get things off roofs safely. Yes, that did happen.

@hereslooking kids are stupid sometimes, but it doesn't sound like the building was that high as somepne was able to help your DD up on the roof. This is why there's no harm done. The teacher obviously felt it wasnt high enough for a serious injury.

I think you'd be better telling your dd to climb over the edge, hold on and drop to the ground if it ever happened again versus jump.

I'd leave it tbh.