Why do some teachers have to be SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO defensive?

[hobbgoblin]

My son is always in the naughty books. He is lovely, and always commended for adorable polite behaviour with friends on play dates and so on - all my mummy friends love having him over. However, he is naughty in an attention seeking way or when he feels lacking in confidence.

I liaise with the school regularly and we all know it stems from self esteem issues.

This term he has been excellent to date and was very good for me in the 6 week hols.

All good.

However, last week he had to be reprimanded for catching the Head's foot with his chair as he was being silly. Today he had to stay after school to clear up yogurt from the carpet. Apparently he made a mess with it but it was actually another boy who was to blame really and my DS caught the tail end of some shennanigans. The other boy went home, my DS had to clear up.

So, I decided to ask his teacher what had brought about the sudden downturn in behaviour as was disappointed but also to find out why it was only my DS doing the cleaning punishemnt.

Teacher explained that other boy escaped before she could get him to clean up and that she would be telling him off in the morning. I said fine but surely that this means my DS has been the one getting the punishemnt whilst watching the other child 'get off' with the bad behaviour. I said we all know that some of the behvaiour is due to low expectation of self and also DS's view of what others think of him, i.e. 'always the naughty child'. I said they perhaps ought to have been punished together instead of making DS clean up just because he went and confessed to the teacher whilst the other scarpered(she told me he confessed and soon after realised that it was not actually DS's fault at all).

Anyway despite acknowledging all this about DS being branded naughty and avoiding any dodgy ground re. self esteem and expectation she concludes with "it was my decision and it is up to me how I deal with it and I'm not leaving yogurt on the carpet for the caretaker".

I wanted to ask why she didn't flippin' clean it up then rather than making DS do it because that was easier. I didn't, but it makes me so mad that I go in and raise reasonable questions about what happened in a reasonable manner to be met with the response I was.

What do you lot think?

[mathanxiety]

Private (Catholic) school in an urban area (prefer not to ID the area for MN privacy reasons. I would stick out like a sore thumb ). I have a large and very spread out, age-wise, family and some of them have experienced the US ed system(s), both private and public/state.

[scaryteacher]

You spoke of an elementary school for one of your dds. Are you in UK? I ask, because many of the schools in the UK don't have an administrator as such. There'll be the Head's PA; the resources manager; the exams officer who may also coordinate reports; the ladies who do the photocopying for you; the finance officer, and sometimes someone who line managers all of these, but at my last school, she was off so often that I've forgotten her title. Sometimes there won't be an overall line manager either, but little offices doping their own thing.

[mathanxiety]

Well, I'm not in marketing; so much of that concept/ branding stuff is rather silly, imo, unless you're trying to sell soup. But as far as managerial and communication style goes, many school administrators could use a bit of training, maybe some new ideas.

[scaryteacher]

You have to careful how those ideas are adapted though. The school ds currently attends, a large international school, has recently appoinbted an external marketing manager and we now have to have everything we produce in the 'house' style, even down to forms for internal clubs. It does seem a little anal at times. It sometimes seems that it is a business not a school, and that the primary purpose (learning) is lost in the corporate communication.

[mathanxiety]

I agree with scary's point regarding teachers who have never left school. The two best teachers my oldest DD had at secondary level were originally in law and aviation. One DD currently in elementary has a teacher who spent 18 years in marketing. She is a great communicator, with both parents and children.

I think the point also applies to school administrators. If you've never experienced another environment you might find it hard to accept ideas from, say, the world of marketing management, that might be adapted to a school situation.

[scaryteacher]

I empathise with the marking! I persuaded my HoD to have ipsative marking for classwork, so we only marked h/w, and summative assessments.

Not only was I one of the RE team and taught KS3,4 and 5 RE, I also taught KS3 Geog and Hist; PSHCE for year 7 and the upper years when it was finance; and Ci for years 8 and 9 which were subject specific for Hist Geog and RE. I also wrote the RE SoW/PoS for Ci for year 8 and 9.

I taught full course after school on two nights a week as SMT wouldn't put it on the timetable, and we got a helluva turnout, and a 100% pass rate. I helped with a G&T club one night after school, and from Oct half term onwards ran a revision session for year 11 until the exams. Coffee, hot chocolate and biccies provided, and one to one tuition for some. I got off early (no after schools) on Wednesdays as my ds's prep finished at 1600 and it took me 30 minutes to get there depending on tractors.

I am now a SAHM, and wonder how I ever coped with teaching!

[scaryteacher]

Given where we lived in Cornwall, it was necessary to go private. I wasn't happy about the leadership at the village school, nor about the bullying that forced my neighbour to withdraw her kids and that hadn't been addressed.

[Morosky]

Thanks, I am trying not to be on here as much. BUt have given up trying to work tonight as I am full of cold and my nose was dripping on my marking

[sassy]

Yes, I thought so. Glad you are still around

[Morosky]

Sassy have been here a long time so have been other people.

I agree scary, I have done other things apart from teaching and have found it to be incredibly useful.

I have just left teaching in a labour heartland and can say it was no better up there, we were laying off staff and shutting schools down. I am now in in a tory heartland with the odd liberal democrat and schools seem to be much better off.

Scary I also teach RE so totally get how draining the workload is when you teach the whole school.

It is not the case though that you always have to go private to get the things that you want, except possibly wrap around childcare.

[sassy]

Scaryteacher talks a lot of sense here though it makes me sad to admit it in many ways. Teaching's the best job in the world when it is going well, but when it is bad it is truly sapping and joyless. (remembering todays Y9 emoticon)

Morosky - did you used to be someone else? (Don't answer if you are being incognito)

[scaryteacher]

There are two things now that decide how I vote. One is Defence (why I am abroad), and the other is education.

What I don't understand and cannot forgive Nulab for is the inequity of spending across England. Devon has one of the lowest spends per pupil in England and has just made 100 teachers redundant. Cornwall is about on a par with that. I have a suspicion it is because the SW is not a Labour heartland, so urban areas like Manchester get more money than we do.

This is why ds went to private school when we were in the UK, and I taught to pay the fees. I knew I was getting small classes, no SATS, a breadth of education that is sadly lacking in the state system and lots of games every afternoon on proper playing fields, rather than 2 hours a week on the playground. I also got child care from 0750-1900 every day as I dropped him off for breakfast and picked him up after prep.

If you want teachers to be effective, they have to be properly trained. Lip service was paid on PGCE to teaching SEN students, and to teaching KS5. If your school doesn't teach A level, then you are not going to learn how to do it well or at all, and in my last year of teaching, I was teaching A level for the first time. That meant 3 hours of prep to every hour of teaching, to make sure I was getting it right. Going on a course was difficult, as the funding wasn't there within the dept for it, and being RE, we didn't have a huge budget anyway. We thought this sucked as we taught every student in the school between three of us, except those that were withdrawn.

I also think, and I may get flamed here, that it is a bad idea to have teachers who have never been out of education. That is, school, A levels, degree (QTS or then do PGCE straight away) and then teach. I think that teachers (or prospective teachers) need to have a career before they come into teaching, so they can bring other talents to the job. Having done years in Community Charge and Council Tax, I am extremely good in soothing savage/angry customers; works on parents as well! I had several colleagues who had never really left school, or so it seemed to me. There was little understanding in some cases that there was a whole world out there and things to be achieved other than school and exams. Maybe I feel that because watching younger colleagues, it was like watching kids teaching kids, but then, I didn't start teaching until I was 35.

[pointydoug]

math is full of marketing management speak

[Morosky]

"It is truly a waste of human capital"

What an awful phrase, it reminds me of a time when a headteacher said we could save money in our budget because of natural wastage - a few weeks after a teacher had collapsed and died from a stress related heart attack.

[mathanxiety]

X 5 -- I am not Ed Balls ROFL.

I agree that there is an element of the sausage factory about many schools; nobody wants to know about what goes on there or how the process really works or how frustrating it is for all concerned as long as the dratted exams produce the right 'sausages'.

I wondered about the past tense, too; it's sad that an experienced teacher could 'lose her sparkle', and that all that enthusiasm and education and training come face to face with unrealistic political expectations and ever-moving goalposts. It is truly a waste of human capital. When I look at my old school's website I see some teachers still there 25 years later whom I would have classified as just ok; the teachers I recall as being really good have gone on to other careers for the most part. I don't know anything about the calibre of the newer ones.

'I think that we have to decide what we want schools and teachers to achieve.' This is really fundamental, like figuring out your business plan almost. After the decision, then the nuts and bolts and budgets can be figured out. While fundamental questions go unasked and unanswered, there is waste of every kind. Does the public want good schools for their children? How much are they willing to pay for quality?

[Morosky]

I am so sorry scaryteacher that you felt you lost your sparkle. Maybe one day you will go back. I had a mini melt down last year mainly caused by working 18 hours a day six days a week and doing so in a very difficult school. I still get up at 5 knowing there is planning/ marking to do and hate that gut feeling that you should always be working.

I Secured a post at a new school and have my sparkle back, but I did wonder if it would.

[fivecandles]

scaryteacher you have all my sympathies. I couldn't stand working in a secondary school mainly because I didn't feel it was actually possible to do a properly good job there. At least for me. In the sort of circumstances that you describe. I'm now teaching at 6th form level where generally I feel like I am doing a good job and that it absolutely is possible.

However, just because information passing is hard or even impossible and just because it's not always possible to act properly on the information you're given about students' personal problems and issues etc doesn't mean that that information and passing it on is not valuable.

As maths suggests, many problems can be avoided or more easily resolved with proper information and understanding.

A lot of the things that make teaching difficult or even unbearable like pupils' bad behaviour could be prevented with proper information.

[scaryteacher]

Did you have a nice day?

I wasn't being sarky actually, I was curious about how you came by your knowledge of schools, as many parents don't analyse it to the depth you obviously have, or give it the thought you have. I wondered therefore if you taught as well, or were SMT somewhere. I even thought you might be OFSTED or Ed Balls!

The problem with everything in a school, and especially a large comp, which is where I taught, is lack of time and money. In an average fortnight of 50 periods I taught 46-48, depending on being taken for cover. I also taught after school four nights a week.

I was in my classroom every break and lunch (apart from when I was duty) with an open door policy so that if my tutor group, and some of my year 11s and 12s needed a safe haven or an ear, or just somewhere to hang out and grab some peace, then they could do that. This also helped me to pick up on any rumours/hassles in the tutor group. Most students went home on the bus at about 1530, so if you needed to grab a student you had to be quick, and you could not prevent them getting on the bus (rural area, lack of public transport). So, time was a big issue.

Also, maybe other teachers didn't realise something had kicked off. The student may have been perfectly docile (for want of a better word) in class, but simmering underneath and there may have been an incident at lunch that tipped them over. Normal sanction if a student wouldn't settle and was continually disruptive would be internal exclusion for a couple of periods, with work, so they calmed down a little.

On the frequent days that I taught 5 in a row, it wasn't always possible to alert a colleague that a student wasn't happy. You needed to have access to all the timetables of all the teachers and all the students and in a school with a roll of 1400, that's hard. Yes, you could phone the office to find out, but they didn't always answer, and by then the bell had gone again. Yes, one could email as well, but there was no guarantee that the colleague would pick it up before they taught that student.

There are strategies in place for assessment - AfL for one, which is the big push now, and that is helping.

I think that we have to decide what we want schools and teachers to achieve. My mil who is a governor at two large urban comps, thinks every student should have an individual IEP, and that every teacher should plan every lesson for each individual student. The time issue again with this one; a teacher needs time off from the classroom; you can't spend all your life teaching, and thinking about it.

You would like from what I'm reading to apply business methodology to schools; you have to get the whole school on board for that, staff and students, and how do you judge the effectiveness you talk about? I often felt that all the work I did with KS3 wasn't valued, even though it would eventually feed into KS4, as what I was judged on were my residuals post GCSE; that is, the difference between predicted and actual grades. God help you if you had a minus residual (grades worse than predictions), and even if that was due to the students not bothering to turn up for the exams, or not finishing the paper, you were still judged by that, and not by what else you did during the year.

I don't think that teachers are complacent - I mark GCSEs to keep up to date with what the examiners are looking for, and this enabled me to teach more effectively and I don't think there is a static view either - for those students who had a crap home life, education offers a way out, as I kept telling them, but at times, the kids don't want to listen.

I think more teachers and smaller class sizes would help more than anything else.

I laughed inwardly at your 'it takes creativity, ingenuity, willingness to listen as well as dish it out, and perseverance.' Agreed, but so many teachers are soo tired that the creativity and ingenuity have gone, and the perseverance (to get to the end of term or the end of the day sometimes) is what is left.

As you will have gathered from my use of the past tense I don't teach any more. I taught for 5 years from aged 35 and loved it. I left to move abroad with dh for a while. However, it took me 18 months before I stopped waking up at 0500 thinking I'd forgotten to plan, or to do some marking, and 2 years to destress. One of my students (year 11) told me it was the right time to leave as 'you've lost your sparkle Miss'.

I don't know if I will ever teach again full time. I miss the kids, they made me double over laughing sometimes; I miss teaching my subject (but am doing an MA to compensate). What I don't miss is the constant sense of running fast to stand still; groaning as yet another government initiative hit the desk to be incorporated into the planning; leaving school at 1830, knowing I probably had another 2.5 hours of work to do when I got home if I was to mark and comment accurately (don't like tick and flick) and being tired all the time. Teaching is an enormously fulfilling job, but it takes a toll if you do it properly; and you have to be careful not to let it take over your entire existence. Given that teachers are being made redundant now because of the credit crunch by some LEAs and that will mean an increase in class sizes, I'm not sure I'd want to go at the moment anyway.

[fivecandles]

I also think the high profile cases of child abuse recently are a lesson in why it is important to pass on information and why it is never acceptable to abdicate responsibility for the whole child.

[fivecandles]

Agree with your points math.

I'd also like to reiterate my point that at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what a teacher thinks about his or her students personally what matters is how she or he treats them and how effectively they teach them.

Teaching is so much about playing roles.

[fivecandles]

I actually don't think we're disagreeing that much.

Scaryteacher, the incident that you describe (the kid kicking off in period 5) is precisely the sort where informartion would be valuable and might help prevent disruption for the WHOLE class.

In fact I think you can't really have too much informatioon about the students in your care.

But I do agree that there are all too many occasions wehre despite all the information you may not have the resources, time, patince, expertise etc to be able to deal with a student or her problems as effectively as you might like to or as, in an ideal world, you should be able to.

I do not agree that there are many circumstances where you get too much information about a student. If there are problems with the way that information is used then that is to do with systems or staff or whatever but not a fault with the passing on of information.

[mathanxiety]

A school is an organisation, just like any other organisation or institution. And each one has a culture which greatly impacts its effectiveness. Each community has a culture which greatly impacts the way the school should approach it. And just as I'm sure you found a way to manage the lesson with the 35 children, there are ways to effectively approach the community. It takes creativity, ingenuity, willingness to listen as well as dish it out, and perseverance.

'You may be the fifth teacher the student has had to deal with that day and you may not know that something had kicked off.' Well, I think it is possible and even necessary for teachers to track a student throughout the day, to flag a child at the first sign that something is amiss. There is no way a teacher in the last period should have to get it both barrels from any student. When there is a breakdown in communication of that nature the other teachers have let their colleague down, and have also done a disservice to the other students that last period teacher must work with. There are tools from other professional areas that can be used to improve or develop communication protocols, assess progress and enhance effectiveness, whether in community relations or in the management of an individual child or classroom; just because a school may cater to children who have nowhere else to take their business doesn't mean there should be complacency or pessimism about its approach or a static view of what may be expected from the parents or the children in terms of performance or attitude.

I disagree, obviously, with your contention that the only professionals who can possibly discuss schools and how they operate are those in the trenches, so to speak. There is actually much valuable insight to be gained by schools from 'outside' observers and specialists and disciplines, all of whom would like to see our taxes used more effectively and schools perform better, we want the best both for our own children and others' children; we are, truly, all on the same side. '..you seem terribly well versed in how you think a school and teachers should operate' is a little sarcastic and dismissive, imo, and perhaps indicative of the attitude the OP encountered from her DS's teacher, and which hearkens back to the original title of the thread.

[scaryteacher]

I don't know many teachers who live where they teach, just because you would never get away from it, and because I like my privacy. I already had my house for years before I went into teaching, and I had no desire to move at all. It was equidistant between my dh's work, my school and ds's school. Why move?

Respect is defined as below:

1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.
2. To avoid violation of or interference with: respect the speed limit.
3. To relate or refer to; concern.
4. A feeling of appreciative, often deferential regard; esteem.
5. The state of being regarded with honor or esteem.
6. Willingness to show consideration or appreciation.
7. respects Polite expressions of consideration or deference: pay one's respects.
8. A particular aspect, feature, or detail:

I would argue that the second No.3 definition defines how I treated the students; and I am old enough to know the difference between respect and admiration. I respected the kids who would come to class and try their best when they'd been up all night lambing; I respected the SEN students who would try again and again to get their heads around a concept in Geography; I respected the lass who was in a wheelchair and who always had a smile despite being in huge pain at times.

As to 'seeking information and input in a determined way from a student's home can give a school a better idea of what approach to take with a student who might otherwise end up on a slippery slope, maybe taking others with him.' You can seek info as much as you please, but the parents aren't obliged to tell us anything if they choose not to, and there are ways and ways of seeking the information. I was a class teacher for that particular child, and I flagged up my concerns with the pastoral care team (tutor and HoY) that dealt with that year group.

Fivecandles - of course we knew who was epileptic, who was diabetic (supply of glucose tabs in my drawer), and all the other physical difficulties. If a student came into my classroom at break and said they had a problem, of course I listened to them and then went with them to / or found out who could help them next. However, and it is all very well MA saying teachers should be social workers as well, we are NOT trained to do that. My school had a very effective and empathetic child protection teacher who had been doing the job for years and who had all the answers at her fingertips and to whom we passed on concerns where relevant.

'Yes, class time is time for all the students to learn, and the problems that cause disruptive behaviour cannot be dealt with during class time -- that's where discipline comes in. But there's wiggle room before something comes to a head.' Not always there ain't, especially if it's been brewing all day and something happens on the way to period 5 or at lunch. Whoever gets them last gets it both barrels at times. You may be the fifth teacher the student has had to deal with that day and you may not know that something had kicked off.

You tell me what your background is in MA, but you seem terribly well versed in how you think a school and teachers should operate . Do you teach? If you do, you will know that the realities don't live up to the theory; if you don't, then you need to experience it to have some idea of what you are talking about and how difficult it is on a practical level to pull off.

Fivecandles - totally agree about more support/more resources /smaller class sizes. I once had a GCSE class of 35 (lots were rugby players) and not enough chairs. That was a fun lesson!

[mathanxiety]

My background is in management and organisational communications consulting.

'I find it incredibly hard to respect someone intent on being rude to me, about me and about what I do.' That is a pity, imo, in a school setting, because without fundamental respect, even without the reward of reciprocation, it can all become rather personal. You are teaching teenagers. They love being rude, making fun of teachers and teaching. Some of them are not nice, or funny. Some you like, some you don't. Some are really, really annoying. It is vital to separate the person from the behaviour when teaching or applying discipline, or personality ends up playing too big a role in the student-teacher relationship, which really hurts class morale (and results in high rates of burnout among teachers, which is very sad.) Yes, class time is time for all the students to learn, and the problems that cause disruptive behaviour cannot be dealt with during class time -- that's where discipline comes in. But there's wiggle room before something comes to a head. A child who gets stoned at lunchtime does not do this out of the blue. Sometimes there are clues in behaviour or changes in home environment that can signal to a school that an early intervention might be needed to forestall more serious deterioration in the student's behaviour or performance. Seeking information and input in a determined way from a student's home can give a school a better idea of what approach to take with a student who might otherwise end up on a slippery slope, maybe taking others with him.

'For me respect is what I feel towards someone I look up to and admire'. I think what you're talking about here is not respect, but admiration for achievement. And how can you possibly even admire a student for their effort if you have no idea what their struggles are apart from what you know of their possible intellectual aptitude? Maybe a definition of respect-in-action in the school context should be an acknowledgment that personal likes and dislikes on the teachers' part are feelings that should be watched out for and examined constantly and set aside as much as is humanly possible? This is vital if good discipline is to be applied consistently. Respect also should mean an acknowledgment that the students are children first, students second.

'I don't see not having access to confidential information as being in a vacuum, anymore than I saw not being privy to discussions about the rate of Council Tax in full council as hindering me from doing my job when I worked in a Council Tax Office'. Surely there is no equivalence between working in a Council Tax Office and teaching in a school full of human teenagers?

'I am a person, not a resource, and yes of course we operate within a vacuum in the community. I certainly didn't live where I taught and had no desire to.' You are a part of the community if you teach the children who live there, whether you live within it or fifty miles away. You interact with the children of the community five days a week for the entire school year. A school is an integral part of any community, perhaps even the most important part, certainly the element of any community that can potentially effect the greatest positive change. And as far as being a resource, imo this is not an inappropriate way of describing a person with a pivotal role in an institution that has the capacity to greatly affect a community for better or for worse. When I use the word resource, I have in mind something akin to petroleum, something essential, not a library reference book. (Sorry if the word offends).

Just curious, why did you have no desire to live in the community in which you taught?

[fivecandles]

And I also find the advice about separating the person from the behaviour really useful and increasingly easy as I get older and more experienced. I don't need to make judgements about a particular student or decide whether or not I respect him or her but I can and should make judgements about their behaviour and work.