Please help me get this into perspective.

[LizzieVereker]

I am a teacher. I love my job. But I am gobsmacked and disheartened by the sheer number and tone of the anti teacher threads.

In the last few days alone, we give out too many sweets, organise too many dress up days, set too much and too little homework, are engaged in a sinister plot to biometrically scan the nation's children, we should give up some of our 13 weeks holiday to provide wrap around care (it's NOT PAID holiday, once and for all!), we are shirkers who disappear ASAP to deal with our own children (but only female teachers), we are mean about children's work, we are not feminist enough. Just in the last few days.

I appreciate that some of these issues are genuine and individual concerns, but it's just the overall tone of disdain, as if teachers are actively trying to avoid work and undermine parents. Genuinely I had no idea we were held in such low regard.

I am fairly new here, is it always like this? Is it because it's half term? Are we seen in the same way throughout soceity?

Lizzie - I have seen threads that went on for days about something as mundane as a rude man on the bus.

In other words, don't take MN too seriously. Here

But as with anything like that, people will always post their concerns and problems, not the positive side. Similarly if you read the posts you'd believe all children on here have social problems verging on bullying. No one posts to say "I'm concerned my child is too sociable".*

I was told once that for a company ONE complaint stands for 100 people. One letter of thanks stands for 10 000.
On that basis 1 thread of complain = 100 threads saying how brilliant teachers are (and they do come occasionally)

*Disclaimer: The other way works with levels. it's always "Is my child doing okay? They're predicted a level 5a in year 3, and I don't know what that means." Never "My child is predicted a 1a in year 5, are they doing okay?"

And the most interesting thing is ... teachers doing the teacher bashing at the moment. That must be because it is half term!

DeWe that is because all MNs' DCs are above average and super intelligent!

I agree that people don't post the positive side - I'm very happy with DS's school and the teaching he receives but that wouldn't make a particularly interesting thread. I tend not to go on teacher/school bashing threads because you end up being a lone voice saying "its fine for me" while everyone ignores you.

I'm sure you're right, we don't always comment when "everything's great, thanks" about anything. I've just been this week at the amount and tone of these comments.

For the record, erm, my DP is nice, I get good service from my bank and my car mechanic's great! Just to redress the balance. And the people in the local chippy are lovely.

I'm an auditor.
A short report means the client is doing well.
A long report means they are doing badly.

Sadly there is little money or kudos in patting people on the back, as the patter is then out of a job.

Any minister who said "schools are doing just fine, I'll leave them alone for 4 years" would be rapidly reshuffled as the bureaucracy is buit on "doing something about it" rather than "leaving it to sort itself out"

It is just a MN/ Daily Mail thing, I rarely here anything negative about teachers in real life.

Hear

See shit teachers and their grammar.

Arisbottle, you is a dizgrace to the proffesion.

Fanks

Lol

I did actually post something positive on the gob-smacked-by-a-teacher post. About my dd's wonderful head of year. Just saying.

It is also fair to point out that plenty of teachers post on here about weird and even abusive parents, but I have never seen a teacher post about sensible and helpful parents. There must be some out there. Would you start a thread about them?

I never go on the teacher bashing threads.
I'm full of praise...mostly!

Hope you had a refreshing half term.

Dear teachers
you do a fab job with shitty kids and opinionated parents in constantly changing political circumstances
which is why DH after his PGCE did not join a school
but you can hire him for a day and he'll make your job easier for the term
not that I'm biased mind

You cannot please all of the people all of the time.

Being the parent of the best and worst reader/speller in the class, one of whom likes dressing up and one who's very self conscious about it, you just can't win.

Dyslexic DD1 could make an A* meal out of writing one sentence, DD2 finished her HW in 30 seconds flat.

You can't differentiate your lessons 30 different ways, you are going to annoy someone sometime.

All I can say is the better you communicate with parents and the easier you are to talk to/email the more likely we are to sort things out and not start threads here.

I don't give a monkeys if you go home at 3.30 if as you drive home you reflect on how your more atypical pupils tick.

I do care if you, stay until 5.30, but still fail to spot the boys are hiding DD1's stuff because it's easier to believe she just loses things.

Some teachers really think about their pupils, some teachers stuff them in convenient boxes.

Wonderful lesson plans, beautiful positive marking and the perfect amount of progress may please Ofsted, but it doesn't necessarily for fill the true role of a teacher.

Fair point Cory, I did put a positive thing in the anti parent thread, but you're right, that's not the same as starting a whole thread.

Startail, I work with a high proportion of atypical students, so that's really good food for thought, thank you. I mean that quite genuinely. My DS2 is certainly atypical, and it's such a relief when his teachers/TAs finally "get him"!

I wish all my fellow teachers and parents a happy and healthy new half tem! (here we go again...!)

Startail, I know what doesn't make a good teacher and I hate the pressure I am put under by OfSTED and the management to do perfectly colour-coordinated marking and achieve, by whatever means, the required progress, but my job is on the line.

I know it is completely wrong and I hate the fact that my child - and yours - are being damaged by the culture which cares about statistics far more than about children.

I am a teacher because I hope that, squeezed around the edges of the OfSTED/targets culture, there will still be some things that my classes will remember for the rest of their lives; school plays, songs, art ....

Labelle...what a beautiful comment. I am a kind of teacher..( I have a little language schoo lin the south of Spain) and that is my sentiment exactly. Amongst all the shit, I hope there is something in the teaching or how we do our classes or just the way we greet each other that the children will take away with them. I don't care whether they remember that they learnt a particualar thing with me, I just want them to learn it and make it theirs.

Talkinpeace....shitty kids, opinionated parents....got that pretty correct too.

HOWEVER, always there is the other side too. My favourie mum would be hated by other mums because when she speaks, her children listen. She is quite strict with them, but she runs a tight ship with her children respecting her decisions. She never comes to speak to me about my way of teaching. It gets the results I want. Others, well, problems, problems, problems.

Not teacher bashing now, but I found out the other day that not all schools in Spain are billingual (English/Spanish) because teachers are not prepared to learn English. I am quite disgusted at this because it effects the learning of the children and there are others teachers, who are willing to learn English or know it already that cannot get a teaching position.

My question, WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS; are they not who we are there for???

From personal experience I know that in a lot of cases it is because the teacher can't be bothered, a friend of mine who is a teacher has expressed this.

I have to stop because I have a major issue with this.

What I'm saying is that six of one and half a dozen of the other.

Notamum; it is exactly the same with teachers here not learning/being prepared to learn another language. So MFL in primary classrooms really struggles and by secondary a huge chance has been lost

I don't bash teachers. But if you have a bad one it can colour your view of the entire profession. They do seem to whinge a lot

Lizzie - my parents were teachers in the 1970s and they got bashed all the time too.

FWIW I think teachers do an incredible job. My child's teacher really makes an effort to understand what makes him tick and alter her behaviour accordingly. I think she's the bee's knees.

Ofsted is an unprintable word in this house, DD2's class worked their little socks off to get their L5's and there school upgraded back to 'good'

Their reward, their secondary has been put in special measures for very little.

Their, I wouldn't get my L5

I understand what you are saying entirely OP. My DH is a teacher, he has teacher colleagues and they do moan a lot . No more than any other profession though. In former times, I was an RGN. You want to hear nurses moan.