What do you do when your child's teacher is really bad?

[Pitchounette]

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It takes a long time to get to know a class. Unless you've been in there and seen her interacting with the children on a regular basis I think you should stop judging her so quickly. There are systems for monitoring teachers and the head will be aware if she isn't up to scratch.
You know your child very well, she doesn't. She will. You should already be supporting your childs reading and counting - you are his 1st and most important teacher.
Regarding homework, it is impossible to differentiate for everyones needs at all levels in school and then homework too. She probably gave everyone the same homework, or gave groups of children the same homework. She probably assumed you would talk to him and support him with it.
Give her a break and start working WITH her.

I second mumofboy - your child has only been with this teacher for a month and I think you need to give her a bit more of a chance.

But if he knows all his letter sounds the next step is to begin to sound out words - so he needs to have books to help him practise this. If he is unable to do this then maybe he needs to revise his letter sounds. Sounds to me like she is giving him the opportunity to do both these things while she gets to know him better. It is very early in the school year - and there are so many other things to think about as a reception teacher (who is screaming every morning, who needs reminding to go to the toilet, who can't be left alone for a second or they will flatten several other kids etc). I never sent any reading books or homework till well after October half term when I was teaching reception because there were so many personal and social issues to focus on.

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Is she assuming he can count to 20 or is this what she has been told by his previous setting? If my class were half as good as their transition records suggest I could fast track them to GCSEs

I would say that you should try to see it as 9 months of his entire life.
DS1 had a dreadful teacher last year, they have tried to sack her twice, she hasn't taught the same year group twice whilst at this school and she is "finding her place" within the school (she has been there 6 years)

In the end, having tried to work with her, having tried to challenge her perception of DS1 I gave up, DS1 now has a great teacher this year and I am certain that his school life has not been marred by his time with her.

To be honest I don't think she thought enough about the homework to assume anything. She probably just had to give some out and had limited resources. I also don't think it's a big deal.

I think you should talk to her about the reading. You are the expert on your child and she will appreciate your input.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to leave it a week between looking at home/school books. Do you have any idea how long that takes for a class of 30? Not just the actual act of reading and commenting, but getting them out of book bags and putting them back in again - all in a normal school day with all the usual interuptions of a reception class. I would assume any urgent issues would be dealt with another way. By the way, I think it's okay to miss a week once in a while too.

I don't mean to belittle your complaints, I just think you should wait a little longer before making such judgements and cut her some slack. What did you do last year? Do you like the school?

OMG what a bunch of wet responses. Go see the Head and discuss your concerns - you have been lumped with this incompetent dinosaur of a teacher twice now - how many more years is she going to get away with this approach? She will be there forever if no one says anything except for moaning at the school gate. You can do it nicely and politely as a concerned parent BUT you should do it.

I can't comment on your entire posting but one query I do have is how do you know that your ds is actually showing the teacher that he does know his letter sounds.

We had similar with ds in reception last year. I was frustrated at the basic work he was getting. I put comments in his reading diary that seemingly were ignored. In a chance meeting at the school I had a word with his teacher who said they had tested ds and he only knew 4 letter sounds. He knew all of them at nursery and was reading simple sentences. For whatever reason he completely regressed when he started in reception and it literally took months for him to show his teacher what he was capable of.

If you aren't happy with the teacher and your ds's progress I would arrange a meeting with the head.

Lots of schools are still using old fashioned reading schemes because they do not have the money to change over to a phonic scheme.

I think that ORT level 1+ is about right for a child who knows letter sounds and is learning to blend. If an ORT 1+ book has the word "frightening" in it, then it is not the teacher's fault. She is working with the reading scheme that she has been provided with, and of course a reception child would not be expected to read it.

I remember dd1 having a Ginn stage one book called honeybee. It had the words abdomen, thorax and antennae in it. I went to the teacher, very puzzled as to why young children were being given words to read that many adults would struggle with. She said that the purpose of the text was to familiarise children with non-fiction books, and of course reception/year 1 children were not expected to know technical terms.

If the numeracy homework was too hard, then let the teacher know. I am sure that your ds will be able to complete this by the end of reception, but at the end of the first month could be rather ambitious.

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Two of my DC had a pretty lame reception teacher, but I don't actually think that was much of a problem (although I was quite PFB with DC1). Frankly, there's plenty of time to catch up.

A truly awful teacher is one who bullies children, and DC1 had that in year 1. We struggled through the year, whilst DC1 was left a nervous wreck. Should we have made a fuss? Yes - but the problem was, every time we raised issues it was turned back on DC1. I sometimes think that we should have made more fuss for the sake of other children (and every year many children in this woman's class go through exactly what DC1 did), but ultimately we put our child's immediate needs first.

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