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?

It may or may not be a good reason, but a teacher has the right to a home life and a reasonable balance and it is not reasonable to ask, expect anyone to check emails after the end of school and not at 7 or 9 pm ffs. There is no good enough reason unless it is a total emergency and then an email isn’t appropriate. My sister works in as a Senco and does respond to emails as the parents feel ‘their email is reasonable’ she emails an update on each of her pupils every day, staff leave all the time as the head says this is contact by emails and a response is reasonable request. They always have shortages. Always. Staff are demoralised. Don’t be one of those parents. My sister is ill with it all and has had cancer and parents expect replies to ‘their little emails’ as ‘I don’t email often or unless it’s that important’ - you are one of ‘those parents’ don’t be. Phone the school office in an emergency. Read comms. Don’t email teachers even for a ‘good reason’ in any evenings. Do your bit.

I don't think it is wrong to email a teacher out of hours. That's often when many people have the time to send them. However, it is wrong to expect them to reply out of hours.

When l was teaching all staff email was turned off between 7pm to 6am and at weekends.

I don't know who these parents are that expect this. In dc's school it is pressure from the stressed HT I suspect wanting an outstanding OFSted report. Anyway staff aren't staying.

I keep getting school administration messages. Are these automated, are people working from home? It's nuts, I had a bastard message come through randomly mid-summer holidays saying I owed £2.40 for a school meal from last term.

DH is a teacher. As he's in a leadership role, he's the designated point of contact for one parent who appears to have no boundaries. For the record, he gets paid no more for this. This mother calls and emails constantly - she's turned up to the school site on several occasions when he doesn't respond within a few hours. There have been evenings on the phone to her for hours and hours about her life, her worries, her stresses, every inch of her life... She needs a therapist.

I never had one anywhere near as bad when I was teaching but it's ridiculous. It quietened over the summer (down to maybe one or two calls a week) but it's ramped back up as they start back next week.

I get a lot of emails and messages on our school platform out of hours. I don’t open them and keep them confined to my work issued laptop or iPad. I have colleagues that keep ClassDojo on their phones to answer out of hours, it’s a trap.

I think this is absolutely a factor. I taught reception and noticed it getting progressively more demanding in terms of parents expecting lots of detail about their individual child’s day and then citing nursery when explaining their expectations.

After a particularly hard year of this I made it part of my ‘New Parents’ meeting in July to explain the difference and what to expect. I told them quite clearly that I couldn’t teach and observe their children if I was constantly jotting down when they had another sip of water and if they’d done a poo that day. It was fine after that.

The thing I never cracked though was parents expecting lots of reminders for everything. I had a parent say that she expected a text reminder the day before for things like school trips and non uniform days…well you had the trip letter and paid for the trip so it’s up to you to put it on the calendar! But we’re all used to getting reminders for appointments and so on so I guess people become conditioned to expect it for all sorts of other things.

Good. I had a head having a go at me for sending an email ‘out of hours’. Crazy! Do they think we are all able to send emails ‘in hours’. The first time I am able to get to admin in the day is after 9:30pm. So that’s when emails are sent. I certainly wouldn’t expect an ‘out of hours‘ response!

I have insomnia and do work at all ours, sending emails with them set to not be delivered until 8am, otherwise I’d look like a mad woman.

Having spent the last year in my SENDCo job panic-replying to parents all day long (even when teaching) and trying to meet a whole host of demands each and every day into the evening, I’ve drafted a general response asking for time and forbearance while ‘the team’ (we are a team) decide on the appropriate course of action. I will now send this instead of trying to do ten things all at once. My job is to oversee provision, I cannot solve every single problem children encounter during the day - even at home! - it’s not sustainable.

I think they are fair enough questions to ask of his teacher though, ie ‘I don’t know what level reading he should be at…what do you think?…is he keeping up with the class?…is their anything I need to work on with him?’
Teachers expect you to help the child at home so I think it’s okay to look for guidance with this.

I used be meeker I think 😅
Older now and the parent of an autistic and severely dyslexic child who was thought to be simply ‘weak’ in his first couple of years in school because he was quiet and had a young, inexperienced teacher. I didn’t realise. They didn’t use ‘weak’ to describe him in the parent-teacher meetings you see (I knew he wasn’t).

That’s another thing…teachers do speak in a sort of code, especially when it comes to things like autism (which was queried later on when everything started to unravel). I didn’t realise ‘it could be sensory, is it behavioural?’ meant ‘it could be autism’ because I knew absolutely nothing about autism then. You live and learn.

I would check on your child OP. Schedule the appointment, be polite etc, but if you need to know how your child is doing then you do need to ask.

I've had a lot of teachers send emails (replies to me) at unsociable hours, I definitely didn't expect them to. Easier just to deal with something quickly, I suppose.

I don't think that is unreasonable at all.

Part of this needs to be on the teachers.
They are absolutely entitled to their evenings and weekends. And I am entitled not to deal with none urgent school related stuff while I'm at work.
That means I will do most school related contact in my free time. That doesn't mean I'm expecting a reply at that point. I'm sending a message when convenient for me, hoping for a reply when convenient for the teacher. If they are choosing to have apps on their phone that alert when a school message cones through, thats on them to manage.

not tutors not babysitters

I don't think anyone has an issue with emails being sent to teachers at the convenience of parents. It's the parents who send an email at 8pm, a follow-up at 10pm and then phone the school at 8.30am to complain that no one has replied. It's the parents who email at 11am and then turn up to the school at midday. It's the parents who email on a Saturday morning and then email copying the head to complain on Sunday morning. It's the parents who find out teacher's personal phone numbers or home addresses and will use those (texting, calling or turning up).

I get messages at all times, I send messages usually outside of school times about my own children. But I only answer messages in my working hours (though I do other school work in my own time). I only answer internal school stuff at odd hours or weekends, because like every employment - most pressure comes from colleagues, even in retail I found that to be the case, and customer service is notorious for Unreasonable member of the public.

I don't think anyone has an issue with emails being sent to teachers at the convenience of parents.

I’ve known teachers to complain about this practice by parents even when no immediate reply was expected.

I think they still felt under pressure to reply.

I think teachers also need to be sticking to work hours for emails, and that also needs to be led and modelled by SLT (I say as a teacher).

I no longer access my emails from home - on mat leave atm but it's massively helped while at my current school, and SLT remind staff not to email students over the weekends either.

My daughter’s school doesn’t give out teachers’ emails, we can only contact through dojo or via the office, we also get regular reminders about not getting a response outside outside of working hours.

I am also a teacher, but in FE, so our contact is more with the students than parents, and we do have to teach them etiquette about teams/email and how quickly they can expect a response. A while ago I did have issues with a student who got quite irate that I wasn’t responding to his teams messages at 11pm, but generally students are pretty good with it. I work three days a week so for the first few weeks of term I set my out of office on my non working days to help manage expectations from the start.

Our school communicates the boundaries on day 1 as part of orientation. I don’t think anyone expects teachers to respond around the clock.

Me too. Isn't half the point of emails that the sender and responder email at a time convenient to them? School staff can't blame parents because they can't 'switch off' or hold their own boundaries.

I think most professionals are used to receiving emails out of hours aren't they? It's a fact of modern life. Choose to mute them or whatever totally fine, but it isn't at all unreasonable for the sender to send at a time suitable for them if they're not demanding a response in an unreasonable time frame.

For many issues, it is reasonable for parents to expect there to be some way of receiving a prompt response to a query. Whether that is through a phone call (to reception to get a message though, get information and pass back etc) or through an email or whatnot. It is up to the school to make sure that there is a channel for this that works for both parties.

In my opinion, it's the teachers fault for responding.

If questioned by a parent they can simply reply that they will respond to emails during their working hours. Simples.

Yes they should do. When I’ve emailed my DS school out of hours and got a reply, I’ve told them I never expect them to answer that same day.

Maybe some people expect a response out of hours because it's repeatedly emphasised how teachers work evenings, weekends and much of the holidays...

I'm patient with emails and happy to wait for a response, but I can see how of someone has said they always work evenings until 11, then why some parents would consider it working time. I don't think it's a helpful attitude for those parents, but it might explain some of it.

Personally, in my kids school, we email admin who forwards the email to the teacher. Whilst this makes sense in a large secondary school, it feels overkill personally at primary where there's only 30 kids. That's not a huge 'caseload'. Then again, like in most jobs, one of two awkward parents/clients often take up a disproportionate amount of time, so I can see why they do it this way.