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 can think of more than a couple from my experience of going to school as a child. But then I suppose even the rubbish ones were generally capable of putting on a show of being good at their jobs when other adults were watching.

No, the woman talking to him brought up Charlotte.
He neither initiated the conversation content, nor referred to his daughter.
He was caught on the hop and made an awkward response.
Understandably.

Ah thank you!

But that's still a really small pool of data, with added personal bias of them being your colleagues. And parents outnumber teachers at least 30 to 1 in most scenarios, so you're working with mismatched samples.

I've worked with schools from a commercial perspective, and early years too. I encountered plenty of evidently bad teachers. My sister liked to tell me I was wrong based on her experience of working in one, high-performing school. She ate her words once she moved, and she acknowledges freely how many poor teachers there are.

Humiliation by teachers at school was big in my day. I thought we’d moved on a bit, but seemingly not. There are still a fair few teachers who go into the profession for the wrong reasons. Amongst which are being able to take centre stage and throw their weight around on a power trip.

There are two separate issues here

1. should the HT have made a public example of one child on an issue like this causing discomfort and shame to the child? Is it good pedagogy?

2. What should OP do to help her DD shed the shame and recover from the HT i flicting a public humiliation and turning her into an object lesson to the other children?

OP really only asked about the first, I think. And she seems perfectly competent to handle the second which can be handled in lots of different ways.

Interestingly a lot of posters here see it as a great chance to put the boot in and accuse OP and her daughter of being weak/too sensitive/that mother/that child—these are all shame based strategies even if they masquerade in the language of “toughening up” thr child for her own good. Its obvious that a lot of these posters secretly enjoy taking the side of authority and ysing humiliation snd shame to achieve whatever ends they like. But just as no more turtles were injured by one 8 year old being humiliated in front of her vlass no more people will be enlightened or toughened up by this pecking and attacking OP for thinking about how to handle the inept HT in the example. Its really just a fetish for attack that the posters are displaying/-especially the one who accused OP of the ultimate responsibility for the incident because she chose to inflict an “eco warrior” school on her child.

Very well put @pikkumyy77 👏🏻

What he could have done is the next day gone out and bought a bottle of that type, and used that to demonstrate to the kids why they were bad.

So teaching the lesson, without singling out the individual.

I think the OP actually taking him to task over it will help make him a better teacher in the future.

Like lot's of other jobs every day/interaction is a learning experience. I think he got it wrong on this one. But his attitude towards what he thinks about the situation when it is explained to him will tell a lot about whether he wants to actually become a better educator or not.

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

What, in his opinion, constitutes a 'proper' water bottle?

Presumably a reusable one?

@Suchevilforebodings you could perhaps explain to your daughter that single use plastics are an environmental problem which is why you don't usually use them but that this particular bottle won't harm anything because you are going to recycle it. She might find understanding the problem (and the solution) reassuring.

But you can reuse shop bottles. I refused one for three years straight after my honeymoon before it was recycled.

My son's hard plastic bottle has a broken lid after 8m and is already unusable and unrecyclable.

I'm sure. But if that is what he meant, then they're not much better if they're plastic. They'd still be leaking microplastics all over the place. Especially in this heat. Which is why I was asking what type he meant. I'm assuming he gave, or pointed to, an example.

😂😂😂

HT sounds like an arrogant a—- who wasn’t a very good teacher but got promoted to management and, like most school leaders, isn’t actually a very good manager.

As a teacher, I get his point but wouldn’t make it with an individual bottle. I know your circumstances are different but the children that bring single use plastic bottles to school regularly tend to be the poorest children with hectic home lives.

My real most hated water bottle is the trash sold by smiggle. Very fun exciting bottles and they ALWAYS break and the children are heartbroken because they were so pretty/shiny/new. And that kind of plastic can’t be easily recycled.

We re-use shop ones - sometimes it's easier to buy an extra than carry two or three refillable ones. Also here at least in wales recycling should mean such bottles end up no-where near the sea.

TBH I'd encourage the kids to shrug it off - comment from someone with no idea what happened to get to choice and not really interested in anything beyond making their own point.

Leaking microplastics aren't really a turtle conservation issue though, not compared to being choked or poisoned by all the single use plastic that ends up in the ocean.

Headteacher is an idiot. Hate that mode of teaching which is how do I best humiliate everyone into doing what I want.

If my boss picked one of my possessions up off my desk and criticised it in front of all my colleagues I would definitely take it personally. HT is twt/dck (delete as appropriate) and a bully.

HT is an idiot, some of them are just lacking. Ds was awarded a HT award by his French teacher - first thing HT did on seeing him to supposedly award him with a certificate was criticize his laces for being undone and give him a lecture on how dangerous that was - he was in Year 7, one of the shy ones who did his best. Anyway - you've got the measure of them early on - ds's HT never could see the wood for the trees.

What a load of crap! My kids used to lose their water bottles constantly. At a tenner a pop, and with three children, I made a decision that I only send plastic bottles into school. £2.50 a week and none of the racing round in the morning, searching every possible place they could have left it, discovering it’s sprung a leak. Just nip to the fridge and get a fresh bottle of cold water and we head to school. We do reuse where they’re not ruined and we do recycle but that’s entirely a decision I’ve made to ease a real pinch point and save me money. It’s absolutely nothing to do with my eight year old and a teacher making them feel bad about it would really annoy me!

Oh yes, I agree - and I think many of us are fed up to the teeth of the AIBU attack fetishists

(I initially mis-typed that as 'fetishits')

I wouldn't be happy either op. Plenty of kids in my school have come in with no bottles at all in this heat so you had the sense to get her a water bottle on the way in. I don't agree with schools politicising kids either. Kids should be able to be kids without this forced agenda being crammed down their throats. No wonder they are so anxious.

I've bought and chucked away lots of my children's so called reusable water bottles because they are broken, or they leak etc. Whereas I myself have been reusing a standard plastic water bottle that I bought from Sainsburys for about 6 months. What a ridiculous thing for the headteacher to say.

Oh God, that's awful :( poor things

It's an important message, but I am not fond of preaching by headteachers- whether it's a type of Christianity, or trying to protect sea turtles- what next veganism?
A headteacher's personal views are just that , personal, they should not be using their HM rostrum to push them, no matter how worthy.