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.

Slug that link to the blog is excellent!!!! have bookmarked it

God slug, in the 5 lies about behaviour
this one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'Lie Number 1:?If your lessons are good enough you won?t have any discipline problems.?
Who?s told me this lie: PGCE lecturers, OFSTED, LEA consultants, teachers from posh schools.
The Truth: Pupils don?t misbehave because you haven?t met their high pedagogical standards. The kind of kids that cause most disruption would consider any lesson where they can?t adjust their make-up, discuss their sex lives, and try and make one of the shyer kids cry as unsatisfactory. In fact one of the things most likely to make them kick off is seeing the rest of the class learning. The worst kids are a problem before you?ve even tried to teach them, they don?t care about the lesson, they don?t have a reason for misbehaving. They misbehave because they can.'

League tables are a problem in that schools will do the minimum to get into the acceptable band. For example, a friend's child was not allowed to do anything above Foundation level in Science because all the school was interested in was checking off the double C grade. It didn't matter that the child wanted to follow in his parents' footsteps and have a scientific career.

I think they have made some improvements to reporting, recognising A-grades, for example. At the same time they have dragged independent schools down by not recognising IGCSE Mathematics (a superior qualification to GCSE, but it means the child doesn't get 5 A-Cs including English and Mathematics). I just pray that independent schools do not stoop down to their pitiful tactics.

To be fair, MB, a poorly planned lesson is asking for trouble - the kind of lesson where the teacher is a bit scatty. In the best class, it is asking for pupils to start chatting or to do their prep from other lessons. In worse classes (not in my school, thankfully), I can just picture the paper aeroplanes and other projectiles.

But....we all have lessons that seem unplanned, or where we have no contingency plans. If the school network goes down, and that's where your powerpoints are stored, then you are in deep doo doo. A good teacher with good pupils will have no trouble finessing it, but others will struggle to turn it into a good thing.

martian, I loves ya

Me too, PD

I've saved that blog for future reading too.

But there is a difference between a good well planned lesson, and a lesson that has to transmogrify itself into a three ring circus to 'entertain' the students in order to have some chance at getting them to learn something.

and TBH I have had kids who will attempt to mess around no matter how well planned the lesson is.

the kids who will simply refuse to do any work at all, Who will simply pretend that they cannot undestand the most basic of instructions. Which is why, in those lessons the first thing that they all have to do is copy down the title , date and aims from the board. Beacsue even they annot complain that the instruction , 'Write what is on the board' is beyond them. And to stop the cries of 'I don't have a pen' I have apot of them on my desk.

Good lesson plans are vital, but there are some kids who mess about, simply because they can

I'd be interested to know some more figures here. What proportion of the entire teaching profession is that 17000 teachers? Sounds like a pretty small proportion to me, and tbh, you're going to get a small percentage of people who arent up to the job in any walk of life. In fact judging by the recent building jobs we've had done on our house, there must be a higher percentage than average of incompetent builders, or maybe I've just been unlucky! Martianbishop, spot on. The bottom line with discipline is that the hard core kids just don't give a damn because their parents don't give a damn. My real concern would be with teachers who just aren't actaully very good at exactly that- teaching. The ones whose lessons aren't inspiring, who are complacent and think that a class full of quiet children who are busy writing equates to a class of children who are learning. It doesn't!

I don't have to do too much entertaining, but I remember when I did my PGCE - I was in a group with some MFL teachers, and they really did have to do a lot of entertaining (it wasn't like that in my day ). I was glad I wasn't in their shoes.

In my current situation, we aren't prescribed to do anything particular, eg three-point lesson with starter, main and plenary (I do recognise good practice when I see it though). In some schools I have been in, the starter has been to copy down the lesson objectives from the board - useful to settle the kids down and also to give them something to do while we wait for the tardy ones to arrive - but yes, even such a simple task is difficult when a pupil arrives with no pen and no book!

I'm still finding my way with writing in a lesson. I think this mostly happens because pupils don't have their own text books, and so they need their own notes for revision. The added bonus is that you retain more of what you write yourself. My pupils have their own textbooks, and so I am able to keep copying (or copying plus fill-in-the-blanks to a minimum), and we are able to do more fun stuff - practicals, discussions, role play etc.

ITG,

It is a complex situation. There are obviously a small % of teachers who managed to get through their PGCEs even though they really weren't cut out for it. I can't imagine that this is very many at all.

Then there are the teachers who are eager to impart their knowledge to those who are keen to learn. They have the potential to be fabulaous teachers, but are ill-equipped or poorly motivated to deal with those pupils who are not keen to learn. TBH, I would put myself in this category.

Then you have the inspirational teachers who have the knack for building relationships with the most unwilling pupils. Good on these teachers - they have my full support, and I really look up to them. One of the really key things about teaching is building relationships with the pupils. I know in my subject that many feel that it is inaccessible and irrelevent to their lives - but what the teacher can do is build relationships with them and really enhance their lives through these bonds.

This category of teacher does not thrive on exam results or statistics, but they are secure in the knowledge that they are a positive influence on the life of that young person.

scienceteacher - a really interesting post. Yes, I agree with you about the inspirational teachers. I suppose the question is, who are the teachers who are really going to have an impact on our kids' lives? Of course exam results are important. But I know from my own schooldays that the teachers I remember were the ones who seemed to come alive in the classroom. In fact, my decision to enter the teaching profession was probably down to one of my A level teachers.

To be honest, I'm in the fortunate situation where I don't have to do that much 'edutainment' either, as most of my timetable is sixthform.

But I do teach 10:7 (of 8). And it is a salutary reminder of what is out there.

The teachers that I would remove are the ones who simply don't like kids. Any kids. Beacsue that is a dynamic that is never going to work.

But I would also seek to remove those children who choose to refuse to learn and activly prevent the learning of others. Such children need small group classes with EBD trained teachers.

Becasue the educations that they are wrecking are often those of the kids who struggle most and are most in need of qualification.

ITG, I was blessed with two exceptional teacher. Miss Poole for biology and Miss Williams for english.

Like you, my life was changed for the better by having such fantastic teachers. I activly model myself on both of them. Without them, I dread to think where I would have ended up. both of them had an endless facination with their subjects, and they infected all the classes that they taught.

Both left school early due to poor behaviour and lack of support from SMT

ST, re practicals , role play etc

the sad thing is that I have classes where I cannot use role play and the kids will just muck about. What is really sad is that these are children who would stand to gain most from such exercises. But because they will not behave, I have to teach the lesson in more dull, but more controlable ways.

Their behavior dictates how I can teach a subject, to their loss.

Ha....bad teachers eh?

I started teaching 12 years ago, kids were much much better behaved than now. I am more experienced, so have better control, but kids are worse, much much worse, so it can't be me!

I am sick of teaching big classes when each class has 2 or so with behaviour disorders, 1 with adhd, and 10 or 11 on SEN register witn no support EVER.

Plus parents are increasingly backing their badly behaved kids up.

i have seen bad teaching and i have seen badly behaved kids.
the problem with most of the kids i think comes from lack of repect and manners and for a lot of these kids (not all) their parent/parents show the same lack of respect and manners, they do not back the school and thus teach their kids to be disrespectful. of course that is just my take on what i have seen as a parent/helper/Gov. i was once told that my kids were too good for there own good and the kids that misbehaved were the ones that got the extra support, my three have autism but are very well behaved they just need extra support that ended up being given to other kids, that had no identified SN.

I hear ya, MB

Wonder if there is such a thing as a bad teacher if you are only teaching about 12 kids......]hmm]

i did a lesson obs is a SN school 10 kids 1 teacher and 2 TAs, the teacher had no class control (teacher has moved back to MS now )
the 2 TAs were very skilled and kept things ok. all the other lesson obs i have done have been excellent

I expect it is the same as with supernanny, it is the parents who are really behind behaviour

Am I bad teacher if I dread a particularly charming bunch of y8's?

They are so naughty that I think sometimes it must be me

OJ, sadly your experience is very common.
I teach primary and always feel so angry on behalf of those kids who need extra support but don't get it because they are well behaved. They get to Y2 and you think, ok, despite being given extra support within the classroom, this child is still not accessing the curriculum and needs to be assessed.

But you're lucky if you get 3 appointments with the ed.phyc each year and those chldren get bumped further and further down the list because the 9yr old who screams at his teacher to f off and throws chairs at people takes priority.

Then the E.P needs to see the 11 yr old who cannot control either his aggression or his emotions and gets so worked up at the slightest thing that he bursts into tears, screams and shouts, trashes the place then does a runner.

Then the last visit of the year will be seeing the 5yr old who has started reception only 6mths earlier but has already asked to see his teacher's c*nt and regularly uses explicit sexual language. We (wrongly) jumped to the conclusion he was being abused. Turned out that his mother was in fact working "nights" IYKWIM. He had been listening in.

This is how each year goes, pretty much. There is so, so much social crap to get through before we can even begin to teach some of the kids I come across.

These children quite literally live in a different world from me and my kids.

The bright kids do ok, you struggle to contain the difficult ones and the poor kids who need the support but don't misbehave to get it, just make do. Nobody wins and very few reach their potential. It breaks my heart and often makes me want to throw in the towel.

Ironically, I am a far batter teacher since working in such an environment than I ever was when working in a far more affluent area. I work longer hours (lunch breaks etc) and my lessons are better.

There are, without a doubt, bad teachers out there. Many more are 'not good' teachers either because they no longer enjoy it or they are unable to impart their subject knowledge to good effect.

Likewise, 'bad kids' is too general. Some kids are just lazy, PITA little sods but many, many more have never had a chance.

Sorry for long,rambly post. I started early tonight!

CC, my sil is in Primary, and she tells me the same sorts of stories. it is so sad.

atm we have an 18 month wait for anger managment for out kids in secondary