It’s not suddenly all the kids, it’s the new teacher.

[jollyoldjo]

DD has just gone into year 4 and has a new teacher.

They had the same teacher for the last 2 years and she was very nice and also had lovely teachers before her.

We are still in the first month of a new year with the new teacher who’s new to the school and quite young so at a guess newly qualified and suddenly all of the children are misbehaving but were fine with other teachers, she keeps them back 15 minutes every day for poor behaviour, this is decided on the day without notice but it’s been every day and that’s the whole class.

A more experienced teacher is taking the class for a week next week to sort out the behaviour.

I regularly help out on school trips and they’re not bad kids and they haven’t all suddenly developed behavioural issues they just have no respect for this particular teacher.
AIBU to think she has no control over the class and it seems because she isn’t coping she’s retaliating against the children by being an absolute jobs worth?

We’ve had multiple letters out explaining they’ve all missed breaks and not done PE etc because of poor behaviour and by keeping them an extra 15 minutes she is making herself very unpopular by leaving parents standing outside in the empty playground while she punishes the children and parents.
I have a child in the same school in year 6 who has walked home and got changed while I’m still waiting in the playground for dd to come out at supposedly the same finish time, we’ve never had this before.
Other children and their siblings have places to be after school.

AIBU to think if as early as September, 30 kids and their parents are hoping they don’t have this teacher again next year then it’s not the kids it’s the teacher?

Tell your child to behave then!! If the children are misbehaving, which even from your biased view point they clearly are, then the teacher has every right to discipline them. Ridiculous post!

So I think I’d be sending an email to head teacher or leaving a note at the head’s office saying that I do not give permission for my child to be kept in class 15 mins after home time, no matter what the reason. If my child really needs detention, it should happen at playtime or whatever.

It sounds like the school are already aware hence a different teacher taking the class next week. Yes banning pe and breaks are making the teachers life harder. As hours sitting still doesn’t benefit children it makes behaviour worse.

It sounds very extreme for apparently just a few poorly behaved children to punish the entire class to such an extent, daily. (And also clearly not working if it’s happening still everyday?)

I’d be asking for clarification on their behavioural policy and also questioning whether they are allowed to keep the whole class back without notifying parents at primary level.

1. PE is in the national curriculum and shouldn’t be used a a bargaining tool or punishment.
2. Her punishments should be on her time within school hours unless your schools behaviour policy states they will use out of hours punishments then I’d be questioning how she can keep parents waiting without notice - it simply wouldn’t fly at our school, many kids have clubs/ use taxi’s / buses etc and have kids in other settings to collect.
3. I can’t see how if maybe a handful of children are misbehaving that warrants such extreme punishment for an entire class and personally I wouldn’t be happy with this (with the caveat of if it was confirmed that my child had done nothing wrong in the first place). Her focus should be on being supported managing the children causing the issue and not burning bridges with parents and disillusioning the rest of the apparently “well behaved” kids.

Treat teachers better, get and keep better teachers.

I'm not condoning her use of group punishment, but we're getting to the point as a society where parents seem to think every one of the decisions a teacher makes is up for discussion. Teachers make tens of thousands of decisions a day- as you would if you parented 30 children for a day. The main decision parents get to make is whether or not to have their child in school at all. Educating your child is your responsibility and honestly we have lost touch with how lucky we are that anyone at all wants to do that for us.

Self-evidently it's not every child's bad behaviour. If other teachers have managed the class without difficulty, it's perfectly reasonable to have a look at what this one is doing that isn't working.

Well of course theyre not going to respect or like her of shes handing out whole class punishments. Theres always going to be a few "challenging" pupils, there's no way my kid would be staying for detentions if they hadn't done anything wrong. And if mine was the one causing trouble I would rather the teacher came to me and I could work with her.

I would be keeping notes OP and if nothing changes then I would be having a meeting with the head.

You need to support the teacher, everyone’s a new teacher once and it takes time to get into the swing of things. However I do think whole class punishments aren’t acceptable and if it was my class I would be keeping them in at break or lunch rather than after school.

As others have said, different teachers have different expectations and there may have been no issues in the previous years as their last teacher was more permissive.

What do you think the new teacher is doing to cause the class to misbehave?

Classes of children will typically test a new person, particularly at upper primary where they aren't used to changing teachers regularly. If they have had the same teacher for two years it does sound that the kids will be playing up.

Having no respect for their teacher IS a behavioural issue.

Your new teacher sounds like a dud tbh. We had one in DC's primary school and it was a miserable year. She left at the end of the year. I was really grateful that the covid lockdown got us out of that class. DC was going crackers having to put up with her.

Of course teachers should be treated and paid fairly. And I also agree that we shouldn't be scrutinising every decision they make.

But its a job and constructive feedback should be welcomed. If a teacher is routinely doing something that upsets your child, makes no positive impact and it puts them off school and learning why wouldnt you say something? My job is to advocate for my child and to make sure they get the education that they deserve.

If the children's behaviour was fine with previous teachers then they know how to behave. They're taking advantage of someone they see as weak. I've seen it loads of times.
Her punishments are not appropriate. In our school (Scotland so it may be different) pupils weren't allowed to miss breaks or lunchtimes or be kept late after school.

all of the children are misbehaving
I think some people are missing this line of the original post.
It sounds like at some level the whole class are playing up for this teacher. This is why I assume a whole class punishment is being given.

It sounds tricky, but Year 4 is tough as there are some hormone surges at that age and they really start to show in behaviour and friendship issues.

Whole class punishments are wrong. I’d want clarification of what my child did. If they were part of the problem they’d be in big trouble at home. If they were not part of the problem I’d want the head to make sure they weren’t punished for something they didn’t do.

I imagine it's a bit of both tbh. New, inexperienced teacher plus the age of the children. In DD's class Yr 4 was when things started to go downhill when they'd been a lovely class before. And they had the same teachers in Yr3 and in Yr4 (they had the same teachers for two years: Yr1&2, Yr3&4, Yr5&6) so I don't think it was that.

I put it down to the children developing more of an interest in their own things rather than all being in the "young child" category. Taking more notice of what others were doing and personalities coming out.
There was definitely the first signs of phone use, social media etc, mainly due to siblings (who were two years older and had been given a phone for Yr6). There were also a lot of comments from the boys to the girls (hairy legs and telling them to go on a diet). Also a lot more fights at break amongst a few of the boys.
Less restriction from parents on you tube and a lot of the children started to game e.g. didn't want to play and wanted to game when they came over to play.

Sometimes, it's not how the school deals with something that is important, but that the children see the adults around them reacting to their behaviour, and communication between the school and parents.

Well i would agree that it won't be EVERY child. But once a teacher is perceived to no longer have control then it won't just be the obvious usual suspects that are misbehaving . There will be a lot of the easily led children joing in as well .

And I agree the teacher needs support from the school to help her with discipline.

My point was that the parents should be working with the teacher and making sure that their own children show the teacher respect and behave in.class. Instead the tone of OP's posts is that the behaviour of the children is nothing to do with the parents and it's all down to the teacher.'s incompetency.

Indeed! I've (as a secondary headteacher) had parents saying it's "not fair" for their child to have a newly qualified teacher. I once responded with "I was one once."

This was my first thought.

Everybody has to start somewhere. Maybe the parents should be teaching their kids to show some respect, rather than the kids feeling it's a license to run wild.

This is really tricky.

the problem is once the class dislike the teacher they do genuinely behave badly.

happens a lot at secondary.

keeping the whole class past home time isn’t ok though.

best thing you can do is tell your child to stay out if it.
email the teacher and explain about swimming lessons etc after school.

our usual solution in secondary is to put SLT drop ins into most lessons who then pulled out and gave detentions to anyone not working.

kids once they scent weakness can be very,very badly behaved and unpleasant and to get the most out of their education they need to be able to work for teachers they don’t like.

if they’ve come from two years of a teacher they love it’s quite possible they would have played up no matter who they got next.

We are still in the first month of a new year with the new teacher who’s new to the school and quite young so at a guess newly qualified

Parent attitudes like this and they wonder why the children are playing up for this teacher.
Bet they also complained about them not getting the "lovely" teacher they wanted again and set the scene before the teacher had even started.

I’m a former teacher too and that teacher unfortunately hasn’t established her expectations in the first week. That’s the establishment phase, when the teacher sets the tone and is very clear about how the classroom will operate. If there is inconsistency and the expectations are unclear, one or two will exploit that and it will spread.

Whole class detentions breed resentment very quickly, because it might be several pupils messing about, but it’s never the whole class.

It does sound as though this class has an early career teacher and she needs support from her mentor, her colleagues and senior leadership to establish herself in the classroom and develop a positive relationship with the class.

It’s not acceptable to keep children behind after school when parents haven’t been informed and the head should be dealing with this.

My guess would be that the teacher is pretty fed up too, but if this isn’t dealt with, it will be a difficult year.

This! They’ve only been back at school three weeks. Manners start at home. They should be treating staff and their peers with respect. I imagine the school is supporting these sanctions, so you can’t very well blame the newly qualified teacher. Maybe the next step is for the school to single out the reoffenders and step up the sanction.