My child was hit by a pen, thrown by a teacher

[Tiredallthetimelaura]

So my daughter who is in year 8 was in a lesson when her teacher 'cold called' her a question. My daughter responded she didn't know the answer and the teacher then threw a highlighter pen at her, hitting her on the arm. The teacher then did it again to another student, also hitting them on the arm. We have reached level 2 of a complaint, but it's always investigated by management within the academy. The school keep down playing what happened and not investigating what we ask. This teacher is still teaching, although my daughter isn't going in on the day of that lesson, which is greatly affecting her attendance. The school said they would move my daughter so she could do a different lesson (double Maths or double English), but we said no! This feels like a punishment to our daughter. She wants to do that lesson, just not with that teacher... and we agree.
Any advice on what/how the school legally should be handling this? Happy to answer any further questions Xx

This is what I would feel

Cold call is actually where the questions are presented for everyone to think about and then the pupils asked to reply to certain ones are strategically chosen by the teacher. It's to cover the whole class. It's not punitive or picking on anyone and it's not true that children who are selectively mute should never be asked to answer questions. In my experience, the ones who genuinely have a problem don't also back chat and try to make smart comments in front of the whole class.

If you're going to do cold calling, it's important that kids can say I don't know without being criticised or mocked or having things thrown at them.

Where a child has special needs, their EHCP should be followed. If that says they shouldn't be cold called, they shouldn't be cold called.

This may help some people on the thread:

library.sheffieldchildrens.nhs.uk/supporting-a-child-who-has-selective-mutism/

No, sorry I wouldn’t be able to remember a particular student’s name and face out of 200 with the sole reason of sparing them from a question. That would not file under a "reasonable adjustment" in our policy because it isn’t reasonable, and puts the burden on the teacher.
As I said, usually what would happen is it would have been dealt with privately, pre-lesson, by the student not choosing to attend, being able to access videos if there are any on offer, perhaps extra small class supervisions, if that is possible, and the most likely case would be that the student would decide not to take this particular class. It is possibly not in the best interests of the student to take that class if they have this particular disability as they would be at a disadvantage.Maybe the student would offer to wear a particular identifier, which would help the teacher, but this would not be asked of the student as they might not feel comfortable “outing” themselves. A video or being excused from class are reasonable adjustments, and they would have been accepted as such by the disability committee, as the offer of a "reasonable adjustment" differs from case to case, and is not dictated or prescribed uniformly by a university committee across all cases. It is left to the teacher, and the committee only demands an adjustment to be made.
So no, a reasonable adjustment would not include forcing the teacher to change their lecture style or remember names and filter out students in such a dynamic and fast paced environment. Hope this helps.

You’ve not actually said what you want. Do you want the teacher to lose their job? A written apology? Hauled over the coals?
I don’t think the teacher should have thrown the highlighter but nor do I think they should lose their job over it.
With taking it so far and your daughter missing lessons - your response for me is disproportionate.

It's really not hard to make a note about any child in a particular class who has a special need, and then check your notes before teaching each class.

If a child had a need not to be cold-called, all teachers in the school would be asked not to do it. If you're saying that the teachers are all incapable of acceding to this request, then you're saying that the child can't go to any class in the school.

That's not a reasonable position.

It's never just one kid though is it...

Thank you for posting that link. If the child has selective mutism and the school has been told that, then all the teachers in the school should have been made aware of the facts in the article. The teacher who threw the pen is clearly ignorant of the facts about selective mutism.

Either the school has neglected to tell the teachers what is required of them when teaching this child, or the teacher in question can't be bothered to do it. Even if the teacher can't be bothered to follow the guidelines, at least she could not cold-call this child.

If the teacher, newly back from 6 months leave, hadn't been informed by the school of the child's needs, then the school should have apologised to the OP, informed the teacher what she needed to do from now on regarding this child, and reassured the OP that this would not happen again.

I don't understand why that would be an issue. I have sometimes had more than one student in a class who asked me not to cold-call them, and I simply noted down each of their names and didn't cold-call them.

I understand how you feel OP, i would feel the same.

Can you accept that it was thrown without the intent to harm (emotionally or physically) your daughter? If so, then I would expect the teacher to acknowledge that she shouldn't have thrown anything at a child whether in play or not and for the school to have apologised on her behalf but I would be happy with this response personally - sometimes people do dumb stuff without thinking. I would then talk to my daughter and show her the letter and encourage her to attend lessons with this teacher again as they have admitted it was wrong and promised it won't happen again.

If you can't accept this and you believe it was done to intimidate or harm your daughter, then this is far more serious and yes I think you need to go through the process and insist on your child moving classes and disciplinary action for the teacher.

Tonsilitittis
Is it possible you're not in the UK? The format of your class would be unusual in the UK, and a few points of vocabulary seem more US or elsewhere too.

I mainly wanted to reassure OP that contrary to your message which seemed to suggest otherwise, if her daughter is interested in uni she should not be put off and should expect reasonable adjustments to be made to support her where necessary. The vast majority of uni teaching doesn't even involve cold calling, and where it is used reasonable adjustments would be worked out.

I bet your daughter is loving life getting a day a week off school

“A bad thing” in the daughter’s perception - ie something that upset her. The child needs to learn to be more resilient. And yes, all this fussing and complaining and keeping the child off school each week is totally over-reacting. It sounds almost like a vendetta.

As for the PP who suggested that the child should have lobbed the pen back to the teacher, well what do you think would have happened if she did? Would the teacher have collapsed in a sobbing heap holding her lightly knocked arm and frantically texting the students for ‘statements’ before taking civil action against the child? No, she’d have said nothing or made a brief comment and moved on.

All this wailing, complaining, pressuring and gnashing is a complete overreaction to something that could have been sorted out in a few minutes.

I'd be really angry about this too. I think if a child threw a pen at a teacher it would result in an exclusion.

Not automatically, they’d look at context . Was it thrown in anger or part of group activity
in this example teacher throwing highlighter to class as part of an activity , not in anger or loss control

Do you also note down and agree not to ever ask other students to recall information, write at length, practise using subject specialist equipment, answer multiple choice questions, read challenging information, sit a test, give a reason .... or any other valid teaching or assessment strategy to check what they know because of a preference not to be included?

If any pupil can't answer correctly, that tells you something. Even if they tell you they don't know. (Even if they rudely say it's because you've been off.) If a child remains mute in response through fear or inability to speak then it's easy to move on, having still given them the option and waiting for them to be ready to respond on future. If they answer back to an adult, rather than trying to answer properly, then that's their choice to misbehave.

I'm wondering what the other girl's parent/s (who was also 'hit' on the arm) made of the non issue situation. I imagine they thought it ridiculous that the OP and her DD have gone into complete over drive about this.

OP, I'm guessing that your DD is playing you with the excuse she 'feels unsafe' around her music teacher, I mean, come on, you say she plays hockey and netball (where she's bound to get whacked at force with a stick or a ball, but she can't handle a PEN thrown at her arm, which didn't even leave a mark at all? Seriously?

She then insists she can't go into school for the WHOLE day, even though music is just one lesson? She's acting like a total snowflake I believe, and I think the reality is she probably doesn't enjoy the other subjects she has on that particular day, hence her claiming she's fearful, and OP you're giving in to her by agreeing to let her stay off school. That's my opinion.
You need to teach your child to stop being so precious.

Oh yeah, definitely.

Not definitely

I agree. Perhaps my sarcasm didn't come through, but there's no way a teacher hit by a pen would result in a child excluded. Schools can hardly exclude for serious violence and abusive behaviour.

You don’t know much about schools then! In many schools kids can push and swear at teachers and not get excluded - a pen hit is par for the course most days.

Just staggering the OP has continued to argue she is being reasonable about this 21 pages in.
If any of my dc had mentioned this, at most it would have involved me raising my eye brows or rolling my eyes.

The hours and hours schools have to waste on this kind of ludicrous complaint are part of the reason no-one wishes to teach anymore, and senior management are working such ridiculously long hors, none of which benefit any of the pupils.

I am in the UK at a highly regarded university. My native language isn’t English, but lived here for decades.
Yes of course, Harvard style is not ubiquitous in every subject, and is typical of subjects that involve debates, and case studies - MBA classes for example. However some technical subjects would also include this style of teaching - we have some applied Maths faculty teaching this way too. I really didnt mention it to put OP’s daughter off at all; but to make a point that she may come across this type of teaching method in the future. It would be useful for her to be aware and inquire about it before choosing to apply to a subject. There are all sorts of visible and invisible disabilities; and we do try to accommodate and cater to different learning styles, but equally there is a balance to be struck between choosing the most appropriate one for majority of students, and catering to individual needs. I wish we had a lot more resources to cater to everyone..

Hi - I was talking about university lectures, not school. Thank you for reminding me I can check my notes before each class :)

You're kidding, right?

It takes a lot more than that!