What to do about horrible teacher who seems to delight in humiliating the children??

[CookMeDinner]

DC is in Y7 and has transitioned beautifully. However, there is one teacher that we hear about all the time, who seems to delight in humiliating the students. She spends a lot of time nitpicking and criticising the kids. After nearly a month, she doesn't know anyone's name and apparently randomly chooses someone off her registration list, asks, "Who is so-and-so?" and then tells them they have a detention.

The subject she teaches should be a fun one, but our child is so stressed out every day that they have her class I'm starting to become concerned that it's affecting their mental health. FTR, our child has not been at the receiving end of this teacher's treatment but they are troubled by how unfairly the others have been treated and they're stressed out expecting to be the target any day now.

I've advised DC to speak with the year head but I'd appreciate other suggestions about how to approach this.

I'm not sure if us asking for a meeting with the teacher makes sense, or if we should speak with someone else at the school.

Thanks.

Totally agree with this

just because others are also in the profession you don’t have to automatically take the view that the teacher is always right. There are certain elements of a teachers’ conduct that absolutely should be held to account and challenged if they are using the imbalance of power to create an environment of humiliation, shame and fear - simply not conducive to learning. There’s a huge difference between crowd control, punishment where it’s due and behaviour that has children dreading the lesson. I had a horribly shouty teacher who seemed to delight in picking on me infront of others saying “ She can’t do maths for toffee can she?” She would shout until her face was puce and yet I was shy and polite my only failure was to not be good at maths. I used to develop such bad anxiety before her lessons I couldn’t sleep and was physically sick. My mum would often get a call from the nurse to say I had stomach ache and needed to be collected. The outcome was my mental health wasn’t great and I still hate maths. I will never ever forget the fear just hearing her voice generated in me

@Illybidol

just because others are also in the profession you don’t have to automatically take the view that the teacher is always right.

I haven't seen anyone saying that the teacher must be right. However there are people saying, maybe get more information it seems odd.

On the other hand there are many responses saying go ahead and complain without getting any further details.

Are you both seeing something we aren’t? Can you link the all these comments you’re reffering to that no one else can see?

Agree with the pp's saying it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. If this is making your child anxious you need to speak to the school and make some enquiries. Maybe it can be explained, maybe it is an awful teacher in which case some checking and scrutiny may make her check her behaviour.

My DD's school send their policies out frequently and there is a lot of information in their planner. We got sent an email for a detention. Seeing an email titled 'behavioural incident' was a bit of a shock in year 7 but turned out it was a detention for being late to school.

Similarly to a PP I was a quiet kid at school who struggled to talk to teachers in any way and had no behaviour issues. I had two awful teachers. Somehow I was able to stand up for myself when it came down to it. One I spoke to after class and called his behaviour bullying. He didn't like that. I had to step back as he was spitting mad all red and purple and looking like he would explode. He was about to call my name again in class and even though I had very few friends at school the entire class called my name before he did letting him know that it was being seen.

Stop putting this onto your child. Tell your child you will investigate what is going on with the school. Tell your child you are grateful they told you and not to worry if they get picked for a detention if they've done nothing wrong, you will not be angry.

I would ask for a meeting with the school pastoral lead - in my school that is a deputy head - with the tone of 'I don't understand this, I'm coming to you as I don't know if my child is understanding properly, please could you help me, I'm worried about how much they are worrying about these lessons now' and see what the school say. Don't assume your child is fully getting the picture but i would definitely want this raised and a response.

IMO never complain to the teacher involved unless it is tiny.

Most teachers are great, a few are cunts, it could be true or your kid may have misunderstood something.

I disagree, the form tutor is the wrong route for a concern about a teacher's actions. A form tutor is for a concern about a child.

It is easiest, fastest and most confidential to go to the top (nearly). I would not raise a concern about a teacher through lower channels.

Teachers can be bullies. It happened to me, albeit I was only eight years old at the time. Never forgot it. Her husband taught at the senior school I went too and he could be a complete prat as well. Thankfully I only had him for one year and I mainly stayed off his radar. Although I still remember that one lesson when he egged on the boys in my class who picked on me.

So your concerns for your son are that the teacher doesn't know his name and is a bit nitpicking? She hasn't bullied your son or given him a random detention so try not to get too carried away here. It is not your business to go reporting teachers who are giving other children allegedly random detentions, they have their own parents to advocate for them. It is not unusual at this time in the year for secondary teachers to not know all the students names. As for the nitpicking, this teacher has a way she likes things being done in her classroom, it might be that there is expensive equipment (art, tech, IT) that she wishes to be treated in a certain way and she is just establishing her expectations.

Why don't you watch and wait, tell your son the other childrens parents will look out for them and that he should just keep getting things right if he isn't being told off. If of course you feel she is actually picking on your child unfairly that is different but it isn't what you have described here.

No one is saying that teachers can never be wrong but honestly if a parent of one of my tutees rang up with this complaint - this teacher isn't being horribly to my child but I think they are giving other students detentions for fun - I would roll my eyes a bit. I of course would look on the school system to see what the detentions were set for and mention it to the head of year and welfare officers but honestly unless the parent of the child who got the detention for nothing complains then what can we do? Your son doesn't know all the information and is getting himself worked up about something which is not happening to him. I would say to him 'Don't worry I am sure there is a reason you aren't aware of' rather than fueling his worries and making a big deal of it.

Head of year. Accepting you have only got one side of the story.

The thing is @WonderingWanda that is how these things are perpetuated, because everyone scoffs and says ‘huh, how ridiculous!’

and while I am not saying whether the teacher is one thing or the other it is possible for an adult to explain things in a way that sounds reasonable to other adults.

What is certain is having an attitude that ‘this would not happen here’ is unhealthy for all sorts of reasons.

If lots of students are being given random detentions then presumably those children or their parents would complain.
The OP is basically saying other students are being given a detention and my son doesn't know why. The response to that should be "why should he?"

I would assume that the teacher has a mark on the register that informs her that children have been late etc and therefore need to be kept in at break. My school have something similar.

I don't know the names of the kids in my class yet - by Christmas I tend to know them all.

I would speak to head of year and go from the angle that your dc is worried about detentions and feeling unhappy

Remind the horrible teacher that some of these kids will be caring for in in old age. Carers or social workers. When she has lost her marbles does she want to be be remembered as kind and have a lot of ‘above and beyond’ from her carers or not nice and get the basic.

My child is being bullied by their year 4 (primary) teacher, I swear some teachers actually hate children. She is an actual monster to those poor kids.
I do worry that it is a profession that attracts sadistic, abusive people. Sone of my secondary school teachers were abusive, looking back. If we treated out kids the way some teachers do, we'd be referred to social services.
A lot of children only feel safe at school, if their home life is shit, and then they're faced with people like this, awful.

Lots of schools have electronic systems that tally up positive/ negative comments and track detentions automatically. Teachers have to let kids know if they've got a detention and sometimes if it's last lesson, escort them to said detention even if it's nothing to do with their subject. E.g. A detention for being late in the morning. A popular system that does this is called Class Charts. Does your school have a system like that by any chance?

I don’t know that the parents would complain actually.

How well would it go down on here if a parent asked if they should complain if their child got a detention? Everyone would say he must have done something to deserve it.

As I have said I am not making a judgement either way. It could be a perfectly conscientious teacher who is just strict. It could also be someone genuinely mean. I just think it’s very dangerous to have the attitude that this could not happen here, for all sorts of reasons.

I do worry that it is a profession that attracts sadistic, abusive people

This is just so wrong. Most teachers do the job because they like children and want to give something back. I was a teacher for 27 years. I never met anyone colleague who was ‘sadistic and abusive’

Theg were caring and kind.

A teacher who gives out half a dozen detentions per lesson, at random and for no reason would have dozens of parents on their neck by the end of the week. Extremely unlikely that he us happening and, if it is, I imagine it will stop very quickly. So I'd take the detentions out of it, just reassure your dd you won't be cross if she gets one.

Then approach the head of pastoral care or the subject lead about the rest if you are still concerned.

SIMS at least used to automatically flag up students with a detention in red on the class registers - it could make the last two lessons of the day quite fraught for some staff, as nobody else would take the risk of incurring the students' sense of injustice earlier in the day. Bromcom shows a red D on the list as well.

Staff can be bullies, I don't doubt that - but it really sounds like this teacher is doing what she is supposed to, telling the kids - rather than than anything nefarious.

The bit about giving random detentions is utter nonsense. You should make an appointment as it will entertain everyone. What load of rubbish.

The detentions for no reason is crap. My DD has had a few for being late and emails are sent out to parents prior to the detention being activated which informs parents of exactly why it's been issued.

Pumpkinpatchlookinggood · 06/10/2022 11:16
I believe your dc op. My ds was bullied by a teacher. They were soon sacked. Don't be afraid to approach the Head teacher.. It does happen.

This.

It does happen and I think more school parents of non targeted pupils should question it if they think it’s happening. I did this for something I witnessed in the classroom before school day began, but after some parents had dropped off. The other parent really appreciated it