My 17 year old, a quiet, studious girl has always loved German. She has a new teacher this year who is (by all accounts) very angry and shouty. DD's grades have dropped significantly and she now hates this class. She tells me it is not just her but the teacher tears strips off them all given half an excuse. Today was DD's turn again, she had only half the homework done having missed the instruction for two pages. She wasn't the only one who had missed the second half, but was the one the teacher set her sights on. DD gets home at 8pm and cried telling me (it happened first class this morning) which is not like her. She cannot approach the teacher as she is scared of her and thinks she will cry (she's usually a bit tougher than this).
In general at school the attitude is that they are now old enough to understand that any loss or gain in work is to their own detriment or benefit so the teachers don't talk down to them as they would have done in younger years. DD says others in the class plead sickness to avoid the class but everyone dreads her class.
Would it be an over reaction to contact her year head about this? DD doesn't want me to as she thinks the teacher will pick on her more but I see DD slipping in this subject. She is changing schools for her final year next year as this is the latest in a long list of really bad decisions wrt to the senior cycle in her school. She has 4 months left of this teacher and will be very behind at this rate.
To put it in context she was an A student up til this year and barely passed her Christmas exam in this subject. She is keeping up in every other subject.