To expect a Y4 teacher to notice if one of her pupils is ill?

[PrettyCandles]

When I picked ds1 up from school today I was quizzed (by a different member of staff) about why he had been off school all week from Tuesday last week. Because he had been ill! And I had called the school to tell them so.

When I picked ds up from school last Monday, his teacher came out with him to tell me that he was making a fuss about some missing gloves. "Having a panic attack" was how she put it. Ds was scarily pale, with shadowed eyes, he told me that he had been told off several times that day because he couldn't keep his head up and kept slumping onto his elbow on the desk, he couldn't eat his lunch because he had such a sore throat, he had bad breath. Just touching him with my hand I could tell he had a fever. When we got home I foudn he had a temperature of 39.4C. Some panic attack.

Is it too much to expect a teacher who has already had a child in her class for a term, and therefore knows him well and should recognise untypical behaviour, to notice that he is ill?

If he was off last week and was still spiking a temp/unwell today why did you send him to school?

If you didn't spot that he was unwell this morning why would you expect the class teacher to?

FFS. I would notice and I would expect any other teacher to notice, she's not doing her job properly if she is taking no notice of the welfare of her class.

YANBU

Should also say that smelly breath IME is no indication of a child being unwell. Most of the kids I have ever taught have shocking breath most of the time. Often makes me want to vom!

Actually, the way I read the OP is that las Monday her son came our unwell with a temp and his teacher mentioned the panic attack. She then kept him off from last tuesday and sent him back today, when another teacher quizzed her about the absence.

I read it that until he had the temp spike last week, he hadn't been unwell and wasn't having a temp today.

Having spent the day teaching my Year 3/4 class I would say that it would very unusual if a child or their friend didn't tell me they were feeling ill, and, if they were much quieter than usual I would definitely notice and ask them if they felt OK! If they said they were feeling hot I wouldn't hesitate to check their forehead!!
(Teachers do still use common sense in the large majority of cases!!)
Make sure that your child realises he must say if he feels ill so this doesn't happen again.
Hope he feels better now...

There have been some valid points made on here about why the teacher might not have noticed. My default position on "teacher" threads, as one myself, is nearly always to defend. But I think on this one you're right, she should have noticed. A few weeks back, I passed a child from another class in the corridor and said, "gosh, are you all right?" as he just was obviously not well. Although I don't know the boy well, he's normally a perky little chap. However, he just shook his head lamely, and welled up in tears, so I sent him straight to the medical room and he subsequently went home and was off school for a good few days.

But i think it is easier to spot when you have your own kids, as someone has already said. You know, when they suddenly start being so grumpy and vile that you threaten them with going to bed and they say, "Actually, I think I'd like to." And you then are a Bad Mother.

I would like to think that I would have noticed one of my year fours being so unwell. I think I would at least have noticed enough to ask if he was ok. There are days that are so busy that I barely even seem to speak to some of the kids- but I think if he was being told off for having his head on the desk, then yes, she should have realised.

YANBU, just shows he had gone a day without being touched, spoken to or looked at

Oh gosh, I'm sorry prettycandles, I've just seen that ILovePlayingDarts is correct and that I misread your post.

The whole not noticing him being unwell stuff happened at the very start of his illness, not this week?

Well...in that case...If she noticed enough to tell him off a few times, I'd say that she should have picked up that he was unwell. I was assuming that she knew he'd been off ill and just thought he was still a bit below par.

I know I often say to my (secondary) pupils if they're slumped over, "Alex did you have a late night or are you not feeling well?". It seems a bit remiss of her not to confirm this with him but just to tell him off.

Sorry again. Hope he's feeling better now.

'YANBU, just shows he had gone a day without being touched, spoken to or looked at '

I don't see how you could make that assumption. Other children must have noticed and yet didn't say.
We lived next door to a doctor and his 6 yr old son went 24 hours with a broken wrist-his parents thought he was making a fuss! I dare say the teacher would have spotted it!
Teachers are not perfect-they make mistakes! He was old enough to say.

I agree that ds needs to tell someone when he is feeling so ill. He knows that, too. The trouble is that he felt he ought to push on and not be bothered by something minor, and I think he was so ill that he hadn't realised that it wasn't minor. When you have a fever your ideas can get a bit skewy.

I don't think this is something to make a fuss over with the school, tho I am disappointed by the teacher. I think that she is fairly new to teaching, so quite possibly she lacks the experience to recognise signs of illness, or to ask the child if she is not sure. And I don't think she connects very well with the children (other parents also have this opinion), so it's not really surprising that she didn't register the difference between ds just behaving a little unusually, and him behaving totally out of character.

Interestingly, this afternoon the school secretary apologised to me for the fact that nobody had noticed that ds was poorly on Monday last week.

If she is young, and new to teaching, she probably wouldn't notice.

Mandy1966

I'm an NQT and don't have children of my own- that doesn't mean I'm not capable of noticing when a child is ill.

I'm also a year 4 teacher, and from my experience so far, there are numerous reasons why I might not call the mum.

1. teachers don't deal with first aid issues. If the child feels ill, they are sent to a first aider (in my school, the LSAs).

2. if a child is droopy after a prolonged illness, then you assume the parents know how well/ unwell they are, and have decided to send them in regardless.

3. a lot of my class don't want to go home. If they tell me they're ill, and I say they should go home, they say their mum will shout at them.

4. Monday is always a rough day. Many children stay up far too late over the weekend, and the knock-on effects are that they look shattered and find it hard to concentrate. That's not enough reason to send the child home- it'd be the whole class off (and the teacher!) otherwise.

5. have you tried speaking to either the teacher or your child about this? Is it possible he did say something, or she did notice something, but not enough to call home?

I think YAB a bit U: At 9 i would have expected him to tell ME before he went to school that he wasn't feeling well and would hope (but cant guarantee) that I would have listened / noticed myself!

Sorry for the double post. It's my first time on this site, and I can't work out how to delete.

Can I just say how amazingly patronising it is to assume new and young teachers are incompetent when it comes to telling if a child is ill?

It's not like NQTs crawl out from beneath a rock, straight into teaching you children. I, personally, did nearly an academic year's worth of teaching practice whilst at Uni.

My age and my experience have no bearing on my ability to notice if a child is ill; especially if they don't mention it!

You're right, Kat, about this assumption - particularly regarding the youth of the teacher. But experience is important when it comes to developing a gut-feeling for situations. As it happens, ds's teacher is not particularly young, but she does not have extensive experience, and does not seem to connect well with the children.

Ds was not ill when he went to school. He began feeling ill during the morning. I am not expecting his teacher to diagnose an illness, merely to notice when a child behaves completely out of character. Perhaps, rather than repeatedly telling him off for being droopy, it might have been appropriate to ask ds why he was so droopy? She accompanied ds to me to tell me about his behaviour - so clearly she thought that there was something that needed reporting to me.

There were a couple of times when ds was in P1 and 2 when the after school club summoned me to fetch him because he was ill (once with chicken pox) when his class teacher had not only not noticed, but had made him go swimming that day. I was livid that I hadn't been called earlier, as he was really very poorly by that point. DS is now much better about speaking up when he feels ill, and I have learned to listen when he does.

On the other hand, I can remember my primary school teacher driving me home after Mum had sent me into school and I promptly threw up in assembly. Mum still claims I hadn't told her I felt sick.

She also sent me back to boarding school with measles. To be fair, Mum was mostly trying to convince herself my sister didn't have measles on that occasion, because she got it first. But I was the one who had to go back to bloody boarding school. And was promptly isolated in hospital, because I was the only measles case in Singapore at the time and the authorities wanted to keep it that way.

Can you tell it still rankles?

'Can I just say how amazingly patronising it is to assume new and young teachers are incompetent when it comes to telling if a child is ill?'

I didn't mean to be patronising, but when I was a young teacher I think that I was incompetent in this area.
It also doesn't allow for the DC who insists they are fine when they were not-I was like that, I wouldn't have wanted to give in and go home!