to feel sorry for the kids my sister teaches?

[LissyGlitter]

My sister is a year one teacher in a fairly deprived area of London. She says that my DD (2.5) is at about the same level in many ways as about half of the kids in her class. DD is pretty much average for her age. My sister gave an example of how a typical child in her class would tell her a simple story and it was basically the whole vicky pollard stereotypical thing, but I thought that teenagers only speak like that because they think it is trendy. I know I am a parent of a toddler, so don't really "get" older kids yet, but surely if they can't tell a simple story or count to ten or even recognise their name written down, they don't have many chances already? I just found it desperately sad that these kids were already so different to the kids I am used to, and it's not even like I come from a very privileged background.
She also said that a lot of kids will have terrible attendance, and it is down to the parents not seeing the point in sending them to school. They will also turn up with things like a packet of biscuits instead of a packed lunch.
She said the kids themselves are lovely, but she spends so long in class trying to teach them really basic things, that they really have no chance of getting even near the targets.
We are pretty poor (ie we are on benefits, in a rented house, no assets and so on) but I like to think that we are lucky enough to have the background for it not to affect DD. No one would purposefully harm their kids chances (or at least very few would) so the parents must be in such a bad place. Not every kid in the class can have SN, surely?

Unfortunately that doesn't stop at primary school. Some of the kids I used to teach at secondary level still struggled to read and write. At one school in a deprived area if I had some of my kids in my Head of Year detention for various misdemeanours, I couldn't get them to go home at the end of it. It used to make me ill with frustration thinking about what awful lives some of these kids had.

Londonone, up until the later eighties there were lots of state boarding schools for children with emotional and behavioural problems (caused by neglect, not things like ASD).

I had family members who taught in schools like these. Lesson times were for teaching academic work. The children then lived in small groups with houseparents in the evenings and weekends who taught them all the other skills, like cooking and eating healthily, social skills and so on.

Teachers should not be teaching children basic, non academic skills in classrooms at the expense of teaching numeracy and literacy.

We either need to bring back the boarding schools or have children in day schools from 7 am until 8pm, so that they can learn the basics as well as the academic stuff.

We cannot have an either/or approach to life skills and academic skills.

I worked in a 'failing' secondary school, in a socially deprived area.
It was heartbreaking seeing some of the children come to school in clothes that hadn't been washed, let alone ironed, with dirty hair and nails etc. They had no sense of self-worth. I always found it was the boys who seemed more helpless, the girls seemed to have more 'go' about them.
One boy always had trousers that were too short, and they all had filthy trainers/shoes that were too small.
Most of them had social workers, but I know from experience that they have horrendous workloads, and cannot keep up with all the families they are assigned to.
I had boys trying to sell me stuff that their parents had stolen.

I volunteer in my local primary and it is a very disheartening place.
Over the Summer the children and their aprents were asked both verbally and in writing to read 'at least one book or comic'. At the start of the new term it's clear that even this abysmally low standard was not reached by some pupils.
The poor buggers get no support at home.
School is very grey and all the playing feilds were sold off.
The teachers are very demotivated and one of the TAs has been off forever with a stress related illness.

I wouldn't send my kids to this school if they paid me.

It's tough. I worked in a special needs preschool and some of the children were placed there b/c they didn't know colors, shapes, etc. As soon as they got to school and someone actually took the time to teach them something, they caught up very quickly. Some of them were actually very bright, but no one had ever tried to tell them colors or even read them a frakking story.

I don't know what the solution is, I really don't. In the school I work at now, there are four sisters (ages 3-7) that I just want to come and live at my house. Their mother (they've got three different dads between the four of them)obviously loves them, but has no idea how to care for them. She either ignores them or screams at them, the same way her mother did to her, and the same way these four little darlings will most likely do to the children they will most likely have by the time they are fifteen.

It's all so sad I can barely stand it, but the few I've seen break the cycle and prove the stereotypes wrong are what keeps me going. Every day, just do the best you can. That's all you can do, I guess. I have a silver starfish necklace I wear to remind me of that story (about the boy who was throwing all the beached starfish back in the water, and an old man came by and said "you'll never get to them all, why do you even bother?" the boy picked up one, said, "it matters to this one," and threw it back.) Maybe out of a handful of kids I work with, one will make it out. And I wish the odds were better, but at least it matters to that one.

My mum used to think a solution would be a "granny" placed by ss to look after the children when the parents wouldn't.

Someone to get them up in the morning, get their breakfast, make sure they got to school. Some of the wee mites were getting their own breakfast and trying their best to get to school on time at the age of 5.

But of course you couldn't do it. The parents wouldn't want a stranger in the house and the public wouldn't like the "feckless" getting this sort of help.

Taking the children away isn't a solution either. Those children love their parents and want to stay with them. I don't know how you can make the parents (the ones where drink/drugs aren't the root problem) see that investing that time with their children can be fun and rewarding.

I have done some work (not teaching) in schools in Tower Hamlets and Dagenham, and I know how much money goes to schools in underprivileged areas. As others on here have already said, it is down to the example they get at home. I really don't know what the answer is.
We know a little girl who is the sweetest little thing. It's sad but she just hasn't got a chance for her future. We know her mum, who has no morals, sleeps around with gangsters. It's her mum's example in terms of relationships that is the really going to be detrimental to this little girl though. Her mum has left her at home with a 'boyfriend' who rolled joints in front of the little girl, and is also being tried for beating up his baby's mother while she was pregnant.
I really respect teachers for what they do. I have considered doing teacher training, but I honestly don't know if I would have the emotional strength to deal with this kind of thing.

YANBU to feel sorry for the children but YABU to assume it is because of bad parenting.
The inability to sequence retell a simple story , count and recognise name are all early predictors of dyslexia. As dyslexia is thought to be at least partly hereditary it is likely that many of these children's parents are dyslexic and were educated in days when it was not properly understood or catered for.Lack of literacy and hence education may well lead to poverty and so it is not surprising to have such a concentration of dyslexic children in very poor areas.
TBH you sound a bit smug

Sorry but don't quite see how she sounds smug, and find it highly unlikely that so many kids in one class can all be dyslexic . Like i've said I was brought up in and still live in a poor area and believe me most of these kids problems are due to the home life, obviously not all but definately most.