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

Exactly this.

Is she missing an entire day of school just to avoid one lesson a week? If so, that’s ridiculous and you need to put a stop to it.

Maybe reflect on why you haven’t got support

It's absolutely not a 'fact'. If you had any idea at all what goes on in schools you would know that.

Throwing pens to them when lending them. Occasionally the throw goes wrong because I'm human. I apologise and the kids usually laugh.

Is that seriously the standard you have for how children should be treated? If they're not being starved to death, they have nothing to complain about?

I have teenage children in school...it would

Haha this might warrant a detention at most. You've clearly not been in a classroom recently.

Maybe just hand the pen to the child next time?

Was in one yesterday actually

FFS. Your daughter is missing class on the basis of this with your approval. She is going to find life very hard.

It wouldn't, but you can continue to believe that if you wish.

But it was a PEN. It wasn’t going to hurt her, was it?
The school know you aren’t happy and they have spoken to the teacher. Get over it.

If she’d thrown a chair at her, then I might think your post was warranted, but frankly you sound really quite pathetic.
Teach your kid some resilience. There are awful things happening to children in the world. Some of them could only dream that the worst thing they had going on was a teacher jokingly lobbed a pen at them..

I thought you weren’t going to comment further OP? Massive overreaction to the situation.Poor daughter,she will be the laughing stock of the school.

I feel sorry for teachers nowadays,they have zero chance of doing a decent job with parents like OP.

Tomatoes, tomatoes.

you said it was thrown like a frisbee, that suggests to me it was thrown to her.

Throwing at her would be an over arm throw.

Because it sounds, from the fact that it was a game, like they were supposed to try and catch it. Lobbing something at a student the student is supposed to catch is not a problem. Or is it, to you?

Agree.

She couldn't answer the question, because the teacher had been off for 6 months and it was her first day back! They'd been taught by a cover

It's a fact

Maybe she was meant to catch it? She could possibly swap music for PE and work on that. 👍🏻

Shook up? I think you both need to grow up and stop being so dramatic.

🙄🙄🙄🙄 Fun police have arrived.

Pens are on my desk, kids at the back are far away, when I'm at the board/laptop I don't want to walk to give them a pen. Almost every teacher I know throws pens to hand them out.

It sounds really bad but I must say IME as a parent - we never really know the whole story or how bad it was. I have heard the students’ versions of events over the years and then you get a different picture depending who saw it.
I always try to trust the school first and I think it may not be as simple as it sounds.
Schools are weakened unless given our wholehearted support. Even sometimes when something far from ideal has happened.
I have no idea if what you describe is exactly what happened - maybe it is - but we have to support a school to get to the bottom of it always in my book. If every parent behaved as you did re this a school becomes a perpetual battle ground.

I once grinned and bore it when my dd got an absolutely egregious detention IMO and in the opinion of some of the staff but I said to dd - this is the ship you’re on and we take the calls that go for us and against us, she had broken a rule. So we gave them the benefit of the doubt and that has paid off over time- we have become part of the school ship, the rough and the smooth. If every parent cries ‘foul’ over every thing - schools cannot function.

I think many schools cannot recruit or retain enough good teachers so it’s important that we let them look into events and trust them and we need to try not demonize teachers even when they behave badly. Maybe it’s a complete one off - who is perfect? It’s a very stressful job & they learn with an audience often willing them to fail!

Kids can be unreliable witnesses. We love them too much to be objective.

I am very close to a young ECT1, I cannot tell you how much teachers put up with from our kids!

Me too. Being faced with parents like this must be so draining.

Says who? The teacher who says it was a game says the game was throwing pens at people? Or does the teacher say it was thrown to them, to catch?