If a child at school is always in detention or in trouble at school - disclaimer - I am hot, sun scorched and knackered

[redrubyshoes]

should they be kept back from field trips/sports days as well?

Just had a nightmare few days of dealing with same five kids who are always walking out of class, being rude/abusive/bullying to other students/staff and a whole host of other reasons...........but the head (who rarely attends these trips) lets them go.

They took up sooo much of our (staff) time while the other kids were having fun/learning/looking out for each other running/jumping/high jumping/long jumping etc etc etc. We were literally at the end of our tether with these five and they stopped us cheering on the pupils or just sharing our attention around the other 193 or so that were great/not so great/injured/hot/tearful (when they lost)/needed water/food/plasters or WAY TO GO MISS DIDJA SEE THAT!!!! moments.

Am I horrible or just knackered and hot and worn out after a long day?

Hit me with it.

I think that every child should follow the same rules but some children might need extra support to get there.

When I was at school I had to wear my school uniform correctly and if I didn't I would get the appropriate sanction. What most people didn't know was that my uniform was washed in school and I would get dressed in school so that I had access to clean uniform. No one said to me because you are from that house which is dirty, the electric is never on and your parents are either pissed or high you don't need to wear uniform.

I also had to hand in my homework and if I didn't I faced a sanction . I did my homework in my form tutor's classroom at lunch time and at either end of the school day. No one said we will let you off because of your background .

I was quite an unpleasant child, a bully not scared to use my fists - because that is what I saw at home . No one said to me - we understand that you do that, it was made clear that if I carried on I would be shown the door and would probably eventually join my father in prison

I remember my head of year being quite blunt with me during one of the periods that I was going off the rails. He told me that people knew who my family were and I was judged for that. My home life was chaotic and therefore if I wanted to do as well as everyone else I needed to work harder not do less .

His advice took me from a life trapped in deprivation - cultural , academic and financial - to a First class Oxbridge degree, a high paying career and now a fulfilling career. All my life I have worked on the principle that to get by I need to work twice as hard and achieve twice as much to get what most others take for granted .

I am so grateful that my teachers were tough with me.

Arisbottle, wow.

This is quite a raw and honest thread.

Life is unfair and the fact remains that those of us who have the least have to work the hardest just to get by. Those with the most can afford to breeze through life and still get a good job .

We can pretend that life will be full of people who will make allowances but generally people don't give a shit!

Arisbottle. Judging from your background you most have had some amazing teachers who were able to see your potential and help your achieve so much. You owe a massive debt of gratitude to these fantastic people . The first teacher who saw your potential "I SALUTE" most kids from your background do not just under achieve they end up without any qualifactions or hope. Your story is fantastic and its a story you should tell your pupils especially the ones who are down on themselves. Did you know you were brighter than anyone else in your family? your parents must have thought it a joke or a wind up when you said you were applying for oxford. well done a truly amazing story.

QUALIFICATIONS.

Arisbottle. When is the book coming out? Your story is a bit like kevin lewis" THE KID"

I am by no means unusual at all, this country is full of children who come from homes where a parent has one two many drinks of an evening , the electricity or phone keeps getting cut off, where a parent is involved in petty crime and so takes a " holiday" every once in a while. It only seems unusual in a middle class enclave like MN. My life would make a very dull book indeed. I have never read "KID" but I guess it is misery lit old at supermarket checkouts which is not really my cup of tea.

I only got through because my teachers were tough with me, I am a tough teacher for that reason, but hopefully they can see that I am tough because I care. Not that I am some kind of saviour riding in on a white horse, teaching is not a vocation or my life's work , I came to it relatively late in life and it a job I chose because it fits around my family.

I am not that bright to be honest, I just work hard. I suspect they let me in because it enabled them to match a quota somewhere.

My immediate family are not that bright although that may be down to a lack of education rather than anything else. I have siblings that have left school with no real qualifications to speak of but they have held down jobs and managed to do a better job of family life than our parents did. I also have another sister who redid qualifications in later life and ended up with a professional degree.

To get a child back on the straight and narrow and have them have a chance at life the same as all their friends, you have to do whatever it takes. If a punishment does not work (ie exclusion to a PRU) then why use it? It's reductive and unpersonal. The best punishment I ever saw a member of SMT mete out was to a perfectly delightful but rather cheeky and badly-behaved 15 yo boy who was deeply embarrassed about his body shape (he was a bit chunky) and desperate to leave school to join his uncle's building firm so he could help his family out financially. He reacted very unfavourably to being told that he either brought in his PE kit and toed the line in future or risked exclusion etc etc etc. Vice principal took him to one side, talked to him as an individual for half an hour, worked out what the problem was and sentenced him to help out the janitor during his PE sessions for the rest of his time at school. Problem solved. Child overjoyed at being useful, learning stuff he wanted to learn, stayed in school, got GCSEs. Not THAT is a good punishment.

Every child ought to be dealt with in this individual way, but quite frankly, some children are harder to love than others. And you do need to care about them to be able to find the right way to tackle their problems.

Aris- EVERYONE at Oxbridge (apart from a few tossers with an over-developed sense of entitlement) feels like they got in by accident.

I agree duchesse to a certain extent that we should treat children as individuals - which is where the support is needed. The support needed to behave as expected will need to be different but the rules they follow should remain the same.

I have sent children to PRUs but lots of things have been done in advance of that decision.

Duchess- I must have been surrounded by tosses at university then as most of the people I knew were convinced that were in the right place for their intellect. Only DH and I thought we were the result of pity or a clerical error .

To be fair, there are a lot of tossers at Oxbridge.......

There are a lot of tossers everywhere- but they do seem to be concentrated in certain places.

I am sure I had my tosses moments to be honest.

Arisbottle. You may wish to downplay your achievements but the chances of someone from your social economic background going to oxford must be 1/1000 therefore it is not just hard work or everybody could get there and that is just not true. You may not wish to read "THE KID" but the story about kevin lewis is truly inspiring and from where kevin lewis started to where he is now is fantastic. The fact he did not end up on a life long journey with crime and prision was down to one english teacher who managed to see the horrific home conditions he was living in and though caring managed to turn kevin lewis in to a best selling author.

I met my husband at university , although he married someone else before me and he is from a similar background, I can't believe we were the only working class kids who made it through tough times !

You are right it is not just hard work but also a big dollop of luck.

My main point is that we got through because it was made clear that a tough family background meant that we had to give more not less. On both of my careers I rose to senior positions quite quickly because of the work ethic that was drummed into me.

He might not have been the only one but there would not have been very many. Im guessing it was the 1980s when you went and i bet oxford was jammed full of hooray henry"s and public school boys/girls who thought an estate had horses and servants. who did not believe that you did not have smoked salmon/kedgeree for breakfast. you and your husband must of been a source of some amusement and fascination.

It was around that time, we were a source if amusement hence us becoming good friends and finding refuge in one another.

Aris

Lovely story and all fine and dandy. What do you do with the students who are not that bright/violent and even MacDonalds wouldn't take them on?

I would not trust them to water a pot plant but they will have children and have no skills to support them with. They will NOT escape their background because they have no wish or desire to.

Everyone love the story of the 'inspirational' teacher who understands the kids (Robin Williams - Good Will Hunting) or Goodnight Mr Tom who 'saves' a child or any other schmaltz you can come up with. I can think of a dozen books or films on this theme.

There are some children you can 'help' until you are blue in the face and will still call you a fucker in the street ten years later when they are pushing a pram with their fourth child in it. I put my arse on the line to help them many times.

Poor nutrition/poor parenting and low intellect (yep I said it) cannot get a child a wad of GCSEs and a degree . No school can produce a silk purse out of a sows ear. Yet we are expected to.

Redruby I have said that I have brothers and sisters who I suspect you would write off as a sows ear. Not particularly bright, infact struggling with basic skills , unpleasant and violent at times. Most of us were excluded, some of us repeatedly .

I certainly am not setting myself up as the kind of inspirational teacher you see on films . I became a teacher to work less! It is a job to me, albeit one I enjoy , not a great life calling . I am a solid dependable teacher, no fireworks or anything outstanding, but I get good results.

I think with some children you need firm discipline and a focus on the core skills. I work with children aged 14 who dedicate time every day to managing their behaviour so they don't beat people up and learning to tell the time and work out change .

My brothers and sisters had poor nutrition, bad parenting and low intellect .

Eventually school got somewhere with them , they can all read and write enough to fill in a job application form, they have some sense of work ethic, can hold a conversation and rarely get into fights or other trouble . None of us have been to prison. They are all good enough parents .

I know there were teachers who wanted to write us all off as scum not worth educating .

Some children would benefit from a quality state boarding education . I would have loved that and my parents probably would have preferred it too.

And there are quite a few state boarding schools dotted around the country- I wonder why more children in difficult circumstances aren't referred to them. It would be cheaper than almost any other form of care apart maybe from fostering by a relative.

Arisbottle. For information purposes what type of school did you go to. If the school you attended in the 80s was a bog standard 1980s high school how did the teachers stop you from joining in with the kids who were most like your background. The ones most likely to be non academic. And what made you wake up one morning and decide right i want a university education since this was alien to your background.

I went to a series of bog standard comps - three in total . Went to about four different primary schools. Because we moved around and because I was also unpleasant , fat , ugly, smelly and generally known as trouble - I didn't really have friends- maybe that saved me.

I also spent much of my life looking at those around me in utter disdain . I just knew I wanted to be different and I didn't want to be poor . I did not want particularly to be educated I just wanted to be rich and I saw a degree as a way of doing that.