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?!

I’d give her the benefit of the doubt. I think you are prioritising your feelings here over how your daughter is settling in. It’s early days and as long as your daughter is happy and comfortable in the class that’s a win. Escalating to a complaint would be uncalled for I think.
Believe me names can get muddled and it happens the other way round too. Many a time I’ve been called mum or even dad by a student. Usually when I’m nagging. 😎

I’m old. My kids are old. But are reception age kids really chopping vegetables? Isn’t anyone else worried about that? I know I know – missing the point of the thread entirely.

I’d find it quite funny but I would ask for another meeting and for her to ensure she had info pertaining only to my daughter. It wouldn’t offend me in any way. I’d probably keep an eye on it though and ask to speak to her in a few weeks to ensure she actually can accurately differentiate between the girls.

Yes. Teaching knife skills (safely) is really important. All mine have been using a knife to chop vegetables from aged 3/4.

No, because believe it or not we actually mix up white kids too. E.g I have two girls in my class with long dark hair & glasses. I keep mixing up their names. Ditto last year two blonde haired boys with blue eyes. The same sometimes happens with black/asian kids. We are human, I’m not sure why you leap straight away to it being racist.

I wouldn't be annoyed but I do understand why this is bothering you. I'd be more concerned that I am not getting the correct feedback about my child and thus not being able to support my child where she needs (and instead getting Jane's feedback).

This week at a book fair both my daughter’s new teacher and the head teacher (who has known her for 5 years!) said ‘Hello Rose’.

Her name is Millie.

She just said hello back and then laughed.

I disagree.

It would be the proven fact that people of different races find it more difficult to identify faces of people from a different rave to themselves.

I have a classroom with 3 Kyra/Kia/kyla variations (names changed) and that's confusing, not racist.

One of my sons had photos of his friend in his Reception learning journey!
I wasn't annoyed, I laughed - they had similar hair and skin tone.
The teacher has 30 children to recognise and remember!

It's not even half term!

This really wouldn't worry me. It's not a safeguarding issue like sending the wrong child out to the wrong parent etc.

I'd be far more concerned that they're spending lots of time sitting at tables and thay they're settled by ability!!

I once got a call to pick up my elder daughter because she’d had a (fairly bizarre!) accident. I was surprised as it wasn’t like her, but went to get her. Turns out it was actually my younger daughter (which wouldn’t have been a surprise, she’s ridiculously clumsy!). These things happen.

Well yes but often BAME kids names are more just not bothered to be learnt. They mix them up across years, classes etc, kids with very different names, that actually look very different but are all Black etc, because they have similar hair, or all have Afros.

Or they just shorten the names and call them similar nicknames, so then they mix it up in their heads, because the names are too confusing, or they can't just try to even say them.

Or they just go through the names of all the Black girls till they find the right one, or constantly mix up the same race from many different years etc, kids who are very different but they don't bother to recognise it or learn. Or just not even learning to say the same, just skipping it, or constantly misspellings etc. It's the effort of not trying which is so common with BAME kids and the constant mixing it up with no bother to learn, get better across the year etc.

Not saying that happens here, but it is very common, and it is a microaggression, often not spotted due to unconscious bias.

I can see why you might be annoyed, but more than that I’d be concerned. It can be really hard to keep 30 people separate in your head, especially if some look fairly similar and spend a lot of time together. And in this case it’s clear the teacher hasn’t managed it so you may not have the right information on how well your DD is doing. That’s the big concern here, not that the teacher makes common, human mistakes.

I think you need to go back to the teacher and talk to them about the fact she’s clearly getting the girls confused and you need her to take a bit of time to go over where each girl is and give you a reliable report on your DD. It might also help if you sit down with her with pictures of the two girls and point out distinguishing features.

If they are really close in appearance, would Jane and her parents be up for you doing something that would make it easier for the teacher to distinguish the two (e.g. wearing a different coloured shirt if uniform allows, or consistently wearing their hair in different styles)?

I have terrible face blindness. I can't even keep track of the characters in a film unless they look really different to each other. I'd definitely use the wrong name, even if I'd got to know the children well. I call all my children the wrong names frequently. I cycle through until I get it right!

I would raise it, but casually. Just mention you e picked up the mix up a few times. Say you can see why - you have described how similar they are - ask what can be done to help differentiate until they are more familiar to the teacher.

its not ideal. But it’s no big deal?

You are right to be annoyed. Perhaps just gently point out to her that these are not the right pictures. I think for gdpr she should be alerted to sending the wrong picture to the wrong families. But as an ex teacher myself I can say term 1 is so busy and you don't really know the kids properly so with 30 kids and busy time of year it does happen. If this is till happening by Christmas I would go higher up about it (key stage lead or SLT).

Honestly, find something that really matters to get her up over.

As a kid inwas taught by the same teacher for 2 possibly 3 years running...thre were 2 of us who looked incredibly similar and even though she had taught our class repeatedly our teacher would still get us mixed up. I would get called asarah and she would get Susan (not our names).

Even as an adult looking back I can't fault the woman. We were both skinny, blonde, blue eyes, long hair, in matching uniform. We do look uncannily similar. Pur birthdays were only 2 days apart so there are lots of photos of us having joint parties etc. There are some where even I have to look twice to know which of us is which.

@Hercisback1 I don't want to make her feel bad but I would like her to pay more attention to who is who

Had the exact same thing with my DD and her best friend in KS1. The kids thought it was funny and would also deliberately wear matching headbands etc, but i did sometimes wonder if I was getting the right info from the teacher and had to correct on occasion. The head teacher always mixed them up too. When they were in ks2 it didn’t happen anymore, everyone seemed to genuinely know them as they got older.

To be clear, I'm not about to make a formal complaint or email the head. If I raise it it would be an email to the teacher, but I don't know what to say and I hate any kind of conflict/perceived conflict 🫣

This is one of those threads that reminds you that not everyone has a knack for empathy.

"Why do people play the race card at every opportunity" - the mind fucking boggles, honestly.

What on earth has racism got to do with this thread? Yes it is annoying and as a teacher she should have checked her facts. But it's just one of those things, it's 6 weeks in.

It could be worse, it sounds like positive feedback and your kid clearly hasn’t stood out to her in a negative way if she seems to see them both in a similar light.

I’d think it was quite funny but can imagine young first time parents getting all het up about it.

Dd in year 8 online parents evening her textiles teacher was gushing about her talent in textiles. After the session we said how proud we were as hadnt realised dd was
so good at it she said “nah thats not me I sit next to a girl who looks like me and is really good but I’ll take that”. We felt sorry for the other girl!