Ahhhhhh... Why do Teachers do this?

[User998877]

Ds (Y5) is a child that is both academic and good at sports, sits on tops tables for Maths/Literacy and is in most of the school sports teams. This is not a boast by any means as despite his capabilities he struggles terribly with his self esteem, always has. He is better than he was as I've worked tirelessly at home to help him with this.

He is popular pupil, got voted for school council etc by his peers and the head promotes him as a role model for the school. Yet one comment can bring him tumbling down so fast, for example tonight he has come home very upset as his CT told him to move from the top table to another one... no explanation, just told him to sit at the other table, which ds did without question.

This is a new teacher to the school and I've had very little interaction with him, I don't take issue with ds being moved as such, there could be many reasons why he has done this but surely ds deserves an explanation as to why he's being moved.

I've now got a ds who's insisting that he must be crap at reading (he's not BTW) as why else would he be moved.. I'm tempted to go in before work and have a word or am I overreacting?

The longer this thread goes on for the more and more it fits a particular type of parent/high achieving child.

Yup. I now have absolutely no doubt as to why OP's son has self esteem issues.

Oh, and I'm not a teacher, so obviously my opinion about a teaching decision is worth much more than a teacher's.

My ds was high achieving, on top table for everything in ks1. In yr3 and yr4, he was placed in second table for one thing. He knew why. I knew why. Despite being on second table, he managed to get GDS. So, I think teacher was actually looking at him and assessing him properly.
I think it's ok to ask the teacher why they have been moved, but I think it's wrong to question their decision.

Someone wrote a post the other days asking why teaching is so bad..... this is why

My Ds was moved from a selective grammar school to bottom set English in a comp (he's top set maths but hey ho) the reasons are complicated. The teacher did share them but only because of how extreme it was.

A boy was moved out of his stream for highly confidential reasons involving my Ds. No way should explanations be given.

At my workplace if my bias tells me to do something or change something I do it without question. He's the boss I'm not.

At my workplace if my bias tells me to do something or change something I do it without question. He's the boss I'm not.
Same in a school.
If I have a question about something I can politely query it when it's appropriate.
If a senior leader asks to borrow a child from my class then the answer is 'yes' not 'maybe but why are you interrupting my lesson'.

Tbh, if your ds is a such a high achieving child academically and also excels at sports, it may be a good thing to feel gutted. Then he can put some effort into it if he wan'ts to be top again. I think it's a valuable lesson.
Sounds like you have a child every parents dreams to have. Kind, sympathetic, clever and sporty. If he can overcome his self esteem issues, he will be a truly great person.

I give loads of instructions without explaining why.

I can’t imagine how slow the pace would be and how little would get done if everything was explained and justified.

OP - you’re really making a mountain out of a tiny molehill. By focusing on the fact that the Teacher Must Give a Reason you’re making it into a huge deal.

Y5 is 9/10 years old, surely he has seen children moved around tables during his time at school? If they sit by ability, do they switch round at each lesson? It’s an unusual,class class where all the children are the same ability in every subject.

I think it’s a bad idea for teachers to tell parents their child sits at a top table to be honest, it makes it look,like their child has dipped when they get moved and then they hassle the teachers for explanations. I think parents make a bigger deal about top tables than the kids, and this can be passed on to the child, our teachers don’t mention top tables or whatever but parents compare and guess, I’ve heard many in the first day back ask who their kid is sat next to and what himeworkmsheet or spelling other kids got and decide which table their child is on.

I appreciate he has self esteem issues, but I don’t agree that the teacher has to give a nine year old a reason for the way s/he chooses to run their classroom. The reason he was moved may well have absolutely nothing to do with your child at all and none of his business.

I say as a parent to a child just getting over self esteem issues and pressures herself to always get top marks, I wouldn’t be phoning the school, I’d be working on having my dd understand that being moved around is ok, that it doesn’t matter and if it’s something important involving her, her teacher will speak to me, if not then assume it’s none of our business.

I manage to do that quite happily despite the number of people I am responsible for

Being 'responsible for' people in a management sense is not the same as being in a room full of 30 children all day, being responsible for all of them all the time and trying to maintain a controlled atmosphere.

At any given time, any number of them might feel like questioning any number of things the teacher asks them to do. It would be constant bloody chaos if this were pandered to. Children have no need or prerogative to question the teacher's seatung plan.

Besides which, some decisions about things like seating arrangements can be potentially sensitive, to do with issues or needs that other pupils have, which you would not announce to the class!

There could be any number of reasons that he was moved:
He was talking or somebody else was misbehaving and distracting him.
She wanted good role models in other tables.
She identified gaps in the children's learning and did a temporary re jig to address them.
The children were a bit squashed around that table.
The sun was in his eyes.
She wanted to sit a difficult child by her.

I could go on.

I think perhaps you and your ds could work together on dealing calmly with these little bumps in the road otherwise you're going to end up quite stressed.

Have read more of your comments op (sorry crap phone at doesn't always show the full thread till I post!!) the thing is, you feel he is owed an explanation for this but would it have made it better? Really?
It might have made it better if it was for a good reason eg being a role model but what if the reason was the ha was struggling with a text? Or he was distracting another child? Or he's generally the weakest of the group? Would an explanation really have helped then? I suspect not.
Asking one child to swap seats in one lesson is a tiny, tiny detail in the run of the school day. I think that catastophising small events may be contributing to your ds getting worked up. Try to relax and work with the teacher.

Hi I’m new my son today has called a child at his school an Indian wich I think she is mixed race but they have reported it I think they have over reacted instead of giving him a warning he is only 8 and was very upset with the way he was treated and as far as I was told the child wasn’t afended 😡 is this racist ???

Discovery if you want some answers it would be better to start a new thread about this.

Could he do the work? Was it interesting/fun? Did he get on with the people he was sitting with?

It seems to me that some posters are talking about their own classes where groups change around all the time as a matter of course. But if that was the case here, OP's DS would be used to people moving around and would have no reason to worry.

Assuming this teacher has had the class since September if December is the first time OP's DS has not been sitting with the same group, and no-one else has moved, he's bound to wonder what he did wrong isn't he? (And it could be a lot longer than that if the whole school is prone to fixed ability grouping and this is the top group.) In that circumstance, I think it would be appropriate to give some kind of explanation. Even if as simple as "DS I think you'd love this book, come and sit with squirrels table today".

I give loads of instructions without explaining why.

can’t imagine how slow the pace would be and how little would get done if everything was explained and justified

I think this is a very dismissive attitude and is where a lot of teachers go wrong.

Moving a child from one skilled set table to another without explanation is very different from asking a child to pick up a set of pencils in my opinion

The former deserves some form of explanation in brief, I think. Surely you can understand such a move may well impact a child's self esteem in some cases and have a them wondering why they've been moved?

I think this is a very dismissive attitude and is where a lot of teachers go wrong
It's a fact of life. People don't go around justifying and explaining every reasonable request teacher or no teacher.

Some things are worth a chat. Others (lile being moved seat) aren't.
Surely you can understand such a move may well impact a child's self esteem in some cases and have a them wondering why they've been moved?
Only if their entire esteem is built on being top/better than others. In which case some work needs to be done on resilience and having a view of self that isn't connected to being 'top'.
I don't make a habit of justifying my seating or instructions because there'll be times where it is totally inappropriate to do so, so why make a rod for my own back? Say i justify everything, then something sensitive comes up and I don't, does that give tjr green light to decide 'Mrs pops is doing it for no reason'? Of course not.

I dealt with a stupid complaint last year about a colleague (secondary). Child started arguing about where to sit in seating plan on the grounds that last lesson they were sat nearer their friends. Eventually they moved. Mum was on the phone kicking off because 'he was just confused by everything'. No it's simple. Miss had a seating plan. She changed it. She told him where to sit repearedly. He argued. I had to come in and tell him to follow a basic instruction. As a 14 year old he knows how to follow instructions but was quickly turning into someone who loved to say why? All the time brcause mummy was calling up about everything As ever, if he had a question hr could ask at the end of the lesson, not be a pain during the lesson to the point where I've left my class to come in.

I don't want to sound awful on this but I have an open door policy.
Students are welcome to come and chat to me etc. It's how I've had some students request to be moved because of things going on etc.
Equally, they know they can raise issues with me. (One did last month did after they made a silly joke which I had to report. They came to see me to tell me that theu felt me writing a pastoral referral was silly because they weren't actually.going to do x).

It's amazing how 'i run my room so we can learn but if you need to discuss anything you can out of class' works. I don't waste my time justifying my actions and in turn thr students don't want to have their lessons wasted by people arguing. I get a handfull see me each half term about issues and we deal witj them.

OP, suppose for a moment that the teacher's reason for this move was a highly confidential one involving another child. Should she have explained that reason to your son?

I worked in industry for many years before becoming a teacher and in all those years no one ever explained why I'd been moved nor did I think to question the decision.

@User998877 You are coming across like you have a massive chip on your shoulder about teachers.

Can I ask: what if the explanation was one your child (or the other children) wouldn’t be comfortable hearing?
ie “you’ve been moved because your recent test results weren’t as good as your previous ones so I’m moving you to a group more in line with your level for the moment.”
Or any of the other examples given by pp.

I am not a teacher but I can imagine that having to explain every decision to up to 30 children every day plus the added on time for discussion of the reasons could very quickly lead to no time for teaching.

Or are you suggesting the teacher only has to explain things to your son? Is he the only one who should be privy to the teacher's plans?

All this bigging him up doesn't sound healthy for him, how's he going to cope when he goes to secondary and finds he's not the best at everything?

Having re-read the OP, I see that the child moved 'without question'. So there is in fact no indication whatsoever that the teacher would have refused to give a reason for the move if the child had asked. She simply didn't give an unsolicited explanation.

Eolian
Exaclty and most teachers would speak to the child at break or somethinf if the child wanted to ask them something.

I seriously doubt the OP is responsible for 9,000 people or whatever, given their childish and petulant responses to people who disagree with them.

No wonder the kid has confidence and self-esteem issues when his parent clearly views themselves as superior to others, not least their child's educators. He needs to learn that unless he is the next Mozart (probability close to zero), there will always be someone better at something in life.

However, as others have pointed out, the most likely explanation for the table move would not have been acceptable to the OP. In which case, they'd probably have started a thread moaning about how their gifted, sensitive and empathetic child has been damaged by the teacher's brutal explanation of why they needed to move tables.

The kid is in for a shock in the real world.