Bad teachers or bad kids

[Reallytired]

A governant advisor estimates that there are 17000 bad teachers. I find this very hard to believe.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7088383.stm

Why are teachers given 100% the blame for classroom disruption. Surely its the kids who are responsible for their behaviour (or possibly the parents for teaching them right from wrong). Kids KNOW they are untouchable.

I think that schools should be prepared to root out disruptive kids who ruin the learning enviromnent for everyone. There needs to be more specialist good quality provision for kids with behavioural problems.

If these kids were in an appriopiate special school they would be in a class with 7 kids, a teacher and LSA. They would get the attention they needed to learn how to behave and the good kids in the mainstream school could get on with their learning.

There is no way I would be a teacher.

It's complicated...

Obviously, you do get bad teachers, as you get bad performers in all professions. A lot of what happens in a classroom is within the teacher's control, and a lesson can go south if the teacher has failed to plan well, etc.

However, there are an awful lot of badly behaved pupils, and if the school does not manage these pupils properly, then even a good teacher is going to struggle. Once things start going wrong, they can spiral out of control and a once good teacher can lose heart and become a bad one.

Everyone involved shares responsibility for bad lessons - the parents, the pupils, the school management, and the teacher. You can't put all the blame on one group.

I think the blame should be equally divided here. Of course there are bad teachers just like there are bad students. I do think that a teacher is responsible for making her class behave though.

'Bad' National Curriculum - it has taken away the control of the classroom from the teachers. There is no time for questions or the use of imagination. The teachers I know are disheartened and saddened.

'Bad' management of funding. The fact that it is a battle for parents and schools to get the funding they need to support children with extra requirements.

Lack of emphasis on how to educate children with special educational needs when teacher training is taking place.

My sister has just completed her PGCE to become a secondary school teacher. She got half a day's training on 'Special Needs', which covered everything from dyslexia to emotional behavioural disorders.

17,000 out of a profession of 500,000 (says the article linked to).
Er, that's about 3.4%, right? How many doctors, HVs, lawyers etc. are terrible at their job? Might be a similar %.... I expect there's a much higher % of terrible builders, office managers, etc.

Of course there are some crap teachers out there but there are also some crap parents who dont take any responsibility for what their kids do once they leave the house.

I don't think that the division is equal at all.

Yes there are bad teachers. They need extra training and help, and if that doesn't work in the end they should look for other jobs.

However, there are lots more badly behaved children who will ruin the lesson of even the best of teachers. The kids know that they are untouchable, they know the schools can do next to nothing, and neither do the parents.

There are crap SMTs who do nothing to help the staff, and have a 'blame the teacher' mentaility.....they trot out horse shit like , 'You have to try to enguage the students', to which I always want to yell, 'Please go in there and show me how' many heads simply never teach, so have little or no idea of just how bad the kids are.

there are parents who flatly refuse to accept that their child is in the wrong, ever. there are also parents who refuse to accept any form of punishment of their children.

NT children need to know that there are basic rules of behavior that are expected of them. I am there to teach not to cajole and act like some farking street entertainer

Training for SEN is crap.

Support in classes is often non-exsistant. I've taught classes with 2 children on the autistic spectrum, 3 functionally illiterate at the age of 11, 1 with EAL, and had no classroom support at all.

I agree hercules, there has to be bad teachers, there is always some bad in every position, but the amount of children I have seen with absolutely no respect for their teachers, mainly because you see the parents have no respect for the teachers is disgraceful!
I have seen parents having a go at teachers because their child has been misbehaving whilst the little shits look on smirking!
Too often parents decide the teacher is picking on their child when really the teacher is frustrated the child is making it hard for them to teach a class of more willing students.
(FWIW, I am talking about year 1&2 here, not teenagers who will know how to manipulate teachers/parents better)

Or the other old favorate, 'Little Tristan only misbehaves in class because he is sooooooooooo clever and is bored, poor little lamb. The stupid teachers just don't see how clever he is'

Yeh, right.

Or someone must have provoked him...

Ah yes.

and the other one, 'But s/he didn't mean to do anything wrong'

We've had parents say that when kids have pulled knives on other children, 'But he wouldn't have used it, you are over reacting'

or you never believe my child because if you'd believed them, you wouldnt have investigated and found out they were lying.

What's even worse is when a child is clever enough to do weel, and perfectly able to behave, but the parent moans at/about the teacher rather than supporting them.
One of DD's friends is known for being a right sod, the other parents couldn't believe I ahd invited her to our party the other week, because they help out in class and see what she is like, her mother even said that the school are 'constantly on at her' when she dropped her DD off.
Yet whenever said child is at my house, she is wonderfully behaved, because her mother would support me if I was to tell her off, rather than say I was wrong. If only she could be the same at the school, her daughter could probably be one of the best students in the class

I think you are right - there are some bad teachers around, but I think there is a far bigger problem with ineffective parenting, resulting in kids who have no discipline. For some strange reason many parents seem to think that it is the job of the teachers to enforce all discipline, as they cannot be bothered to do it themselves at home.

I think teachers these days also have so many "extra" things to do outside of just teaching and keeping discipline, and not much support. I have several friends who are teachers. They all enjoy teaching, but most of them complain about all the other parts of the job which make it difficult to find the time to do what they would really like.

TBH I wouldnt mind so much if we could actually discipline the kids (not the cane, but actially effective punishments). But parents will often not let us do anything.

I once had a student tell me to 'Fuck off' when I asked him to do up his tie and his top button. As a result of this, he copped a large punishment as he was on 'final warning'.

His mother phoned up and said it wasn't his fault because it was her fault that he didn't do up his shirt, because it was too small. Which was a downright lie. He was 16 year old, why was she still preventing him from finding out that poor behaviour has consequences?

Thankfully the school backed me up.

Within some schools there is an ethos of teachers not being able to admit when they are struggling with a particular class, or with behaviour management in general. Or if they do there is no effective support.

The poor behaviour in that class then has a knock-on effect in the next classroom they go to, and a knock-on effect as to how far those students will attempt to push the teacher in every class they go in to.

Some SMT prefer to save their training budget and INSET sessions for thrilling things like AfL and mentoring; and deny there are any issues on behaviour management.

Citing as evidence the fact that they do not see many serious behaviour issues in classes when they do lesson observations.... Yeah, like the students are really going to play up with the Deputy Head sat at the back of the room!

'The poor behaviour in that class then has a knock-on effect in the next classroom they go to, and a knock-on effect as to how far those students will attempt to push the teacher in every class they go in to.'

Roisin, you are spot on!

I think that many parents would be utterly schocked to see the level of poor bahaviour that staff have to deal with on a day to day basis. And this in spite of 'All singing, all dancing' 'edutainment' that teachers have to churn out.

I know my classroom management is good, and as a cover supervisor I have many difficult classes in difficult circumstances.

But my classroom management is not perfect, I do have some poor classes, and I constantly strive to improve.

After lots of hassle I finally got approval for a mentor to informally observe me in some lessons and give some feedback, and work on specific ideas and techniques.

The first lesson she observed me in was a very difficult yr9 class, cover lesson of course, and last lesson on a Thursday afternoon.

Afterwards she told me she was just astonished at how good my classroom management was, how many different techniques I knew about and could use effectively, how good my rapport was with the students, how well they behaved for me etc. She had assumed that because I had 'asked for help' that I must be a hopeless disaster zone, with major crises every 5 minutes, and dreadful technique.

I contend that for most people it is difficult to improve solely on the basis of self-reflection; and that the key is organised/structured programmes of regular informal observing and being observed (not linked to pay or performance management or anything else) as well as training on specific techniques and strategies.

I think schools should have these in place for everyone who wants them, everyone whose line-manager says they need them and everyone with less than, say, 5 years classroom experience.

AFL!!!!!AGHHHHHHHHHH! Who thought up that little chestnut?WHAT A WASTE OF TIME.

my personal bete noir is VAKi. Every teach I know of varied their teaching style, if you didn't you'd go off your head with boredom. But telling the kids they are kinesthetic learners? Insane. I've got a mate who teaches english and had kids who resfue to wrte because they are 'Kinesthetic learners'

Isn't writing kinesthetic?

I have every sympathy with teachers. When I help out in school I'm always stunned by how many really difficult children they have in the classroom. And some have no excuses--they come from families with working parents, good housing, etc. I think some parents are unbelievably bad about instilling good discipline and following through. And at sending their children to bed on time. Some children are obviously not getting enough sleep and will tell you they were up to ten. They're six and seven!

Sometimes I just want to whisk a bottle of wine and box of chocolates out of my bag and take these teachers off for ten minutes' R & R.

smartie, oviously not kinesthetic enough for this chap. I think he probably wanted to do Macbeth as dance theater or summat

I blame league tables. Too many head teachers are reluctant to exclude students because the figures turn up on the league tables.

I work in an FE college and the biggest pain at the beginning of each year is getting the students to realise that, as they are now 16, there is no longer any legal necessity to keep them in education. The fact is most of them are at college because the schools won't have them back and it usually takes about a term and the loss of three or four of their classmates before the message sinks in sufficiently to have any effect on their behaviour. For many of them the "You can't touch me" attitude is too ingrained to make them teachable. You only have to read cowsgomoo's thread here to see where it starts.

I always find this blog hilarious but depressingly accurate about the state of education today.

Slug, I have the greatest respect and sympathy for you guys in FE collages.

It always amuses me that the most dreadfully behaved children apply to go into our sixth form, and are really surprised when we say 'No'

They seem to think that they can continue in another two years of idleness and misbehaviour. One lad did this, and had a reacod of bullying, violence, theft and smashing fire alarms. He was rather schocked to find out that we didn't want him. And with his record, neither did the FE collage.