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?!

This made me laugh!
I have similar- my brother is three years older than me and was always a bit of a cheeky chappy/golden boy in primary school, everyone adored him. Whereas I was just a plump, moist haired girl who faded into the background. For the first half of year 5, my teacher referred to me as “Adam’s sister.”
My mum didn’t write an email to complain.

As a secondary school teacher I once had a class with three girls called Grace. They were all WBRI with identical long, straight brown hair, all very clever but very shy, quiet and reluctant to speak up in class so it took me a while to get to know them and their personalities. I ended up having to learn which one was which through their handwriting and I used to double and triple check I had the right Grace before parents' evenings because I was so worried about mixing them up. I couldn't change the seating plan for months because I would have got muddled again. I'm a really conscientious teacher who cares about getting to know my students and it took me ages.

I don't understand why they have parents evening so early in the year. They need to leave it until after Xmas, the teacher and children have more time to get to know each other then and much less likely to get them mixed up! What can they say in knowing them 7 weeks it's silly.

I think it’s partly to flag up any initial issues that could be nipped in the bud quite quickly, and just to give a bit of a sense check as to how they’re getting on. The early one isn’t intended to be an in depth discussion on academic progress etc.

Since the introduction of the reception baseline assessment in 2021 there is usually a fair amount of info to feed back to the parents from Autumn 1, plus parents often appreciate the reassurance of knowing how their child is settling in. Primary schools typically have three parents' evenings a year.

I've not read the whole thread so this may have come up already, or may not be relevant, but some people are "face blind": https://faceblind.org.uk/. Here is an article saying some celebrities have this too: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/well/mind/prosopagnosia-face-blindness.html.

This is desperately serious. Clearly your life is so devoid of problems that you are making them up. 😂

Please don't alienate yourself by having a go at the teacher. Just don't do it. It's no biggie. Your daughter has come to no harm.

Tbf I'd be annoyed, and I'd be wondering "do you actually KNOW my daughter?" If she's giving a review of your daughters progress, you'd like to think she had the right one!

No. Some people have poor face recognition. It’s a real thing. It is easy to get people’s faces muddled whatever their race. I confuse two white girls in my year group and I also confuse two black girls in my year group. Does that make me racist? I don’t think so.

I have twins who are very alike, not sure if they're identical. Their teacher didn't want them to wear name badges, as it would make them feel different. They ARE different, they both look the same! I used to send one in a cardigan, one in a jumper, one with a green scrunchy, one with a red one, and they still got them muddled up.
Their teacher said she had twins herself, girl/ boy, so not the same but she had years of teaching children blah blah blah. That bit her in the arse, as at halfway ish through the year the children had a special job to do. Twin one did it first, twin two was supposed to do it next. The teacher was waxing lyrical about how good they were, looking at the girls and saying how they had behaved etc. You guessed it, she got twin one to do it twice! She was looking at twin one thinking she was twin two, so I pointed that out to her. She did a double take, asked twin one why she didn't tell her she wasn't twin two, twin one said you didn't ask me.
However, to be fair, when we had a set of photos given to us when they left school, showing the things they'd done over the years it took 6 months for me and the twins to notice 2 of the photos were in the wrong set of pictures!
I can tell them apart now, though in photos I can get them muddled, including with their older sister.

I’d give it a bit more time but would keep an eye on it. I completely understand you wanting to be clear that the feedback you get actually pertains to your own child! But I would also bear in mind that it’s early days and she’s still getting to grips with who is who.

Having said all that, when I was teaching reception I was extremely aware that my feedback on children’s progress had to be spot on accurate. I taught several sets of twins and was always very hot on making sure that parents’ evenings were very individual to the child. By six weeks in I knew each child quite well already and certainly wouldn’t have mixed up the abilities of individual children. Getting names muddled in class was a different matter….one year I had five girls whose names all started with ‘P’, think Polly, Pippa, Peggy, Penny, Poppy and I was always getting it wrong - not because I didn’t know which child it was but because when I started to say the name my brain seemed to produce whichever ‘P’ name it thought of first! A bit like calling your own children by the wrong name. I wouldn’t get upset about that part as long as the teacher clearly knew my child.

One thing you might consider is speaking to the teacher to say ‘I’ve realised how much like Jane Alice looks and obviously we don’t want them muddled up in terms of their schooling, would it help if I always sent Alice with a yellow headband (or whatever)?’ It flags up the fact you’ve noted the issue and have your eye on it, but offers something of a solution. I once taught identical twin girls who looked so alike that it was incredibly hard to tell them apart. Their mum suggested she always sent one to school with green hair ties and the other with yellow before they even started school as it had worked well in nursery. Six months in I could tell them apart when they were facing me but not from behind or across the classroom so it was very helpful. Again though, I never muddled up their individual attainment…

I would expect a teacher to know all the kids and be able to tell them apart within a week. Even identical twins. Regardless of ethnicity.

Anything else is just laziness.

Honestly no one can say anything wrong about teachers on MN. The minimum you should be able to expect on parents evening if feedback about your actual child, come on.

Raising it informally shouldn't be an issue. Just speak to the teacher, if you send an email saying you just want to double check how shes doing as there was some confusion between her and other child.

That's a bit lacking in imagination.

9 pages!!!

I'm going to annoy a lot of people now by giving some more information which I think changes things a bit (not a drip feed as I wasn't aware of it before!).

Having looked more closely at the forest school photos I can see that Jane is chopping veg next to another little girl who also looks similar ("May") . So I think actually the teacher didn't mistake Jane for Alice, but saw Jane next to May and assumed May was Alice because Jane and Alice are always together (bloody hell these names are getting too much).

Anyway, it's still not ideal but given that May sits on a different table and has other differences which I won't go into, I'm no longer worried that the rest of the teacher's feedback might have related to a different child. Phew!

Thanks for all the helpful replies! FWIW I agree with those pps saying that the use of the term "race card" is really offensive and only used by people who have never experienced racism

Really?? You think that the reason a teacher might not be sure which twin she has in front of her, when she only has one there and she has spent a total of 30 hours with them along with 28 other children she’s just getting to know is laziness?

I can easily have 100 new pupils at the start of an academic year. It's ridiculous to expect me to know all names and faces perfectly after seeing them for a week.

In reception?

Really???

Are you a teacher? Have you been able to do this? Even with identical twins? If so, wow, I’m impressed by you.

I volunteer in a school. I've helped with classes and its not hard to learn them all really very quickly.

No not reception. But your post didn't specify that, just said a blanket "teachers".

Fantastic work! Go you. I’ve taught a fair few sets of identical twins and it’s taken weeks and weeks to tell them apart, and even then it’s only because one has her hair plaited and one in a pony tail, or one has slightly longer hair etc. I don’t think I’m lazy though, think I’m a bloody good teacher, I think I’m just…human.

Did you have anything else to do while helping with the class? You weren't organising the actual lessons and doing the 101 daily tasks of the teacher?
Not to mention people with dyslexia, ADHD, perimenopause can all struggle with working memory and the ability to learn names.