To think a hard boundary should be drawn with teachers?

[ForCandidSheep]

I’ve seen a growing expectation for teachers to be constantly available, responding to emails outside of school hours, dealing with parents’ demands and even engaging with students on social media in some cases.

Surely they should be a clear boundary? Teachers are professionals, not 24/7 customer service reps. Parents shouldn’t expect instant responses and personal contact outside of school should be a firm no.

AIBU to think that more people need to respect teachers’ time and stop blurring the lines?

There's no such thing as office hours for most teachers. They'll be teaching all day, except for 1 hour in ten at work.

I think its all very blurry these days and people generally have very unhealthy expectations of constant availability. I saw a complaint from a client at work recently that we had taken 3 days to respond and it wasn't good enough. Initially I quite agreed, until I realised they emailed in at 4 o clock on the Friday and were shouting down the phone mid morning Monday that their email hadn't been replied to.

When I email someone in an official capacity (teachers, NHS staff etc) I always add in a caveat now that just because I am emailing at 4 o clock in the morning because it suits me, I am not expecting an out-of-hours reply from them.

I was getting tired of the "in crowd" at my school, well in socially with the school secretary who had two of her own children at the school, when one night I got the deciding phone call. This was back in the day when ex-directory numbers were a thing, but of course I had given the school my contact number.
It was a footling organisational detail concerning an upcoming concert, but one of the "musical mummies" decided she needed an immediate answer.
The school secretary did not remind her that I had a private life, or indeed that I had expressed a desire for privacy out of school hours, merrily handing over the telephone number with the cheery reassurance that "I'm sure Miss TwoSheds won't mind!" and I was called at 20 to 10 on a Friday evening.......
Miss TwoSheds did mind; it was the last straw, and helped me to decide whether I should hand in my notice or not.

There should be a rule that email to teachers is for emergency only, and emergency should be clearly defined to parents.

All other enquiries and information should be sent by letter.

That would stop 80% of the rubbish from parents.

Email and texting is too easy.

Absolutely agree. I have had a few parents complain if I haven't replied within less than 24 hours. Equally annoying is receiving an email at 9am asking to come into school that same day, as if I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs in anticipation of a last minute meeting.

However I also agree that it doesn't do anyone any favours when some colleagues do respond out of hours, because while I know that's realistically the first opportunity they've had all day to check/write emails, it creates a culture of expectation and gives the impression that those of us that don't email after 6pm are avoiding contact or slow to respond.

My school is generally pretty good about this - parents are not supposed to email teachers directly and school staff are strongly encouraged not to email each other out of hours. However, I've just been responding to students asking me to look over GCSE and A Level exam papers while I was away on holiday abroad.

It seems from a recent thread on here that primary school teachers are expected to go in and arrange their classroom for the new school year and re-do all the displays in the holidays, because there is no time to do this on the INSET day(s) when they go back. This kind of expectation is totally unreasonable imo.

I've done shedloads of work this summer holiday and been into school twice. For me, the problem is the sheer workload encroaching into evenings, weekends and holidays tbh, not really the communications with parents and students.

I email teachers when it is convenient, but I expect they will read during working hours.

social media is tricky because at the higher levels we have teachers using it to communicate with students for activities outside of school hours. If they need to change a meetup time or location, they message the students on whatever app everyone has agreed to use. The students have school email on their computers, but don’t check it constantly enough to get real time updates. For those they need something on their phone with push notifications.

I’m in Ireland and DS went to a village Primary school and yes, with the brief parents evening and end of year short written report.

However, it was easy enough to speak to his teacher at home time about a minor matter or arrange a meeting to discuss other issues, if required. The teachers were always very willing to accommodate a request for an meeting and all of them had left the car park by 4pm at the latest.

Teaching in Primary in Ireland is far less stressful than in the UK according to the last Head who had worked in both countries, as there’s very little extra prep required. The curriculum follows the set workbooks and all the homework comes from the same workbook.

Hmm, my SIL was my child’s teacher so that wouldn’t have worked for us 😂
It depends on the community doesn’t it?
If you’re in a smaller, rural community you could easily know your child’s teacher as a friend or relative.

Not a reasonable inference at all imo. The OP posted about a problem that she knows about in a specific sector. Do you expect her to know all about the extent to which this is a problem in all sectors? If it's a problem in yours, maybe start a thread about that.

I think we're all pretty sick and tired of the assumption that when we mention any problem with teaching or schools, we mean it's the only sector with that particular problem or indeed with any problems at all.

After 34 years teaching I'd love to draw the boundary prohibiting parents from contacting teachers by email at all.

If we could go back to the days when parents had to write a note or telephone the office( within school hours) then we'd see a drastic reduction in the number of matters that "need our attention"

The amount of time wasted replying to non issues, demands or complaints is ridiculous.

If you are worried, angry, confused, wish to express your every opinion or just want information about anything to do with your child's education, then I am more than happy to meet face to face. Honestly prefer a quick chat/more formal conversation to back and forth messaging.
Just spare me the unnecessary emails.

As for contact on Social Media... massive No as well.

On the platform my son's secondary school uses you can't send any message from 8 pm to 8 am, nor during the weekends. This was put in place a year ago due to parents abusive messages at night (some May have been drunk I suspect).
I never expect an answer the same day but I do expect one in the week that follows. My DS had one teacher who always responded to all communication the same day before 8 pm and one teacher who simply did not respond at all even when repeated requests so parents had to contact the principal in order for her to respond.

You could ring the office in the second term and ask for a short meeting with the teacher if there’s anything in particular you’re worried about. Or schedule a phone call with the teacher if that’s more convenient. A relative of mine is a teacher in Ireland and this is a fairly regular occurrence.

ETA if the teacher is good at his/her job then you will be contacted if there’s an issue anyway. You know your child best, however, and sometimes there are things they don’t see but need to know (eg meltdowns at home because of the stress of school). Quiet children with issues can also fly under the radar for a while in my experience.

Your school needs to support its staff with a reasonable reply policy. We have a 48 working hours policy and it's stated in automated footers at the end of all our emails, together with a reminder about respectful communication. This came after a series of hideous and threatening emails to a number of staff from a very small number of families, and our Head will contact parents who are abusive if brought to their attention.

All my teacher friend either dont have social media or use false names.

Schools policy is very clear tbh

Your always going to have chancers

even engaging with students on social media in some cases.

If they are doing that report as a safeguarding issue

My email has not been checked all summer. We were told to set it to auto reply to that effect on the last day of term and request office is contacted instead over the summer

in normal term time again under HT instruction email says auto reply my working hours are 8.30am to 4pm on …. Whatever your days are. School policy is to response wherever possible in 2 working days. In an emergency contact school office or safeguarding team. During office hours we are normally teaching and therefore not able to respond instantly,

This has only happened since Covid as parents were emailing at 10 pm and then going loopy that we hadn’t replied by 8am. So the headteacher just said no.

On the whole, I absolutely agree that teachers should have boundaries in place and not feel pressured into responding out of hours unless they prefer to.

But there should be staff available in the days following results to discuss grades and reviews with. Leaving it until term starts may be too late for those who have missed their grades and need to make alternative choices.

I guess the school should have named staff who can be contacted, or a specific email address to contact for this. My DD’s school didn’t communicate this to us so I guess we’d have to contact subject teachers if needed.

At my school, parents are told that teachers only answer emails between 8am - 5pm, when they have the chance, and if the parent desperately needs contact outside of those hours, they have to contact the head. I really appreciate it, but really all schools should do that as a matter of course.

I had to email school quite a lot, especially the SENCO but she liked me to email after 9pm as she likes to work then.
One of her teachers doesn’t do emails after 7pm, but did for me! I did appreciate it, she also said she knew I only emailed for good reason.

There is a huge difference between wanting a response instantly and waiting over 2 weeks for a response from the teacher though. That is the case for me I've got a quick question about one of my child's subjects and been waiting almost 2 weeks for a reply so far.

Oh and not in UK so currently not on school holidays before anyone pipes up.

My child is in my class this year. Would quite suit me to go no contact after the long summer 😁

I don't think emergencies should be communicated by email - if something needs to be addressed immediately in relation to the safety of a child, a teacher isn't the person to address it!

If it's not an emergency, it can wait a day or 2 for a response. If it is a safeguarding issue the DSL can be told the following day.

As a social worker, I sometimes have to remind schools and families (and social workers) that emergency services are there for emergencies. A teacher would be very much in the way there was an actual emergency out of hours.

Just because a parent wants us to jump doesn't mean we have to.

Unless there is an issue that I know of, with the vibe in my son’s school I feel that would seem demanding. I don’t feel a just checking in to see if everything is ok would be welcome as it feels like asking for something not offered.

I spent most of last year unsure of how DS was getting on. Yes, I’m his parent but I don’t what is reasonable to expect for certain things such as reading.

I've only seen the opposite tbh, very firm boundaries about this sort of thing... increasingly so.