School concern

[beasmith81]

My daughter came home from school yesterday and told me she was crying in school.

When I asked why, she said the teacher rubbed her work out twice.

She is year 3 7 years old.

So apparently what happened was she did her work, which was a combination of writing and pictures. She did the writing, but forgot to draw the pictures. So when the teacher (her actual teacher was off yesterday) saw her work, she rubbed all of it out and was told to do it again.

So she did it again. Once again the teacher rubbed it all out. By this time, it was playtime. The teacher made my daughter miss most of playtime to redo her work.

During this time, the teacher (TA) left her in the class room completely alone whilst she went out onto the field.

It was at this point my daughter said she started crying. 2 girls came in and got paper towels for her.

The teacher then returned, helped her do the work, which again was without the pictures.

I have asked my daughter over and over if she was messing about or being disruptive, but she swears she wasn't.

What would anyone here suggest doing?

I am concerned that she was left completely alone, and also concerned that she was effectively put in detention for getting her work wrong.

My daughter had a teacher that rubbed out all her work once. It’s a particularly shitty thing to do. I let it go the first time, but would have been talking to them to find out what happened in your situation. Was the work so important and so badly done that it warranted staying in at break? That’s usually only done if the child hasn’t made any attempt at doing the work. It’s a really good idea to let your child know you believe in them, but it’s also worth getting the teacher;s side of the situation. My daughter was honest to a T - still is, but when she was younger her perception of that went on was sometimes different to what actually happened. It came down to how things are communicated, e.g “I can’t take you to the toilet at break because other children need my attention, I can take you at the beginning of class” became “I’m not ever allowed to go to the toilet at break”.

It does sound awful for her, I hope it was a misunderstanding!

Sounds to me like the teacher was off and instead of a qualified replacement the school saw fit to allow the TA to “teach” the class for the day. The TA would have also been expected to fulfil their role of playground duty. They handled the situation extremely poorly. If your DD work was not done correctly the TA should have re-explained the task and left her with notes or a diagram to follow- not repeatedly rub out the work and leave a 7 year old to work out why it is arbitrarily “wrong”.
I recommend you report it so the school are aware the TA requires further training before they can supervise a class alone in future.
Also under no circumstances should your DD have been left alone to finish the work. If it was so important it could have been done after break or set as homework. I imagine had the other children not been inside comforting your DD then the TA would have kept her in for the whole break time