Teacher threw away my DDs bracelet and I'm cross about it - should I complain?

[conniedescending]

Title says it all really, she forgot to take her bracelet off yesterday and the teacher saw it and chucked it in the bin!!She only told me on the way to school this morning and teacher wasn't there to have a word with (was in a meeting apparently)

so should I ask her today or just seethe quietly?

No. Throwing away other people's property is unacceptable even if you tell them you're going to do it.

In fact, the fact that the teacher was so calm about it is more worrying, IMO. If it were the end of term, and she'd been dealing with constant playing up from the little terrors, and she'd just snapped and lost it and thrown the bracelet away, I could understand it (I'd still expect her to say she was sorry, but wouldn't particularly think the worse of her). But it's less than a week into a new term, and she appears to have acted very coolly and deliberately in destroying something belonging to someone else.

Fair point.

Gorionne, I guess it annoys me because for so long I worked with students who saw no link between the two types of behaviour either, then wondered why their sons were constantly in trouble at school and with the police.

Children, as I'm sure you know, can have very selective memories. We once, out of desperation, videoed a class to demonstrate to them how their behaviour looked to outsiders. They complained that half the things they saw did not happen, even when the evidence was in front of their eyes. They had learnt, through their school years, that if they were not made to face the consequences of their actions then effectivly the action had not happened in the first place. Their first response to discipline of any kind was to shout "racism", "that never happened", "you're picking on me", "you didn't tell me that" or (my favourite) "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to"

They didn't learn this behaviour when they went to secondary school, they came equipped with it already.

slug, I did not read a single thread that says the girl was right to wear the bracelet, not a single one! but what everybody seem to agree on exept yourself, is that the BINNING of the said bracelet is not the right procedure to teach a child right from wrong, that is all...

"I could just have easily gone on about the example of a parent who came in all guns blazing to demand that the nunchucks we had confiscated (and given to the police as he was treatening another student with them) be returned forthwith. Or the drugs, or the bottles of cheap cider, or the mobile phones that are explicitly banned under the school rules."

Surely you can't compare weapons or something illegal with a bracelet?

You would bin a childs mobile phone?

oh dear...

Tamarto- I thought that about the phone as well. Nunchucks or drugs- to the police- yes. Alcohol- call the parents in to decide wht to do with the alochol but a mobile phone? Against school rules or not- we would never be allowed to bin them. In fact if anything happened to the phone whilst in our care then it was our responsibility so we used to send them down to the office to be kept in the school safe

I think slug is forgetting the difference between children just starting KS2 and secondary. My DS is 7 and having anything taken off him by the teacher would be mortifying. Having to tell me that I had to get it from said teacher would also upset him. That would be lesson enough. If he repeated the offence then more serious discipline would be required. Still not binning though.

DS's school works on positive praise and discipline. Works well.

And I am so not a namby-pamby woolly liberal!

The discipline/punishment would obv increase with either a repeat of the offence of if a child were older.

two wooden sticks with a chain in the middle, it is a martial art weapon.

I thought it was a wii nunchuck

Thanks for that.

nunchuck (Norris)ah ah ah)

Gosh, you lot are all over reacting here. I didn't say the teacher was right to bin the braclet, though we don't know if that was threatened earlier or if the teacher had repeated the instruction several times already that day.

Nor did I suggest you bin anything except plagarised work. Since, obviously, as the work is not the student's own they cannot pbject to it being thrown out.

What I was pointing out is there is a link between parents failing to back up the school in matters of discipline and poor behaviour in schools. Positive praise is a very effective technique. But if we don't teach our children to face the consequences of their actions, be they 2, 7 or 17 then when exactly do you think it is a good time to teach people that actions have consequences? When they are 21? When they break the speed limit? When they are in the dock for stabbing someone?

Disclaimer: the following statement is tongue in cheek.

Might just order myself one.

Complaining about a teacher who has in essence broken the law is teaching children actions have consequences.

Bin something that doesn't belong to you and you are in the wrong.

wow - thanks for the input here. I was ready to go to the office today to speak with the head about what happened to DD.....but the TA handed me the bracelet this morning and said the teacher had 'found it'.

I am very pleased to have it back but still somewhat bemused by the incident.

To clarify, I wasn't annoyed the teacher had taken the bracelet away (I would have asked her to take it off had I seen it) but that she threw it away when it had been a gift. And one of very very few gifts!!!!

Think I'll chalk it up to experience and have a bitch about it with my friend (also with child in same class)

so glad you have it back.

If she indeed meant to put it in the bin (and not to just to scare dd into not doing it again) then it sounds like she had a change of heart about her practise.

Good result all round - and bet dd doesn't wear it to school again

Hmm, I suspect if it was 'found' several days after the incident then it was probably never thrown in the bin in the first place. Or if it was it was retrieved as soon as the point was made, ready for return at a later date.

Connie - glad you've got it back

slug - so you think it's OK to mess with children's heads...Lie to them that their punishment is/will be worse than it really is?

connie

Why did the teacher not give it back herself instead of sending the TA? Guilty conscience?

Jeezze! Get a grip. The teacher wasn't "messing with the child's head" She was trying to enforce the school rules with thirty odd seven year olds, many of whom's parents were probably trying to talk to her after class. The braclet was not recklessly thrown away, the police did not need to be called, the child learnt a lesson.

ManamAnt, I sincerely hope your child does have a teacher who keeps order in the class and makes their students face up to the consequences of their actions. Believe it or not, students actually like being in classes where there is consistent application of discipline and the school rules. I run into my ex students regularly (I work in a university now) They routinely thank me for making them work and taking no crap from them or their classmates.

Copied and pasted fron connie yesterday

"thanks for the advice

turns out the teacher did throw it in the bin - apparently lots of the girls have been wearing jewellery to school and they were told in assembly about it. Told my DD in front of me that she had had a warningon mon so it was her fault and she would remember next time.

I just walked away because I felt like crying, and actually have cried about it when DH came home. I need to go and see the head about this but am sure I'll cry as soon as I try to talk it out.

My DD is 7 and she knows she is not allowed to wear jewellery and is normally very good about this sort of thing. I am positive it was a genuine mistake and had she noticed before the teacher she would have put it in her book bag straight away."

It looks to me that she did not only mess with the 7 year old's head but with her mum's too slug!

slug on Fri 09-Jan-09 13:06:52

"What I was pointing out is there is a link between parents failing to back up the school in matters of discipline and poor behaviour in schools. Positive praise is a very effective technique. But if we don't teach our children to face the consequences of their actions, be they 2, 7 or 17 then when exactly do you think it is a good time to teach people that actions have consequences? When they are 21? When they break the speed limit? When they are in the dock for stabbing someone? "

I agree in principle but am a bit worried about how this has worked out for my dd in the past. Because she was so sure that we, as good parents, would back up the school she never told us that she had to crawl on her hands and knees to get to the toilet because the head refused to let her use the disabled toilet, or that she wasn't getting any maths lessons because the school wouldn't change the sets round to put hers on the ground floor. She suffered discrimination for several years and was made to do some very dangerous things given her condition (which they knew about) because she thought it would be wrong to question the decisions of her teachers. She got terribly agitated when I finally found out what was going on and wanted to complain.

I tried to explain the difference between backing the school up when she was being naughty and backing it up when she was not, but she told me I did not understand what the English system is like (having been brough up abroad), and that questioning a teacher's decision is naughty in itself and would make her naughty, so that she would then need to be disciplined for that.

Of course, I don't want her to get into trouble with the law, but I don't want her to think it's ok for adults in authority to break the law either. Or that noone must ever protest.

Dd is certainly not lazy or undisciplined, but I have had to work hard on disabusing her of the notion that a teacher is always right. Came naturally to me, because both my parents were teachers

Oh corry, the things you both had to go through... it is terrible when a child loses confidence in the fact that their parents can actually make things better for them when needed just because they are told it is naughty to complain. We have had that as well with Ds2 on a lesser traumatising level though.