Teacher unfair to dd(9)

[foreverand]

Dd (9) is well behaved at school and preforming above targets. Quietly gets on with everything and never complains so is often forgotten about at school.

This year in particular she has been repeatedly used often under the guise of her being so kind and helpful to her expense.
Child who chats too much in lessons, gets moved next to dd. Bully who now doesn’t have any friends, put in dds group. Child who doesn’t do any work, gets paired with dd for partner project so she does it all on her own. Bullied child, dd gets taken off to play with them. Child sat on friendship bench, gets pointed out to dd. New child gets paired with dd then 3 months later new child who doesn’t speak English fluently again gets paired with dd who has to help translate for them while trying doing her own work. Need volunteers to stay in at break and help tidy/set up, ask dd. Someone has to have the old scribbled on book because they didn’t have enough new ones, give it to dd. You get the picture…

She was recently appointed cloakroom monitor, a role that she didn’t want or ask for.

Today a couple of known naughty kids were messing around in the cloakroom, going through someone else’s bag. They were being loud and nasty so dd pretended not to look at them. Another kid saw and told the teacher. Teacher asked dd if anything happened and she lied and said no.

She’s now got to miss 15 minutes of golden time friday along with the kids who actually did the messing around. She got a big speech from her teacher about how disappointed she is in her and how she expected better from her, the naughty kids no doubt didn’t get this speech.

Only time she’s ever been given a punishment through school and she’s completely devastated.

Obviously she’s shouldn’t have lied but being appointed class snitch is hard for an 9 year old.

I’m not being unreasonable to think this is absolutely unfair and her teacher is again taking advantage of her, am I? Surely never before causing any issue should count for something and she’s deserves a bit of understanding ?

I don’t want to to send her in Friday but dd wouldn’t want to do that but I can’t wait for this year to be over.

She had apparently already spoken to this teacher in private around her treatment of 'good kids' and the teacher had refused to move DD based on 'class dynamics'. So I think she was making a point, and as much as anything making a point to my DD that she would stand up for her, that she was 'in her corner'.

I'm not defending the teacher. Just sometimes teachers, like all of us, will get something wrong at work. I am always very happy to apologise and try to make things right if a parent is unhappy - the teacher won't know you're not happy if you don't tell them.

Dd was used like this unpaid TA work to the degree that she was specifically picked in the mixed class year group for her ability to teach the other children on her table I pulled her from the school in the end and she went to a school where she was treated like a child but it happened AGAIN in high school a thousand students loads of staff and teachers pulled her from lesson to fix their whiteboard the second or third time it happened her head of year stepped in and said not to do it again call tech support yes grabbing dd was faster but she needed to revise!

She said she will never be a teacher tbh I think she would have made a good one

I find it interesting that you view these tasks negatively as lots of children would LOVE to be chosen for them.

Monitor roles are highly sought after in my daughter's class and the few times there has been a new student the children speculate hopefully that they might be chosen to buddy them?

What you are seeing a chores your daughter is being assigned your teacher might think of more like rewards for your daughter for her good behaviour!!

Surprised by the negative talk of 'snitches' and 'sneaks' on this thread. Of course teachers should be teaching our children to speak up when they see wrong doing?? It's not 'making them be the snitch'.... I can assure you children this age are generally only too happy to be telling tales on each other!

Asking a capable child to explain a concept to other children is a well known teaching technique which is beneficial for the capable child and is that childs next step in mastery. In asking your child to do this the teacher is giving them a beneficial exercise to stretch them as it makes you think in a different way to have to explain how to do something to others.
Its not using your child!! It's for your childs benefit in their own learning

I think they were rewards the first dozen times and dd hasn’t complained directly about them, she likes being kind and helpful. But it’s meant daily she’s had to miss out doing her own work or with playing with her own friends to help someone else.

I think children should be encouraged to report things too but appointing one quiet child to stand at the door and watch so the bullies know it’s her who snitched is unfair. Even more unfair to give her the same punishment as the kids going the crime for being too scared to tell on them.

Hello, I think you need to act up on this now because this sounds a lot like my husband. Sorry in advance, this is long winded:

My husband was one of four boys. He sounds a lot like your daughter, and his mum made him do the ironing, do the cleaning, and make the dinner. None of the other three boys had any of this responsibility. He did this because he was a ‘good boy’.So he grew up feeling like it was always his responsibility to take care of things like that. An essence the messages that you are less worthy.

His older brother when they were teenagers had a girlfriend his mum didn’t like. He would see her behind his mum‘s back. The mother would try and make my husband be caught out in a lie and ‘mark’ on his brother.

When we were all at university, one of the other brothers had a girlfriend she didn’t like, She would ring up and try and catch my husband out again in a lie to ‘mark’ on his brother.

Curt out a long story short, later in life he required psychological support to deal with the childhood pressure. And we now live 2 to 3 hours away from them, and have minimal input in family things because it finds it pressured and distressing.

I can just see this situation playing out, where our daughter is seen as a very ‘good girl’, and given lots of responsibility over and above that of her peers & expected to ‘tell’ on her peers.

You sound like a wonderful mother, you clearly know what’s going on and I think you should speak to the teacher Kindly and say you’ve noticed this pattern, and in no way do you provide permission for your daughter to be given additional responsibility on top of any of the other children.

Tell him you want her to treat her exactly the same as all others.

I think if my husband hasn’t been singled out as a good boy, a lot of upset in his life would’ve been avoided.

i hope this helps :)

The teacher is not 'using' the child. The child is part of a class and will have to fit into wider society where not everyone behaves the same or follows the rules all the time.

You'd be complaining if the children who might disrupt lessons were not separated nd allowed to sit together, but you don't want them near your child.

She's in the same class, so that's that. She needs to respect the teacher's choices, do as she's asked and be honest when spoken to directly. If she doesn't, she's hardly the perfect pupil you describe.

I mean ‘nark’ *

I'd be sending the teacher an email, cc head, saying exactly what you have said above. YOU are disappointed with the teacher and how she has treated your DD over the coat room incident. Highlight everything that has been put on her during the year and that it has been at the detriment of her own learning and relationships with her own friends. She isn't there to make the teacher's life easier and act as a pseudo TA. She's a student and deserves to be able to concentrate in class, not supervise and help other children. I would finish by saying your expectation is that the teacher apologise to your DD and that her punishment is rescinded.

Well, the good thing is she won't be viewed as the "good kid" anymore since she lied to protect some vandals. The teacher will have to find someone else she trusts..

Did you read the op?

I’d be discouraging her from being ‘kind’ -surely she is also being taken for a mug. Where did she get the idea she has to be ‘kind’ to horrid kids? She needs to do what SHE wants to do not what makes her ‘kind’. And not being stuck with these awful kids is what she wants surely.

I would change schools, this is completely unacceptable. If that’s not possible - could you afford to go private?

My kids had this experience at school too so I had to advocate for them and tell the school no.

It’s lazy to take advantage of the well behaved kids to make the teacher’s life easier. If there is a need for some kids to suck it up eg sit next to someone unruly then the burden needs to be equally distributed around the class. Just because a child like yours doesn’t complain, it doesn’t mean that it’s going well or that they don’t mind.

Mine were much better at telling the teacher no by secondary.

I would speak up for her, it’s one thing to use a chidk to explain a concept to another child or ask them to help tidy up or whatever every now and then but when it becomes a regular habit it is unfair and smacks of the teacher going for the easy option of using the nice compliant child instead of asking the less compliant children where the teacher will have to supervise and guide them.

Our school were so busy using " mastery" as an excuse to not engage the brightest children, by the time they got to year 7 , it became apparent that they hadn't been taught several mathematical concepts that the brightest children from other local Primary schools had learnt.

I’m a teacher and think that the threads criticising teachers are often unreasonable. In this case, however, I don’t think your concern is unreasonable at all. The cloakroom incident sounds like it has been poorly handled. A conversation with your child to get to the bottom of why they felt they couldn’t be truthful would’ve been better - and if there was a consequence, it shouldn’t have been the same consequence as the children causing the issue in the first place. I agree that it sounds like too much expectation is being placed on your child more broadly - obviously teachers do strategically pair and group children to different purposes, but this sounds a bit overwhelming.

Depends on the children you’re being asked to explain it to. I was often given this role, and being asked to explain something to a few other children who couldn’t be arsed to listen to the teacher the first time and certainly had no intention of listening me did nothing to benefit me (or them tbh).

appointing one quiet child to stand at the door and watch so the bullies know it’s her who snitched is unfair. Even more unfair to give her the same punishment as the kids going the crime for being too scared to tell on them.

I think a face to face chat with the head ( who after all called her disappointing) about that in particular is better than an email which can be binned, misinterpreted or disregarded.

Also. Consider. What do you want to happen? What do you want out of the meeting. What changes would you like to see? And work towards that rather than expressing it as a complaint.

By all means have a meeting with the teacher or both.. but If you intend staying at the school, a softly softly approach ( galling as it may be because Id be so upset at what's been going on) and approach it more as DD is always picked for this, for that.. etc.. and give the list over the year, in calm, non emotive language.

Don't be swayed by any guff about "Oh but we are teaching children to be kind!" etc. Repeat your observations (rather than complaint) and then turn it round to
What could be done to improve things for DD in next year.
For eg... was there anything in her report to suggest that she wasn't performing to her full capacity.? You think she gets very distracted by xyz thing. Then you can say she found cloakroom role too much pressure, its eroded her confidence and damaged her relationship with her classmates. That sort of thing. Rather than "complaining" you could focus on getting across the effect its had on her.
Getting them to say what they are going to do differently next year. You want the meeting to be about drawing them out, making them say what they are doing and what improvements could be made ( be well prepared because they are skilled at telling parents to work harder, so refute all that)

If not satisfied you can then take it further. But I'd try softly approach first. Otherwise they may just dig their heels in, as its convenient for them.

I'd also help your DD get through the rest of term.. which is probably a few weeks as best she can and if it helps her to have a sickie on Friday to recover from this... well I think that's fully justified as she's been through a very unjust experience and it will give her time to de stress about it, rather than going into school still very upset. Take her out to have fun this weekend. Best of luck.

And then the whole room clapped

Fair enough

Most of the stuff you describe in fairy standard treatment of the well behaved, nice girls in primary schools.

However, punishing her because she didn't confront other children is really not on.

The teacher might have a bit of a blind spot and not have realised the impossible position your DD was in. Please explain it to her in a way that's helps the teacher going forward.

Totally agree. I despise teachers like this. They were rife when I was at school and I can’t believe they’re still doing this. It’s awful for your daughter.

Be careful because if your DD is not chosen for anything next year you may not be happy either. I agree with a PP that your kid is not the only one chosen to be helpful.