What would you think about this email from school? Sudden change of class teacher.

[Junglemoon]

We had an email yesterday evening from our (primary age) child's headteacher saying that his class teacher Mr Smith had left and that as of tomorrow his teacher would be Mrs Jones. No further details as to what on earth was going on, the email was literally three sentences.

Mrs Jones has been teaching them the last couple of days but our son was told and believed that Mr Smith was just off ill. He and most of his class were very upset in school this morning that there would apparently be no chance to say goodbye to Mr Smith, who is much loved by the children. Neither the children nor the parents were given any notice of this or any preparation.

On top of this the headteacher and the deputy head are apparently away at a conference and unable to answer phone calls or answer any questions and none of the other staff appear to know anything about the issue. The student counsellor was in the classroom this morning trying to reassure the children but she had no answers for them or anyone else.

Some of the parents have phoned and emailed (we are in contact with each other) to express concern and unhappiness about how abrupt this has been and how little information we've been given and the head has replied to an email from one father saying that Mr Smith had left suddenly and she couldn't provide any further details.

Obviously my mind is going all over the place. I can think of a few things that could be sudden and confidential, but if it was something that had to do with the children's safety, the school would have to inform us, wouldn't they? If something awful has happened to Mr Smith I suppose we wouldn't be owed that information but it does seem very hard on the children to just be like 'Mr Smith is gone, you won't see him again, Mrs Jones will be your teacher now'. Which is all they got.

Thanks - I certainly didn't have the energy for it. It was horrible to be told by a pupil in my first week back "We all know you had a breakdown and we're going to give you another one".

Yes, I'm glad I got out too. 😘

I agree that it is a workplace and people are allowed to have personal privacy (no-one needs to know their medical diagnosis), but I still think that this comment completely misses the point that some of these kids spend more waking hours per week with their class teacher than with their own parents. They do have individual personal relationships of trust with the teacher, and to have someone that significant simply 'cease to be' overnight without any way of knowing if they are even dead or alive is actually quite a big deal, psychologically, and it is the parents who have to pick up the pieces of that abrupt loss of attachment afterwards.

May not help but when I left a teaching post this happened. I went in to work on a morning planning to hand my notice in because the school was horrible and toxic and I felt I was going to have a breakdown . On the way in a member of slt asked if I was ok and I could feel the tears so I asked to speak to them after school. Very long story short , I was out the door by 9am - didn’t get chance to say goodbye to my class whom I adored and the school said nothing to the parents except that I was no longer the class teacher.

So , it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s anything bad .

Apparently not only the parents of the kids involved were informed.
Or are you basing this on heresay?

I don't think the school are under any obligation to explain. It could be somethig very personal and private for the last teacher. I'm sure the school realise there will be gossip and speculation but that doesn't mean they have to divulge the reason.

Could quite easily be a family emergency that wont be sorted anytime soon and they have had to move back home. Or they themselves are sick. Or mental health reasons so they have decided teaching is not for them.

of course the teacher is entitled to privacy, but the young children are entitled to some kind of explanation
It's the nosey entitled parents who are demanding to know too much, the children will probably have forgotten his name after Easter.

I had a similar situation and it turned out that it was a dispute - my youngest’s teacher was there at the start of the year and he was so happy with her. We knew her well and loved her as she had been our eldest child’s teacher too. About 3 months later she just wasn’t around and we all thought she was ill-we were really worried. I asked a few times and it was all vague. Then the next time I asked it was “oh Mrs X has left” I remarked on no comms and was told “well that’s on her, she chose not to inform the parents”. Thankfully, I bumped into Mrs X outside school eventually and found out she was ok. She had been booted out for not agreeing with the direction the senior leadership were taking. They told her to take leave and didn’t allow her to say goodbye or anything! How spiteful and the blatant lie!!. I should have gone ape shit, I still might tbh.

After teaching for many, many years, it's quite eye opening to have my own teenagers and hear the shite they come home with when a teacher suddenly disappears.
And it seems to happen fairly frequently in their (not academy) school. At least twice this year.
"Ms x has gone. Apparently she's been fired because of x.'

I always shut it down- and remind them that they see only the teeniest , tiniest part. And that any teacher who tells them any salacious details, or implies, is being really unprofessional.

Wow, what sort of school is this..... to have a teacher leave and be replaced last minute, and the poor kids couldnt say bye. Its so selfish.....😂

Agree. Shame for the kids but it's life. People move on in jobs, here one day gone the next.

I've had it with dentists and hairdressers.

It's not, actually. Teachers ordinarily can't leave mid-term. There are set resignation points and this teacher will have missed the resignation point to leave at Christmas, so shouldn't be leaving until Easter at the earliest.

Is it time to stop the world? The children and the parents are upset by a change of teacher. Christ. Where will we end up in 20 years time when we are relying on these kids and these parents to keep the cogs turning in the workplaces across the country.

My late husband, also a teacher, was suddenly absent from school as he had a bleed on the brain one Saturday afternoon that we subsequently discovered were brain tumours. It will have appeared to his pupils that he was there one day and gone the next. But no, parents didn’t have a right to know the details of his diagnosis. It is unsettling for pupils to have a change of teacher but that does not give any right for medical or other personal information to be shared.

Do you think the OP will be back ?

Such a shame she didn't set up the voting on this thread.

Something like this happened at DS’s school. Teacher literally just disappeared over half term. Nothing was said as to why. I remember thinking it very odd at the time but whatever, life goes on.
It much later turned out that there’d been an incident with a student which she’d blamed on a medical condition - however it was the kind of condition that you are supposed to declare to the school when you accept the job, and she hadn’t declared it. So she left on immediate “sick leave” while the union/lawyers sorted it all out, and because lawyers were involved it meant nobody could say anything.

How did you get that information?

Obviously my mind is going all over the place.

Why?! There are loads of very normal explanations! This kind of thing happens not infrequently - completely understandable a child might be a bit upset, but highly likely they will get used to the new teacher within a week or so and that will be that. No point giving it much more thought really, it’s presumably a stressful situation for that teacher and the school, but no reason for it to be a massive deal for you!

As you said, it’s none of your business.

Curiosity is natural but there’s a million things it could be that are none of your business. We’ve had this at my school due to physical illness, mental health, sudden bereavement and the still birth of a child, none of which the colleagues in question wanted to discuss with the school gate gossips. Yes it’s a change for the children but the new teacher will more than likely hit the ground running and within a couple of weeks the class will settle and it’ll all be fine.

Are you deliberately missing the point? The highly unusual circumstance is not the change of teacher, but the fact that it is happening mid-term with no warning to parents or children. The teacher has a right to privacy, but it is not at all unreasonable for the parents to wonder what has happened to cause this extremely unusual situation (particularly unusual in a primary school, where young children will have built up a relationship with the teacher why has suddenly vanished from their lives).

You mean the parents will have to parent their children through this? God forbid! 🙄

For people saying it's sudden, the fact a replacement teacher has already been lined up suggests it wasn't sudden at all.
Yes there are set points teachers can leave but there is the possibility they have simply left for a job outside of teaching and they/their union negotiated them leaving before the end of term. There might not be anything tragic about the situation and maybe they didn't want to say anything.