Working as a volunteer in school - challenging the teacher

[Jules2]

Here's a pithy subject for other parents and teachers - I really would like to hear from teachers. I've been volunteering in a Yr 6 class at my daughter's school and every week the teacher has made some kind of mistake - be it a grammatical error, spelling mistake or a mistake in Maths. One example was where she asked pupils to put 4 fractions in ascending order and she gave them the wrong answer. I'm not so quick at Maths myself but thought it was incorrect and worked it out after I left. English is my strong suit - I was a book editor and English graduate - so I do know my stuff. But what should I do? I don't want to embarrass a teacher (and she's not the only one) and this particular teacher can be quite defensive. Should I let these errors go? Or raise them discreetly after class - but when it may be too late? Teachers/parents - have you experienced this situation and what would you advise?

That a volunteer doesn't have the authority of a teacher, so they are not equal.

My nearly DIL is a teacher and she had to do years of volunteering as a teenager to get into her course, so it's not fair to say teachers don't have life experience.

No - having authority at work does not make you less or more equal to the people you work with, it simply means that you do a different job with more or less responsibility. We are all created equally, remember? It certainly doesn't mean that you should dismiss or become angry at someone who points out a basic error that you have made in the classroom. In fact, as a parent, I would fully expect an error to be highlighted before my children were taught it as fact by someone who was a)not proficient enough to teach that subject, and b)not sufficiently professional to accept feedback from a colleague (paid or unpaid) and learn from their mistakes.

I am quite well aware that some teachers have experience outside the classroom - my point was in response to CandoDad who was querying her breadth of experience.

They didn't think she had enough months before so the only thing that changed was the first choice went off to other things. I would still want a HT to have experience, more than that which she gained in her PGCE.

More and less responsibility makes a hierarchy, doesn't it? A teaching assistant will have more responsibility than the volunteer and less than a teacher. Because my DIL is still a new teacher, she gets less responsibility than the more experienced teachers. And then on top of them is the head teacher.

Of course you should always be polite and courteous to everyone, but that goes without saying.

It makes for an organisational hierarchy, yes. It does not make for a personal hierarchy in which teachers are above and beyond reproach by volunteers.

Cand - she was a volunteer, then a supervisor (whilst studying for her PGCE), then a teacher, then a deputy head, then the head - all of which followed her experience of working (level unknown) in another industry. Seems fair enough to me - plenty of teachers I've known over the year work their way up through the same school and are excellent senior teachers/deputy heads/heads. They certainly speak very highly of her.

Are you going to raise your concerns with her LA?

And that's all that girl you are being nasty about was trying to say when she was talking about her workload! She said about three times it was wrong when teachers refused to take corrections.

Girl?

No, if you read her posts they were far more than that. Go back to the beginning - I believe she started off by describing volunteers as 'bottom of the heap'. Never, in my professional life, have I ever, ever described any of my colleagues (wherever they are in the organisational hierarchy, be they paid or unpaid) as 'bottom of the heap'. How utterly patronising, demeaning and dismissive.

If there's a hierarchy, there's a heap, not a big deal in the change of words.

Nice try.

My observation is no issue to her LA just as we both know she is not directly answerable to the LA but the Govenors.

Your flippancy to some on this thread shows a lack of respect you claim to show everyone in life.

But either way this is pulling the thread off track.

There will be schools that like volunteers and those that don't. Any volunteer shoud ve free to tactfully and in a professional manner correct mistakes just as a volunteer should feel free to be corrected.

Any volunteer relegated though to pure tasks such as sharpening pencils etc all the time should ask if they can be of more direct benefit to the children.

We don't have Governers here, the LA is responsible for staff appointments - but if she is answerable to them then are you going to raise your concerns with them? Or were you simply thinking out loud on MN?

I do agree that Volunteers should be seen as an invaluable asset - a good school and teachers who take a more professional approach do tend to.

Thinking out loud? No you pillock I was passing my opinion which is my entitlement. Why are you so obsessed with talking to the LA about it.

I'm not obsessed, you pillock.

I've gone and registered :) omg I've registered as a Girl Geek too! I'm so excited! Well something good came out of the thread lol!

Well done you!!! All the very best - I am sure you will be a massive asset to the school

There are the issues of authority and responsibility, that's for sure.

I have a role like Dana's. I am very aware that my authority comes from having no authority if that makes sense. The buck doesn't stop with me.

I think though that those are better concepts than "hierarchy". I don't do hierarchy. When I pitched to a new head to keep my paid role I think it helped when I said that I appreciate that I am not a decision-maker. I'm important -in my own way I'm a leader -but I am not a decision maker and only get information about internal matters where there is a need to know. Does that make sense?

Interesting debate. I work as a TA (with a good degree in English) but I would never correct a teacher's grammar, punctuation or spelling. I don't consider it my place to do so and it would not be taken kindly.

ppolly - I agree.

When you are watching a class of 30+ kids of course you make mistakes you wouldn't otherwise make. It's a huge responsibility keeping kids engaged for a whole hour.

Challenging a teacher undermines her credibility in a classroom. Not on at all.

Continued, repeated grammatical / spelling/ mathematical mistakes? Never corrected? I thinks that's a shame. People never stop learning. I would want to be corrected.

I would love never to make them, but I do. I've got better through spell check because, yes, it keeps correcting and correcting and correcting....

I think credibility is undermined if mistakes are not corrected, ever.

Otherwise it all gets a bit 'Emporer's New Clothes'!...

I agree capsicum.But because I know teachers are sensitive about having anything corrected, particularly by those working under them, I don't do it.

Such 'sensitivity' is stupid. There is worse waiting than been corrected by a TA. What if it were the head teacher or a governor or a visiting dignitary or an inspector?

I am not sure that it is stupid. I think it reflects how beleaguered and unsupported they feel. If they were truly confident in their role, then of course they wouldn't mind.

It is unwise, though, to let any dissolutionment and anger to cloud their vision. Especially in the current climate, a teacher needs to able to keep their head, to, well, teach.