Quirky Teacher: 'How I wish more parents would read my blog'

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This teache is always worth reading but this one is particularly relevant for parents - it's a good read, too! It will be interesting to hear Mumsnetters' response.

It comes across as someone trying to be controversial for the sake of it

Very belated reply to mrz as I've been out all day - yes, of course I'd like to return to having respect. It was the 'fear' bit that I didn't really want to return to. I can see that wasn't clear from the way I worded it.

I have no idea how we return to a system where teachers are respected simply by virtue of the fact that they are teachers. It is so depressing that in schools with difficult classes (i. e. most state secondaries) you either have to be inherently scary or spend a huge and tedious amount of time and energy endlessly progressing through complex layers of sanctions in order to maintain order. I don't consider myself a pushover and I have nearly 20 years of teaching experience, but it seems to get harder, not easier.

Oh and before anyone tells me I should get out of the classroom... I already have. Private tutoring and adult education for me from now on.

I'm not very knowledgeable about primary, but don't actually recognise in my dc's primary school any of the complaints from the list in the blog. It is a tiny, rural primary school, and is utterly wonderful.

I don't think it's about respecting teachers but respecting everyone unless they show they don't deserve respect rather than the idea of needing to earn it first.

Unfortunately, I don't think there ever was a time when society upheld the principle that everyone deserves respect unless they prove otherwise. However, authority figures used to command more automatic respect than they do, nowadays.

There was more trust in authority figures in the past, too - trust and respect tend to go together.

And when there isn't trust, there can be deference, but that is pretty alien to modern society.

Some headteachers in difficult schools are trying out less complex discipline systems (i.e. not all the numerous escalations of sanctions, often not enforced). This is one: mrlock.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/no-excuses/

I like the idea of a simpler sanctions system, but all he mentions is detentions. The really difficult kids often just don't bother to turn up to detentions. If they aren't bothered by the threat of informing their parents and they have no intention of turning up for detention, what can you do?

Yes, Springtimemama - there are enough novels and autobiographies about school experiences for people to know that a fair share of teachers were feared rather than respected in the past! People were trained to be deferential to their "superiors" from an early age (regardless of the actual cruelty or idiocy of those expecting deference). Quirkyteacher, however, seems to think there is still too much trust and deference, not an insufficiency... apparently, we should all be questioning teaching practices more and doubting "platitudes." Obviously, however, Quirkyteacher is deserving of respect, unlike the other morons.

Or, more confusingly, we should trust the teachers but not their methods.

I respected my teachers without a threat of the cane or fear of being humiliated. It was enough to know my parents would be disappointed if I wasn't well behaved and polite to any adult.

If they aren't bothered by their parents being informed it suggest they don't respect their parents either.

Children need both to respect their parents and to see their parents respecting their teachers in order to learn that they should respect their teachers...

I agree rabbit

Holmes, an isolation room within school is another possibility, which avoids the problem of not turning up for detention, but it has to be real isolation, meaning working in silence, and seriously enforced.

I think that ultimately, the sanction has to be the threat of moving to another school away from their friends, or if that doesn't work, then just exclusion full stop. For one thing, parents are much more likely to be 'bothered' if exclusion is a realistic sanction than if it isn't. You will still have children who need to be excluded, and provision ought to be made for them; but on the other hand, if all schools took this kind of firm approach to discipline from the beginning, children would be less likely to get to the stage where poor behaviour has become a habit, along with their belief that they have a "right" to engage in it, meaning that they ultimately have to be excluded. (Of course, this needs to be mixed with genuine pastoral efforts as well, ideally including nurture units where necessary.)

It would also help if all primary schools really took seriously the fact that it is possible to teach nearly every child to read early on by using a good phonics programme, since poor behaviour is strongly associated with poor reading ability.

I'm not sure about exclusion, I'm inclined to see it as a last resort for repeated extreme behaviour - some kids actually seem to see it as a positive outcome.
Isolation rooms can only work if there are enough members if staff to effectively police and some kids will just walk out with staff virtually powerless to prevent them.

I disagree with most of that post. I had a very traditional education, and I did pretty well with it ( although I remember my 6 months in an inner city London "progressive" school as the happiest time in my primary school years, where I was most free to) but I am constantly impressed by the education my children are getting.

The teachers are incredibly talented and professional, my children are learning far more than I did at their age, the atmosphere in school in kind, focused, supportive and , and inclusive and everyone is keen to learn.

Things seem to have improved so much since my schooldays.

Exclusion can be utterly brilliant IF it is to a place of specialist support, rather than to nothing

when its used to just push kids under the carpet it is a long term waste of time

the scariest teacher I ever had at school rarely raised her voice above a whisper
and never physically threatened anybody (even though it was utterly legal then)
we just knew that crossing her was a "bad thing"

I think exclusion rooms are good for extreme behaviour. The worst problems I've had have not been in classes with one or two extreme kids though. They've been classes with 8 or 10 uncooperative kids who are not interested in learning anything and can be quite confrontational if challenged on their behaviour. You can't exclude all pupils who behave like that, obviously, but nothing much else seems to work with them. I know there is always a handful of scary teachers or teachers with super classroom management skills who deal with these classes more effectively than the rest of us mere mortals, but not everyone is like that. I just cba any more. It's too much of an uphill struggle, combined with the endless admin and judgement from all sides.

I'm another parent who won't be reading that blog again. I found it quite incoherent, what was the takeaway message? That one philosopher was a bit odd? Most philosophers are a bit odd! The idea that children learn through their curiosity isn't really very strange surely? Any parent can see that in action after all.

It sounds as the the blogger has only been a teacher for a very few years (from the comment about enrolling in teacher training 'a few years ago')

That list of issues would I suspect be similar 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Certainly my parents had very similar issues around my brother's time at primary as I did with my son (both dyslexic). Given the comment about dyslexia later on that blog I suspect that 'Quirky teacher' also knows very little about dyslexia. I'm not full of respect!

I think they are 'golden ageing' with their view that a return to traditional teaching is best , without as far as I can see any definition as to what that even means. Their manifesto sounds totally grim. My children are high achieving academically, but they are also (probably because) questioners and challengers. I would hate them to be in a stifling school that was more concerned about them being quiet and conformist, and at four I certainly wouldn't have wanted them to be treated as 'the adults they will become'. That doesn't mean as the blogger implies that I don't want them to 'do well in life'. Such narrow thinking!

Oh and my children's UK primary (we emigrated) was great on behaviour management (they had a special unit attached and so much better resources). When ds really played up they used the quiet room very effectively as a way to calm him down and then reintegrate him. However if they had managed to teach him as well as to manage him it would have been better! We really liked his 'old school' reception teacher, but her traditional teaching of reading really screwed him up.

I think you've just identified the problem with many isolation /quiet rooms nooka ... while they are there children aren't learning. It could also be argued that while they are misbehaving in the class no one is learning.
I'm not sure there is a single answer

Homes when you say the worst have "been classes with 8 or 10 uncooperative kids who are not interested in learning anything and can be quite confrontational if challenged on their behaviour.", I think that is exactly what the school in the blog I posted by Stuart Lock is effectively dealing with. Also, when you say "You can't exclude all pupils who behave like that, obviously, but nothing much else seems to work with them", I don't know but I suspect that when that behaviour becomes unacceptable in the school, so that is genuinely not tolerated ANYWHERE, in ANY class, then things other than exclusion might actually start to work. Although, that said, there would have to be some exclusion as well. But better than than spoiling the learning of everyone else, blaming teachers for not dealing with them, and wearing good teachers out.

I sometimes think we need two parallel school systems. One for the children of those who think a quiet, ordered environment where children are expected to work hard during part of the relatively small amount of time they spend in school is "stifling" and "conformist" and thus unacceptable, and one for those who think that it actually might be a good idea, at least once children are out of infants.