Teacher mistake - how annoyed would you be?

[GruntGrunt]

DD "Alice" has just started reception. Her best friend "Jane" has the same skin, hair and eye colour as her, and is a similar height. The also sit on the same table (tables are determined by skill level).

During parents evening the teacher slipped up and referred to her as Jane. We pointed this out and the teacher apologised and corrected herself. Later in the conversation the teacher mentioned that Alice had been really good at chopping vegetables when making soup in forest school. We said we thought she'd been off sick that week but the teacher said it must have been the week before and insisted that the photos were on the ap they use.

We just checked the photos and they're of Jane!!

Am I unreasonable to be annoyed? Shall I email the teacher and if so what shall I say? She seems like a great teacher otherwise and is really lovely so I don't want to have a go at her, but this has really upset me! And who knows whether any of the other feedback she gave related to Jane instead of Alice?!

Pompous person virtue signaling

Not hard for you. If you’ve got to adult age without realising that everyone is different then that’s a bit worrying!

Just to be clear, we’re not talking here about teachers not knowing the names of these identical twins after a week in reception. I would know all the names of children in my class before they’d even started because I’d spent the Summer producing tray names, peg names, a set of books per child on which I’d written all their names and so on. All we are taking about is whether a teacher can reliably discern whether it’s Anna or Amelia who is standing in front of them a few days into term. If you can do that, good for you! I would challenge whether you could do that without fail when you’ve had the responsibility for running the school day, herding lots of little people who don’t know the routines and don’t know the geography of the school for a week. When you’ve already had your head into baseline assessments, sorting out the child whose medical issue needs some special attention and an instant routine and have dealt with the inevitable behaviour issues that come with settling 30 new children into their first ever class. Again, if you can do all that well done, but please don’t randomly decide that the only reason it hasn’t happened is laziness…!

I genuinely don't think after a month there's an excuse. It's not virtue signalling. It's knowing the kids. If you don't know the kids how can you actually be properly assessing their progress and ensuring their learning is on track?! The OPs example of the teacher getting It wrong for parents evening is unacceptable. It literally is something essential to being able to bloody teach! Otherwise Jane might be getting credit for Alice's work in class whilst Alice's parents are being told she's struggling when it's Jane is struggling.

The kids in reception can't read their own names so yes I damn well expect a reception teacher to be on top of it asap otherwise the risk is some pretty appalling mix ups and situations which I can't honestly believe anyone is trying to justify as being ok even with pressure at work.

For god's sake this could relate to a safeguarding issue. If you can't tell the difference between Alice and Jane and one has an accident or an allergy or something, this is pretty fucking important.

I stand by what I say for those reasons alone.

It's mixing up two kids, after the event, on a busy evening. We know memories get blurred and mixed over time.

The teacher clearly knows the child's name and made a mistake.

Don't be dramatic.

If a child was struggling you'd find out before parents evening.

Oh dear, the world seems full of T.A.’s and volunteers who imagine they can do the job better than the actual teacher. I suggest they do the training. It’s a hard job. Be careful before you judge.

Oh come on, if you volunteer you are clearly tone deaf to the challenges of being a teacher, with this sort of blasé ‘I’m so much better’ comment!

You don’t even have 5% of the mental load the teacher does and you’d be lying if you claimed to!

Oh no! How ever will I sleep at night now 😂😂😂🤷‍♀️

OP - just seen your update, hope it’s all sorted now.

On a totally separate note, my twins never had any forest-school type activities but would have loved it. Sounds like the school has a great set-up.

Spot on

I’d be more annoyed that in reception the children are sat at tables according to ‘ability’! In reception they should be accessing continuous provision with maybe one session a day taking part in a task where they sit at an actual table with the teacher.

There’s nothing in the OPs post to indicate anyone’s ethnicity - including the teacher’s - and yet there’s a passive aggressive assumption that the teacher is racist! FFS!

Oh dear!
In one of the classes I teach, there are 3 white children with very similar what I call ‘influencer’ names that are tonge twisters, and 27 black or brown children. Of these children, there’s a couple of Zack’s, a Christine, a Sally, a Mo, a Hamza, a Hassan and a Sara. The remaining names are easy to pronounce. Your assumption that teachers can’t be arsed to learn the names of their pupils is really offensive - almost as offensive as referring to children who are not white as ‘BAME” as if they are one homogenous group. I know my Nigerian children would be very offended to be grouped with Pakistani children and vice versa. It’s just ignorant.

I’m a TA and get names muddled all the time (including my own children). Doesn’t help that I have menopausal brain fog!
I especially often mix up children with similar characteristics eg blonde long hair, short dark hair, glasses etc.
I’ve taken to calling everyone ‘darling’.

We often group according to ability. Some children need extra help and some have already been taught things before they start school. We try and catch everyone up to a good level and stretch others as appropriate.

There’s a difference between getting a name wrong and knowing the difference between children. I get my own kids names wrong when I am half thinking of something else but I know very well the difference between them.

I mean , have a word . My family are immigrants and there are four blonde kids in the class and 8 blonde parents. If I called racism every time the wrong kids name was said to me at pick up or they called me other mums name- I would have a breakdown. These people care about all the kids and NO they don’t focus on one- least of all yours. Just take a day off- is your kid happy and full of love ?

Lots of schools will group them by ability during phonics and maths.

If it is used in the right contexts it's fine, I think a lot of things have come up where it's used incorrectly or not right for that context.

So BAME lumps together dozens of ethnicities, nationalities, and experiences as if they are one group. For example, 'BAME underachievement' is overall improving, but hide that some groups (e.g. Black Caribbean boys) are still disproportionately excluded - in this context breaking down in subgroups is more appropriate.

Also grouping so many groups together, can ignore specific forms of discrimination or specific differences in discrimination experienced by particular groups.

For example, BAME people face disparities in health outcomes is true, but it hides how and why those disparities differ between Black and South Asian patients as an example. Or even Black women compared to Black men.

But BAME can be a practical umbrella term when used well. It’s fine if it’s clearly defined and followed by disaggregated data - breaking down smaller subgroups (e.g South Asian, and then Indian etc).

So for something like, summarising large-scale data (e.g. NHS patient diversity, ONS reports) where there are small sample sizes for individual groups, BAME can be a practical umbrella term.

Also before BAME became common, ethnic disparities were often ignored or underreported. The term forced public bodies to acknowledge that outcomes differ by race and ethnic groups in policing, health, housing, and education.

Also, when used with sensitivity and clarity about the benefits and limitations that ‘BAME’ is imperfect and may not reflect individual identities, but it’s used here for consistency with national reporting standards.

BAME is also short, recognisable, and easily understood by the general public and policymakers. In communications like press releases, policy briefs etc it can be useful shorthand to talk about policies for ethnic groups without a long list of lots of different ethnicities.

In short, the type of communication and context mamatters. I was trying to make a brief point on a mumsnet thread, if i was having a longer, in-depth conversation about racism in education etc, a brief I would use the specific ethnic groups related to stats etc.

Some organisations or advocacy groups may use BAME as a collective identity in solidarity, or other terms like global majority or just the specific ethnic group are better.

AI

It's not, I just use bold because I always say too much and I don't know if the poster wants to read my.rambles, so I cut it down and use bold. It's just the common brief in why some people reject the term. Or rather don't like the overuse of BAME which in general I agree with. But it definitely has practical benefits for data which are clear and also had encourages more public bodies, schools etc to care about it, or have better equality policies but some overuse it and you can definitely see the tokenistic approach to it, in some contexts. Likely why some public bodies especially smaller ones are moving away from it, for purposes other than data collection.

In fact - after sports day in year one I showed a video to my daughter of her winning a running race. And she said no Mum that’s not me in the video, that’s my friend. I was in the race before 😂. Even I muddled them up myself!

Haha! I can relate. Arrived at Sydney airport to be met by my DD and her DP, after a year of not seeing each other. There she was, tall, slim, blonde, unmistakable, accompanied by her tall dark-haired DP. I raced over to hug them both...Oops...

Id ignore it .You said teacher a great teacher otherwise.It doesn't mean they don't know or care about your daughter.Its just cognitive load understain.If your child is learning and happy then id park it .