To wonder why some parents refuse to support teachers?

[Rosieeo]

Why do some parents blindly stick up for their children, regardless of the obvious truth?

Had Angry Mum on the phone today, complaining because I've rejected her darling boy's coursework. Darling Boy's essay consisted of a rather bad copy n paste job. I'd say maybe a quarter was his own work. I followed our department procedure, which involves a re-submission of coursework under supervision and a record kept on his personal file.

But, according to Angry Mum, I have not been sympathetic enough to his laziness plight and besides, I must be wrong about the plagiarism as Darling Boy would not cheat. I have the evidence and have emailed her links to the sites in question, to which she replied that there must be a mistake, someone must have stolen his work and put it on the internet! And anyway, I am at fault, because I haven't 'captured his imagination' and haven't offered to coach him outside of class time.

AIBU to scream 'Wake up woman! Open your eyes and kick your child into touch! Stop babying him for crying out loud, stop encouraging the endless sense of entitlement that he already has! And STOP bothering me at work with your foolishness!' ?

Sometimes teachers are downright crap I have had many many examples of this but fortunately a few really excellent teachers have shone through and made school worthwhile for my dc.

Obviously teachers are not exempt from being crap/dishonest/downright dangerous but they are in the minority. The vast majority are in the job because they feel passionate about it, IME.

Perhaps with the coursework/homework/behaviour issues, part of the problem is that there can be a real discrepancy between how they are at home and how they are at school. I think some parents would be genuinely shocked to see how their little darlings behave in the classroom. That can work the other way though; I've had quite a few occasions at parents evenings when I've told a parent their child is polite and well-behaved in my lessons only for the parent to say 'Really?! He's not like that at home!'

The OP was talking about situations where the truth is obvious (when presented with our child's coursework and an identical essay online, how many of us would really believe that their work had been stolen and posted online?!)

I have always taken the line with ds1 that I will back the teachers until and unless I have proof that I shouldn't.

He has been made to apologise to teachers and once I even made him write a note of aopology too. In return, because the teachers know I'll back them up (because I know my son and I know that he IS capable of telling porkies) they will phone me when he's in trouble for a chat. They also phone to tell me when he's done particularly well in something.

I tell ds1 that regardless of whether he likes the teachers/ likes the subject that they deserve his respect at the very least, given that they have already done their studying, got their degree and got a job.

However, we do not support patronising, rude teachers who try to make out that ds1 is a complete bad case, who try to gloss over the reports that have been given showing exemplary behaviour from ds1. Then it is clear that they have a particular axe to grind and have allowed personal feelings to get in the way of their professionalism.

Fortunately that has only happened once and after this year we won't have to have any contact with this particular teacher. Sadly she lets her profession and colleagues down.

Forgot no 5:

E. If you have to spend the whole morning whingeing about your teachers, how about doing it in your own room?

I don't have to use that one very frequently, but I have it in reserve.

Oh yes, we run revision sessions every week, but when this particular child turned up (which was rare) he couldn't really access what was being revised because he had missed so much previously! Thus requiring me to stay on extra nights just for him.

Our school is very hot on always saying 'yes' to parents...but on this instance we said no.

I think that obviously sometimes teachers are wrong, of course they are, a whole profession cannot always be right. But I think what gets most teachers' backs up is the permanent assumption that many parents have that their child is never wrong, the teacher must always be wrong, whilst simultaneously living to serve them and their child despite all others.

One of the reasons I left teaching was the parents who refused to believe that their children were less than angelic. The most common phrase I got was teachers "wouldn't teach him". Apparantly every teacher from nursery onwards was guilty of this. In many cases it was not that the teacher's wouldn't teach them, but ratehr that the students spent so much of their time outside the class (having been either removed for bad behaviour, been incredibly late for class, or not bothered to turn up at all) that teaching them along with the rest of the class was impossible as they were so far behind.

Revision sessions, in my experience, were always attended by those who needed them the least.

Incidentally, most univerities nowdays use plagarism detection software. It comes as a mighty shock to some students.

slightly different.... but why do they think they know better than people that have been trained to teach etc?

i had a mother tell me she didnt want her reception aged ds drawing in school because he was there to learn... she said he didnt have crayons etc at home because she wants him to write not draw and wouldnt accept that drawing would help him write

I assume the teacher is right initially. I know my children can be lazy, economical with the truth and that as children they are also not goo liars! I also tend to feel that the teachers and I are on the same side - ie to get the children through their education as successfully and happily as possible.

But not being an inflexible moron I am also capable of realising that teachers are also fallible. And make mistakes.

If I was the mother in the OP, my son would have to be holding a gun to my head for me to make that phonecall. I'd be too ashamed.

And I also wonder what else Rosie could have done to help said child.

OrmRenewed I agree with your stance. My DCs aren't at school yet but when they are I'm sure I will tend to assume the teach is right in the first instance. Not because I think teachers are always right but because I will tend to take the word of a professional adult over that of a child (even my child). This would apply particularly to situations relating to work/effort/behaviour.

Obviously, if one of my children made a serious allegation against a teacher relating to something illegal or immoral then I probably wouldn't automatically disbelieve my child. Hard to say without being in that situation though. Of course, children make false allegations against teachers all the time. That's the sort of situation I would find very difficult to navigate but just hope to goodness it will never present itself.

Parent of a "lazy-arsed little angel" here.

I just wish his school had contacted me about his coursework. Said little angel didn't tell me until the day before the final deadline, when he hadn't started it.

I only found out about the help he could've had and had spurned when I rang up the school.

Needless to say, he did not do as well as he could have.

We use the plagarism software at our school -
works a treat! It's easy to spot plagarised work for an experienced teacher, the problem is persuading parents so we have invested in the software. The most difficult thing to prevent is parents doing coursework for their children. Can you imagine telling a parent you won't submit thier child's coursework because 'someone' has clearly helped them too much?

Wish you'd all stop using 'Johnny' as an example... it's DS2's name and he is practically perfect in every way .

Some parents are also professionals. Some teachers find this hard to realise. They assume that as a parent you must know less about their subject than they do, and that you can't possibly know anything about teaching, because if you are a parent that is all you are, isn't it? You can't possibly have some other life where you wear another hat and even possibly happen to be better educated in their subject/have more teaching experience than they do. I am a kindly person so I do not have the heart to disabuse them.

Most of the teachers I work with are also parents, to reverse your point. So we sit on the other side of the table too. Obviously I have teaching experience, but my children are in primary and I teach secondary and frankly the two are pretty different and I wouldn't assume my experience counted for much. The only advantage is I understand the jargon, which makes parents evenings quicker.

Not sure what your point is about the "better educated" thing. Unless your children are being taught inaccurately.

I didn't suggest that parents aren't professionals; I said I would tend to take the word of a(nother) professional adult (i.e. the teacher) over that of the child.

Oh Cory, I fully realise this. Most of the parents in my current school are professionals. They are also very supportive. Apart from the occasional parent on the odd occasion. It's fantastic to be working in a school where parents view us as experts and our relationship is one of mutual respect.

If we were to think of an area that a teacher may have more indepth knowledge of, it could be in relation to specifications, examiners' expectations, marking criteria and how students should respond to particular assessment tasks in order to achieve the highest possible marks. We're also quite good at helping students get into the university that most suits them, etc, etc.

Some parents and students forget that teachers also have other lives where they wear other hats. However, It's lovely to hear that you're such a kindly person. I'm sure the teacher breathes a sigh of relief when she sees you sit in front of her on parents' evening.

I think discussion of the quality of teaching is irrelevant here.

If a parent assumes it is more likely that her child's genius has been plagiarised than evidence that coursework has come from an internet cheatsite, well.. you know.

No parent should be fighting their secondary school student's battles like that. I'm all for the bleeding-heart-liberal angle ordinarily but this mum is being precious and U.

YANBU as long as the teacher is being fair which in most cases they would be.

However, I think YABU to post this on here. You have a professional job that requires you to be discrete. Surely if the woman in question were to find this thread she would be able to identify herself from what you say. I would never come on a public forum to air my opnion about people from work and given you are a teacher you shouldnt be either.

All a parent achieves by underminding a teacher is a disrespectful child IMHO

YANBU - shocking - and very sad too. Mummy's little Emperor is going to have a shock one day in the big, bad real world.

Btw feelingsensitive, I think that's a bit of an odd thing to say - and maybe your nickname is appropriate! I'm a Software Engineer - would anyone really get their knickers in a twist if I rolled up here saying that my customers didn't know their arses from their elbows and wouldn't know a static requirement if it hit them in the face? No, of course not.

'And I also wonder what else Rosie could have done to help said child.'

I expect that the Mum would have liked her to provide 1 to 1 until the exam for free, giving up her home life and spending less time with her own kids to facilitate this.

Also, Rosie could have written the coursework for him and then sat the exam as well.

Having spent 2 years driving my year 10 and then 11 tutor group to hand in their coursework, I know how hard it is to screw the work out of the students; and eventually one runs out of options. I had break and lunch time detentions for them to do their coursework in (my department didn't do coursework at GCSE, so this was as a tutor), and for my subject, I ran afterschool revision sessions all year. You cannot force the students to turn up to revision, or to do coursework; ultimately, it is down to them.

Feelingsensitive - I bet any of us who teach secondary could post much the same thing each year and not be identified. You'd be surprised how much this goes on. I thought Rosie was very discreet.

TheFallenMadonna Wed 12-May-10 22:19:17
"Not sure what your point is about the "better educated" thing. Unless your children are being taught inaccurately."

Afraid that's what I meant. Dd's French teacher has a ghastly accent that you could cut with a knife- and which dd is now picking up. This is in Yr 8 and we are not talking about an un qualified supply teacher but about their regular teacher. I recently discovered that dd (who is in top set and top of her group) does not know enough French to put together a single phrase and was unable to recognise the phrase "je suis"! Teacher during recent trip to France had to call on assistance as she herself couldn't follow the guided tour of the bakery: dd said she seemed unable to communicate with the locals at all. Yet at parents evenings she talks down at me as if I were a complete idiot who couldn't possibly understand anything about foreign languages. So I have given up trying to discuss dd's French: I am just teaching her at home.

Her history teacher last year regularly set them tasks based on complete historical inaccuracies: "Use the following pictures to illustrate how the views on witchcraft changed between 1050 and 1350"- the earliest of the pictures was from 1599 and the rest were from the 1600s- teacher is clearly incapable of recognising 17th clothing or realising that a print is unlikely to be from the early medieval period. Dd tried to discuss the difficulties (very tactfully) in her essay and got marks knocked off for not following instructions. Similar problems occurred with every new project they did: it always seemed based on false assumptions. Again, it would be horrendously difficult to point this out without being perceived as a difficult parent.

Otherwise, it is a good school- brilliant on pastoral, good with SN, which we need, lovely atmosphere- but they do have some less than knowledgeable teachers.

The problem is that I would like to discuss dd's academic progress. But I can't do that if we have to start from the premiss that every parent is an ignoramus. As it so happens, I do have a degree in medieval history and have spent my life in research, I do speak French, and I am currently teaching in the English department of a Russell Group university. And I have at least been a supply teacher in secondary, though I recognise I am less well up in the intricacies of the current examination system. But it is difficult to for me to speak as if I knew anything without seeming rude, when the assumption is that parents can't possibly know anything. So I just smile a lot at parents evening. It's easier that way.

Cory, I think you make some good points regarding the subject knowledge of some teachers in some schools. You'd be amazed at the number of teachers teaching A Level subjects when they only achieved Ds in these subjects themselves and went on to less than fantastic universities.

Quite frankly, the level of qualifications needed to enter teacher training at some 'universities' is shocking.

On my PGCE there were many fabulously intelligent, well qualified individuals who either already had MAs from top Universities or went on to achieve them. I am still close to five people who fit into this category who were brilliantly qualified and were amazing teachers - we all began in, did well in and enjoyed teaching in good state schools. Seven years on, the five of us, including my DH, are all teaching in independent and grammar schools. I'm sure we're not the only ones to 'sell out'!