Headteacher criticised my daughter's water bottle

[Suchevilforebodings]

Slightly annoyed at my DD's headteacher. She is 8 and in Y3

I packed her bag yesterday morning and noticed as I filled up her water bottle that it was leaking from the lid. Grabbed another only to see it was split down the side. Annoying but one of those things.
When dropping her off at school, we popped into the local shop next door and grabbed her a large plastic bottle of water with a spout lid.

She came home from school yesterday and said that her headteacher, when visiting the classroom, had picked up her bottle from in front of her and told the whole class that this kind of bottle was "very bad" as it "ends up in the ocean and kills sea turtles" and a "proper" water bottle is much better to bring into school.

She's a very sensitive child was really quite upset and being told she's killing turtles, which she loves, and also at what she perceived as being "in trouble" as she loves school, is a good pupil, and hasn't ever been told off.

I get that the head isn't actually wrong, and I wouldn't normally buy bottled water but it was a "needs must" situation.

Was this an appropriate way to bring it up?

I’m confused by your comment, I didn’t say anything about the sack?

Another poster mentioned he should be sacked.

No wonder people don't want this job.

I still remember the "thoughtless" comments teachers made to me. Admittedly it means that rather than be upset with them I'd rather punch them if I saw them now, but it's still there.

Right. So it was just ONE poster who did that then. Hardly a majority view.

I dunno, perhaps HT's need to develop a bit more "resilience"?

We are talking about ONE comment here.

Either your examples were more than a single thoughtless passing comment, or you need to go to therapy...

If you are genuinely that traumatised by a teacher mentioning your bottle once (as an escape), this is a problem that runs deeper than the teacher.

I did well at school, and generally got on with teachers, but there were a lot of comments back in the 80s/90s. One that particularly sticks is the French teacher who called me a "deadbeat" as my mum couldn't afford to pay for me to go on the school residential trip. (Not an isolated incident either, she said a lot)
Probably need therapy, but I'm AuDHD and can't let go of things easily. God I would love to have it out with that woman particularly.

My point exactly!

Calling someone a "deadbeat" and it being part of continuous, unprofessional behaviour (which I'm sure was much more common in the 80s especially) is incomparable to one isolated comment about a water bottle.

It's not a good example to set for children though, picking on one child as an example to the school. If they wanted to discuss how plastic bottles are bad (perfectly valid discussion to have) they didn't have to involve the OP's DD.

But I'm certain that they didn't pick one child as an example, they picked one bottle.

Context is so important:

"This bottle isn't the best to use because..."

"This bottle, LIKE THE ONE LITTLE SALLY HAS BROUGHT, isn't the best to use because..."

Are completely different circumstances.

DDs English teacher called a kid in her class a pratt because he was very disorganised - and it was a daily thing.

Again, unrelated to OP's incident and incomparable!

Sure, that’s why your post got deleted because you were fine. 😂