Pupil / teacher personality clash?

[Helenagrace]

Has anyone ever experienced a personality clash between their DC and their class teacher?

How did you handle it?

Even when I started teaching in the 90's, we knew that a variety of teaching styles was needed. That is not a new thing.

No one said it wasn't. You muddied the waters by suggesting that seeker's friend was right, that some Y6 children learnt better by moving around and not being compliant.

I actually said that Seeker's friend had a point.

I did not say that she was totally right. As with most areas of life, things are rarely black and white.

You can be sitting at your table, matching questions and answers by moving cards around, or by problem solving with apparatus, or by handling an artefact to describe it and produce an explanation of its function.
All are kinaesthetic, none involve moving around the class.

I hope you can manage to teach to a specific learning objective tomorrow, mindthegappp - you've gone all around the houses here, even arguing with yourself at points.

Thanks for all the advice. Having pondered a bit more I'm not sure it is a personality clash but I think the teacher has decided he us naughty and that's that.

I have spoken to his reception teacher. Incidentally he was in a mixed class of reception and year one children so he didn't do much of the at based curriculum. He did have problems sitting still last year but he wasn't disruptive. His teacher once showed me some great writing he did and she observed him doing it. He was totally engrossed in the activity but didn't sit down at all during it.

DS is quite clumsy and falls over his own feet often. He usually has a bump somewhere. His sister is dyspraxic so I wonder if he is as well. She can't sit still either.

It looks like I need to make an appointment to talk to her. Not quite sure how to play it. I spend my life advising others on how to communicate and then I go to pieces whenever I have to discuss the children.

Go and see the head. It always amazes me in discussions about a teacher's performance how much agonising there is about whether we can possibly excuse the teacher's behaviour.

This is unacceptable. If the teacher hasn't worked out that it's not her job to put aside personal likes / dislikes as part of the quid pro quo which involves her being paid for her time, someone senior needs to point this out.

I'm not at all surprised about the maths thing. When I changed school when I was 8, I was about to finish book 4 of whatever the book was in Maths, and about to start book 5. Two things happened.

In my old school, I wasn't allowed to move on to book 5 (for about 3 weeks) while the teacher's favourite pupil caught up with me (or he'd get upset). And then when he was ready I had to wait a further week to give him a head start.

In my new school I had to go back to halfway through book 4 as this was the furthest anyone had got in my new class - because if I was put on book 5 it would - you guessed it - upset the other pupils.

I also utterly disagree with the poster who blamed the other mother for reporting back what she'd heard about the "nightmare pupil" comment. In the other mother's place I would have done the same because I would have considered it unacceptable and would have thought the mother had a right to know.

Absolutely, Down. And if the teacher provides this kind of activity, it will help focus that child and dampen down the urges to get out of his seat. If he expects long periods of written work, or whatever, he should not be surprised if some children cannot sit still for long.

Don't make an appointment to talk with her, make an appointment to talk with the head. Tell her she can be there if she likes. Take charge. Don't let her bully you.

Play based curriculum

Stupid iPhone

VAK has been widely discredited

current thinking is:

An individual's learning style is not fairly stable across tasks etc. It is topic dependent as Curwin showed (Curwin, 1992) or people just assume it is static and not topic dependent "

Even a proponent of Learning styles, Dunn & Dunn, says that an individual's learning style is not static "Learning Style changes over time. It is not static. It changes." .

I haven't worked with such young children, but have found with older ones (eg Y5) that a stress-ball can help with the fidgeting.

That is not to say that a child cannot have a dominant learning style at that moment in time in the classroom or particular lesson.

mindthegapp - you implied from your earlier posts that children are particular types of learners. Do you know see that isnt necessarily the case?

Mrz, I lose track sometimes now as to what the current fashion and buzzwords are, and what is state of the art and what is discredited.
It changes so often and what was the subject of INSETS and endless reading up becomes yesterday's nonsense.
It's why it is hard to take some ideas seriously, wait a year and someone will be mocking it as rubbish.
I did all the VAK stuff, and the Braingym and every other hot new bit of evangelical whatsits that came along, trumpeted by SMT and the rest as The Way To Go.
Then you apply common sense.

I don't believe that I said it was set in stone.

MindtheGappp in the 90s VAK was the "flavour of the day" leaps in brain study have shown that no one is a visual/auditory/kinaesthetic learner but everyone is a combination of all three so actually labelling a child as "kinaesthetic" is in fact damaging

OP - I think you should take the 'not being able to sit still' thing seriously, in that it could well be a pointer to dyspraxia or other problems.

I would be thinking about all the things which might be indicative of problems, and making an appointment with the SENCO.

Particularly since your DD has a dx of dyspraxia.

If he does have dyspraxia, getting it diagnosed sooner rather than later is the best thing you can do for him right now.

Most educational initiatives, eg AFL, are things that we have all been doing for years - just more formalised. I don't have a problem with that, although don't like to use it as a tick-box exercise.

When you are interested in raising achievement, you have to start with the learners. You can see that some teacher have a magical touch with 'difficult' pupils and want to know how they do it and what they do that is different.

When I was at school, I think my learning style was very well catered for by the teaching and exam system. But I think it failed a lot of students by not letting them reach their full potential. Say what you like about education today, I think we now enable more pupils to achieve, even if it is a bit dumbed down at the top.

I dont think you can go far wrong with a variety of activities and teaching styles regardless of new ideas, initiatives etc. I agree with mrz that it is dangerous though to see children as a certain type of learner.

Mindthegapp, I am struggling to follow your argument as you seem to contradict yourself, backtrack etc with no explanation.

Of course everyone is a combination of all three. Some are fairly even spread over the three areas, and others are strongly one and weakly the others.

It's like your two posters.

you're

Perhaps you need to read more carefully what I have written...