"Can I have a quick word, please"...

[thebeansmum]

Wondering how your DC schools handle the 'wanting a quick word'/walk of shame across playground scenario. Ours varies from some teachers being really discreet and sending DC out with a little note, to full blown teacher heading towards you, walking quickly, looking angry, talking loudly. Does it depend on the 'offence' or the teacher?

It (honestly) hasn't happen to me often and I've never noticed it happen to anyone else, so they must be discrete. It's always been the DS walks over to me as usual and tells me teacher wants me to talk to her.

Well I think it might be down to the individual teacher and how they feel on the day and how far our DC have pushed them.
I imagine that there will be some school guidelines on the appropiate way to approach a parent though...

The Teacher comes and talks to you, which is fine by me. I can't imagine my child giving me a note.

I think it varies from school to school and teacher to teacher. We have a high profile in the playground after school and walk over to chat to lots of parents. It might be to say their DC had a good maths lesson, they bumped their knee at playtime, had the parent received the christmas play dates as DC didn't think they knew? If it's done well it shouldn't be seen as "the walk of shame". It's a difficult thing; if teachers don't approach you to talk to you about something the parents are upset and sending your Dc out with a note doesn't always work. If the DC is in trouble they might not pass it on / loose it; it might get stuffed in a book bag and not seen until the weekend; the parent might feel more aggrieved as we've summoned them in writing when a quick word would be better (comment made to another teacher who wrote "please could you pop in to talk to me when you collect little Jane")

I send children to fetch their parent for me as they are often spread over the playground and I have to supervise remaining children (they also know that if they don't it will result in call home later in the afternoon where I will have to add the disappearing act to the list!). Parents wait slightly separate to the staff so it's easy to have a quiet word out of earshot of other nosy parents.

I'm glad that works for you hockeyforjockeys. But it wouldn't always work for me. Last term a boy raced across the playground and rushed his mum out the gate before I could catch her - he had punched another child in the face at afternoon playtime and knew he was in serious trouble. He knew I wanted to talk to mum and he certainly wouldn't have passed the message on. I did phone her later, after allowing her time to get home, and her retort was that if I wanted to talk to her about it I should have asked found her in the playground. I did try, but when you have 29 other children to make sure you reunite safely with parents, no other staff to leave them with and no office staff on call that afternoon to phone mum before collection time to ask her to pop in I don't see how I could have.

I called it the Walk of Shame as on Friday, I was waiting at school for my DS with a friend I have known since Reception, our boys are friends (Y3) and over the years I have been spoken to maybe a handful of times about my twins, but they have always been prompted by one of them coming out looking sheepish and babbling 'teacher wants to speak to you but it wasn't all my fault because x did a sliding tackle bla bla' scenario - but Friday, out came (tall, loud, quite intimidating - but lovely) teacher onto playground and said to my friend "I think we need to talk" turned on his heel and left my poor, red-faced friend following in his wake, mortified.

Most teachers at the infant school say at pick up "can I have a little word, please." This can be anything from they did * really well today, really proud of them, to what a terrible thing they did today. So it does send your heart beating when they say it, but it isn't really a stigma as it can be good, bad or indifferent.
Never happened at junior school to me so I don't know.

AbigailS I would just put that down to being a pain in the arse parent quite frankly. If you are more concerned about when you are told (as in a difference of an hour!) than that your child has misbehaved, both by hitting and then ignoring a teacher's instruction, I doubt that telling you is actually going to make any difference to the child's behaviour.

At our school they bring them out in a line and send them off one by one. You know a chat of some description is on its way if your LO is holding teachers hand.

It depends on the child. If I think they can be trusted to bring the parent back in, then I do that, to avoid anyone feeling embarrassed about other parents seeing me come over to speak to them. If not, then I do go out with them, but I always try to lead them over to a corner before I talk to them, so that no-one else will overhear.

You get the curly finger at our school!

Parents collect children from my classroom door and I am always there having a general chat anyway (with parents!) I ask them if they have a few minutes and move discretely away with them - but most of the time this is for good news, that way I am not singling anyone out for just 'bad' things.

our teachers are great - they are subtle

Very crowded playground pickup so you'd have to be pretty nosy to even clock who was getting chatted to (following what where TA was going and with who); most often it's the TA who comes out, and sometimes they are delivering good news, even!

At our school the teacher hangs onto your child while the others leave the classroom one by one - you eventually realise your DC is not going to come out unless you approach the door, because the teacher wants a quick word.

Oh, I always used to get pulled up in front of everyone. "Mrs Chandon! Can I have a word with you about Tarquin's behaviour?!"

It always made me feel giggly somehow. I know I know, bad reaction!

When my ds at primary we always had the walk of shame approach. He has ADHD so we quite often did the walk.