to want to choose which teacher dd2 gets next year?

[peasandbeans]

I'm inclined to feel that this would be rather selfish behaviour, but I still feel quite tempted...

My dd2 will start school in September. There are two potential teachers. DD1 currently has one of them.

The basic issue is that although DD1 has basically had a good year at school, I feel that the teacher's behaviour is sometimes rather unreasonable (with my dd1), and sometimes outrageous (nearly always with little boys).

An example of the former would be threatening that the devil would come and take away the naughty children in his sack and cut them into little pieces.

An example of the latter would be tying a little boy to his chair because he wouldn't sit still. When his parents found out they withdrew the child from the school immediately.

The teacher is also very strict about things like being able to colour in nicely and will happily show an example of messy work to the other children so that they can ridicule it.

Do you think it is reasonable for me to make a request to the head teacher that DD2 be put in the other class? Or what would you do?

I find it difficult to believe there is 'nothing' they can do - what, they can't talk to this teacher and suggest that some of her discipline methods are felt to be inappropriate

For me, the thing about talking to other mums explicitly would be to gather 'evidence' (and yes, I know that the words of a 5 yo are not always that!)of additional/recent behaviour - ie child x mentions one thing at home, child y mentions another etc - together it becomes much more damning.
And, although the school would like the chair incident to be 'top secret' doesn't make it so. Personally, if that had happened in my class, I'd expect to hear from the head how that teachers methods were being monitored on an ongoing basis.