"PRIMARY ONE BE QUIET!"

[jasper]

Sorry about the capitals but this , shouted at an incredible volume by the headmistress was my introduction to a local primary school I visited today with a view to sending my son there.
Primary one were in the games room with their teacher; the room is just next to the headmistress's office and she came out and bellowed at the class in front of their teacher. I had not noticed much noise to speak of coming from the class.

I wanted to ask those of you who are teachers and those of you with kids at school if this is a fairly commonplace scenario.I confess to having been slightly shocked,(in fact I felt a wee bit scared ) but then it's 20 years since I was inside a school. Ferocious yelling at children was fairly common in my day but for some reason I had perhaps naively assumed it had died out!
DO I need to toughen up immediately?
Thanks ladies

All very interesting.
I think I was more surprised she did it in front of a complete stranger (me) than anything else.

I'm a teacher in a Scottish school and have taught P1. I'm not saying I never get a bit frazzled and raise my voice a bit, but it doesn't happen very often. I would be mad if my HT did that as it's so disrespectful to the teacher and the kids. How does anyone expect a group of kids doing games to be quiet? Try and ask around and find out if this is normal behaviour for the HT - maybe she was just having a bad day!!

When I was teaching I learned very early on that if you shout a lot then your class actually get noisier ...
I don't think it is necassary to shout ... there are lots of ways to avoid shouting when you are teaching ....
I always felt that the 'shouty' teachers (the ones who always shout) are ones that don't have much control ...

I think shouting does happen in most schools at times. How the children feel about it depends a lot on the context and their relationship with the teacher. Foe example, one head I know was very quietly spoken, but firm and fair and the kids loved him. I remember an incident when some year 4 boys had done something awful and were bad mouthing him badly (can't remember what they did) and he shouted at them face to face. The whole school went quiet and listened. We were all so surprised, but not half as surprised as those boys!

I think most teachers wouls say that they agree shouting is not good practice, but I know that when I have had a lousy day with my class and I'm tired (or have PMS or a headache or something, then I have shouted when I wish I hadn't)

agree with Ghosty about shouting making the kids noisier, and shouty teachers struggling to keep control. (mind you in my first year, I think that was me )

message withdrawn

i agree with ghosty and steppemum too

I agree too that shouting isn't generally that effective, especially if you do it a lot. Nowadays most teachers, IME, know this and certainly in the 2 secondary schools I have taught it (and the primary I did some consultancy for) shouting was pretty uncommon. I do shout at times but not often. I prefer to use other forms of discipline personally.

Besides shouting all day would kill your voice.

If I was a teacher, I would shout!