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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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New recruit teacher is inadequate

459 replies

BoboChic · 15/09/2015 06:41

This, basically. DD in Y7 started secondary school 2 weeks ago. One - and only one - of her teachers is totally inadequate. He is a new recruit. Parents and pupils have noticed pretty quickly that he doesn't have the first inkling of the subject he is supposed to be teaching. One approach has already been made to the school to alert them. What are the best words to use to describe this situation? Inadequate? Lacking subject knowledge?

OP posts:
BitOutOfPractice · 17/09/2015 12:39

got you (the DC) to a very high standard"

And

"they haven't done very well I knew this all along"

Are both direct quotes.

Which is it op? At first you said they were at a very high standard. Now you're saying you knew they weren't all along. Which is it?

And, if you'll forgive me for saying so, you don't seem the sort of parent to keep quiet if you knew all along it was crap.

SilverBirchWithout · 17/09/2015 12:40

I suspect the Head has turned the OP's concerns about a specific teacher and his lack of effective management to suit his own agenda about the curriculum. Knowing her style and enterprise he has flattered her and fired her up on an issue that he has been unable to get the MD to move on in the past.

Either that or he wanted the MD to have a good laugh at the entitled Englishwoman too.

SheGotAllDaMoves · 17/09/2015 12:43

BOP the OP's DD and her peers were taught by a much loved teacher and to a high standard in their previous school (junior).

Now they have moved up to secondary where the pupils have historically not done well in this subject.

BitOutOfPractice · 17/09/2015 12:47

silver you may well be right.

But there are SO many inconsistencies in this thread it's unreal

She's known about the big problem since May v the big problem only emerged after the HT chat

She's always known the kids were doing crap in this subject v the old teacher got them to a high standard

She wants the new teacher fired v why would we ever think she wanted him fired?

All of this plus a hilarious analogy about Aunt Chotilde's cake and an industrial caterer.

And I'm genuinely confused

Oakmaiden · 17/09/2015 15:07

I'm just confused by the refusal to say what the actual subject is. It is not like saying "It is latin/chemistry/divination" would make the op any more identifiable than the information she has already given.

BitOfFun · 17/09/2015 15:14

Hang on- you were giving a presentation in school to tell them where they were going wrong?

Was this the primary or the secondary?

I can only imagine the size of the party they threw after you left your child's last school. I bet that Head is tempted to reconsider his plans for early retirement and that the staff absence levels are back down to pre-2010 levels Grin

SuburbanRhonda · 17/09/2015 15:40

BOF

I understood it to mean that the OP used the occasion of a presentation by the school to make a point about where they were going wrong.

Not sure whether that's better or worse than your scenario.

BoboChic · 17/09/2015 15:47

At the end of presentations by schools there are usually quite a lot of Q&As.

OP posts:
SuburbanRhonda · 17/09/2015 15:53

But you described it as

a comment I made in a presentation at school

not a question.

And judging by the way you've expressed yourself on this thread, I can't imagine it was an especially constructive comment either.

BoboChic · 17/09/2015 16:00

If I were giving the presentation I wouldn't be commenting on it, would I?

I think that probably the judge of the usefulness of the comment was the person who wanted to pick my brains as a result of it!

OP posts:
Chippednailvarnish · 17/09/2015 16:05

I have found his CV on LinkedIn

I stopped reading at this, Stalker!

SuburbanRhonda · 17/09/2015 16:07

OP, do you ever worry about your total lack of self-awareness?

Hmm
BoboChic · 17/09/2015 16:09

No, but I very much worry about other people's lack of awareness of their children's education.

OP posts:
ThenLaterWhenItGotDark · 17/09/2015 16:33

Well, in all fairness Bobo, the rest of us don't seem to have chosen (after apparently lots of research) to pay to send our kids to schools with 'inadequate' teachers and 'flawed curriculum' do we?
So maybe the lack of awareness thing is a leedle bit closer to home.

Bolograph · 17/09/2015 16:34

No, but I very much worry about other people's lack of awareness of their children's education.

You're the parent with the children at the flawed school with the flawed curriculum, incompetent teachers and heads who can't do anything, not us.

sanfairyanne · 17/09/2015 16:36

Be funny if its English and the spellings are
Color, humor, center, organize

BitOutOfPractice · 17/09/2015 16:50

OP you said you made the comment "in a presentation" at school. Not on. Or after.

And whoever it was that "picked your brains" about it after your comments / presentation, clearly didn't action anything did they?

Then you seem to have forgotten all about the issue until it emerged again / for the first time, in your chat with the HT

Am I right? Or even more confused than I thought?

TheBeautifulAndTheDamned · 17/09/2015 17:26

OP - you were originally looking for "jargon" to support your case and you cannot adequately explain the situation here. You even say it will take you a few days to write it all out and it is "beyond you" to explain it on MN. Lots of posters are confused and you seem a tad incapable of casting light on the subject, with your analogies about cakes and spellings. MN is anonymous, you know. Nobody knows who you are here.

Are you sure you are fit to be reorganizing the syllabus at this school where your child has been a pupil for two weeks?

SuburbanRhonda · 17/09/2015 17:32

I think the purpose of the "of course I couldn't possibly say" stance of the OP is to add a little spice and drama to an otherwise fairly dull OP.

Shutthatdoor · 17/09/2015 17:47

You're the parent with the children at the flawed school with the flawed curriculum, incompetent teachers and heads who can't do anything, not us.

Plus apparently paying for the privilege of doing so..m

mathanxiety · 17/09/2015 18:24

"no taxation without representation' means that you have right to be represented, not that you have the right to push your individual values/opinions on others.

As noted, it is groups who get together and can therefore be said to be representative. Not individuals with bees in their bonnets. Groups like African American parents who formed the pressure group APPLE ('African-American Parents for Purposeful Leadership in Education') or a group like the parents (aka the Booster Club) who campaigned for years for lights for the football stadium so the team could play night games and the community could have a night out and appreciate the school. Soon after the lights were installed the team got new safety equipment after many community members saw the state of the helmets the boys were using, shoulder pads coming loose from jerseys, etc.

Parents have the right to input into schools, they do not get to dictate policy, democracy means that the needs of all are served ( something the original "taxation without representation" forgot, many needs were not served.)

The needs of all are served when certain groups of students do not feel school security is targeting them disproportionately. Discipline in general is improved and that is good for all. More students feel the school welcomes them and cares for them as individuals and reflects them as people (which is great in a huge school) when teachers are recruited from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. When the whole community feels it has a stake in a school the tax dollars keep on pouring in. The school is seen as receptive to the community's needs and all can move forward together as those needs change.

The fruits of this include a sense on the part of students that they belong, a willingness of parents to attend policy meetings, to be in contact with teachers wrt academic progress, to be confident and proactive advocates for their students sen, racial/ethnic/linguistic minorities, lgbt and in effect the needs of all are served. This takes the form of excellent SN services, bathroom and sports participation policies to meet transgender student needs, sensitivity to the needs of immigrant families, religious and racial and ethnic minorities, and everyone benefits when everyone is basically happy. I think you have in mind a model where an administration decides what happens and the community likes it or lumps it.

not that you have the right to push your individual values/opinions on others
This is a community that actively encouraged racial integration in the 60s thanks to the determination of a few brave activists who pushed their agenda, convinced people the experiment would work, and eventually got a large number of residents behind them, at a time when white flight from the neighbouring city was in full swing. The community continues to foster diversity today, and that means pressing the schools, especially on matters where diversity and inclusiveness are concerned.

It is a community that has diversity of income and socio economic background as well as race, language and ethnicity. The school simply has to be receptive to input, pressure and even outright protest, and the community, which has a huge stake in the success of the school, most certainly has the right to that input.

A few years ago the issue of detentions for students due to tardiness to class was brought up, and the school invested in a swipe card system where all students in the hallways after passing period had to swipe. Detentions evened out a bit but it was also demonstrated that in general the detentions were not being meted out to any one group disproportionately to the number of tardies. The question of detentions was eventually revisited as a result of the hoo haah -- one issue looked at was scheduling, and whether it was physically possible for students to make it from PE on the first floor to for instance, Latin, on the fourth floor and at the opposite end of the building in the five minute passing period. PE instructional time was shortened slightly to allow students more time to change clothes and gather bags from the gym lockers. Another issue was whether detentions were effective as a deterrent. There is a slightly tweaked code of discipline now in place than the one that operated when DD1 was a high schooler. And also there is ongoing sensitivity training for the school security personnel.

Undergrad courses in the US are not (for the first few years anyway) as academic as those in the UK. Students persuing something like my subject (Econ) would find that the first two years at least are almost comparable to A level, even at Ivy League schools. This is what results in things like "pre med" and "pre law" sets of courses at colleges. Where as in the UK our students would start at 18.

Undergrad courses that I have seen my oldest three DCs go through are every bit as challenging as those I took. My oldest DD is an Econ grad of an Ivy and DS graduated from a leading state university with a science major. DD2 is a junior in a leading RC university; all had gen ed or core requirements that would have stretched university students in the UK. '...almost comparable to A level, even at Ivy League schools' is a big stretch.

Pre med and pre law are only mickey mouse concentrations in mickey mouse universities, which abound unfortunately. In a selective university they provide a solid academic foundation for future law or medical studies or in fact any other avenue a graduate should wish to follow. Medicine and law school courses are structured differently in the US from the UK. There is something to be said for a system that allows students to decide to devote their lives to a profession a few years after the ripe old age of 18.

rollonthesummer · 17/09/2015 18:29

Why would the teacher have got the heave ho? My objective regarding the teacher at this stage is to get the issues with the teacher acknowledged, nothing else.

Erm.....!

There are important reasons for not waiting (French employment law means that if we wait too long we'll be stuck with him for the whole year).

TheBeautifulAndTheDamned · 17/09/2015 18:32

I do need jargon because want I feel like asking is why this moron got the job!

This is a complete non sequitur.

BitOutOfPractice · 17/09/2015 18:49

It's not just me then who is completely baffled by the contradictions and just plain bonkerness in this thread.

I notice the op pops up immediately to answer questions that suit her or to be sarky but not to help iron out the inconsistencies we've spotted Hmm

MrsSchadenfreude · 17/09/2015 18:52

Bobo - first off, you have no idea how pleased I am that I can buy Pierre Herme macarons in London, albeit at vast expense. Grin

Math - there is terrible snobbery about the low standards in American education in the UK. DD2 transferred back to the British system from her American school two years ago. She was way ahead of her British peers in Maths and English. DD1 has stayed in the US system, and is now doing the IB at an international/US school. Her American education has more than equipped her for this.

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