Advice needed pls - Do you think this teacher is BU, and what do I say to her?

[ilovepiccolina]

DS is 16 and takes his mock Maths GCSE this week, real thing in the summer. For the past few weeks he's been coming home saying that Miss sent him out of the class for no good reason. I know that he can fidget, not listen etc so have ignored this. Then on Friday he came home angry, frustrated and upset, saying that he had put his head down briefly onto the desk, and she had shouted 'Right, out NOW' etc. & made him stand outside for 15 mins. Another boy was sent out for making a noise as he yawned. (They were both 'disrupting' the class.) He says that this was totally unjustified.

She'd gone home by this time so I've sent a note asking her to ring me. I am very concerned that DS is missing valuable tuition in a subject he struggles with. I bumped into at CA friend who's worked with this teacher, she said if she was the parent she would kick up a stink, and that the teacher is hopeless at teaching basically - she doesn't get 'on task' for the first 20 mins so no wonder the dch get bored/sleepy/distracted.

Why couldn't she have said to DS 'Sit up straight!' He said he would have. Is there not a better way of dealing with this behaviour? DS says all the other teachers ignore it.

What should I do?

Well chums, I have some news - DS has just come home with the results of his Maths mock GCSE: a D, 3 points off a C !! He got 132 & needed 135 for a C.

This was the first Maths lesson since the mock, and Miss had an announcement to make - she is leaving at the end of term.

DS is cock-a-hoop and found it hard, he says, not to shout YESS!!

As for me, .

Also he said that the Head has told him not to revise so much, give it a rest now so as not to overdo it. Little does she know....

Anyway, lets hope he gets Scaryteacher next term. And I feel newly motivated to reach for that Revision book & sit him down, after Christmas.

Yay!

Good news ilovepiccolina.

I think you were right to ask if there wasn't a better way of managing this situation.

Teaching is not done in vacuum, a teacher has to teach real live children and inevitably some will misbehave. A good teacher must learn effective techniques to deal with this.

It seems to me that this teacher was weak and could not impose her authority on the class. Her only answer to minor infractions, such as rude yawning, was to take the extreme measure of removing the child from the class. This weakness would inevitably be noticed by other children and as the sense of injustice and resentment would grow, more and more challenges would be made to her authority. In the end the pressure on her would start to become unbearable.

Teaching is a hard job and she should have been given help in how to deal more effectively with these situations.

Oh for God's sake. She can't be that crap if he nearly got a C, can she?

Your son was rude. She dealt with it. And I don't think you're doing him any favours by encouraging him to blame his problems on other people's personalities. He needs to take responsibility for himself.

The teacher probably has about two hundred children to teach and worry about- she can't waste time trying to deal creatively with lads who are just going to be rude and insolent.

Sorry. I've had a bad day. I aplogise if that seemed overly abrupt.

It's OK. I'm jolly glad I'm not a teacher. Well, I'm an unofficial one, as we all are, & that's hard enough!

It's just that he felt that in this particular incident she was being unjust & totally over-reacting.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that he is lovely. Kind. Cares, as in offered to help an old man who was clearly struggling across the road, and put his arm round him! So not a yob.

I'm glad he's done so well, that's great news. And my was not that a 16yo should enjoy skateboarding- perfectly natural- but that his mum should think it cruel to make him do a bit of work with a tutor when he preferred playing.

It won't be long before he needs to either earn a living or prepare to do so, and that involves having to do things we don't want to and dealing with other people even if they seem unjust at times.

I never thought he sounded like a yob from your description. But perhaps like someone who still gets away with seeing himself as a younger child than he is. I am sure he is a lovely boy. But he needs to start thinking like an adult soon.

Maybe you have a point. He's my baby . He says he will stay at home until he's 30

You teach do you Claig? Were you in her classroom? How do you know that this wasn't just the last straw after maybe teaching this class last year, or having to deal with constant low level disruption?

I taught 600+ students per week, and believe me, if they stepped out of line, they stepped out of my classroom. They had no right to disrupt the learning of others. They went up through the assertive discipline levels and then were removed so I could do my job.

I think that this
'It seems to me that this teacher was weak and could not impose her authority on the class. Her only answer to minor infractions, such as rude yawning, was to take the extreme measure of removing the child from the class. This weakness would inevitably be noticed by other children and as the sense of injustice and resentment would grow, more and more challenges would be made to her authority. In the end the pressure on her would start to become unbearable.' is utter bollocks. He tries that in the workplace, and believe me some do, then he would be out on his ear. Rude yawning is not 'a minor infraction', it is interrupting a class which takes away teaching time. I have sent very pointed notes home about this in planners and suggested earlier bedtimes for some.

It's good about his D grade, but the temptation after a good mock result is to coast through to the exams. He can't afford to do that and needs to start at the beginning of the syllabus and revise some each week, especially the bits he found hard, again and again, until he has it off pat. I speak from Year 11 experience as a teacher and a tutor.

Nothing wrong with sending someone out the class for a while.

No I don't teach. I am in management and have had experience of behavioural problems with employees and know that there are several ways to skin a cat.

I think the situation arose because the teacher handled the situation in a wrong manner over a period of time, evidenced by her sending the pupil out of the classroom over a period of several weeks for "no reason", which I take to be relatively minor offences. If she had nipped it in the bud in the correct manner earlier on, then putting his head down on the table would never have become the final straw. As the mother said, telling him to sit up straight would probably have been sufficient.

I do not consider that a student yawning loudly, probably tryng to get a laugh from his mates, necessitates being sent out of the classroom. I think the teacher's reaction was counter-productive and would only create more problems for the future. I think she escalated these issues because she had no other solutions and could not demand respect in any other way. I think this is a failure. If the teacher carried on like that, probably half the class would need to be removed.

It is evident that you like to think of yourself as some sort of dictator, but let me assure you that in the workplace, as opposed to a classroom full of children, people are not "out on their ear" for putting their head down on a desk. Employees are not ciphers, they are valuable to a business and are not dismissed at the drop of a hat.

The children that you have had removed for "stepping out of line" so that you could do your job have been failed by you, but I guess you don't care about them, so long as it made your job easier.

I know standards have dropped in schools and now I can see why with the kind of language you use. Sending notes home about earlier bedtimes probably gave you a chuckle, but it is utter bollocks

"It is evident that you like to think of yourself as some sort of dictator, but let me assure you that in the workplace, as opposed to a classroom full of children, people are not "out on their ear" for putting their head down on a desk."

Doesn't that rather depend on what job you are in? I can think of quite a few jobs where this would not go down well, particularly if you're dealing with clients/customers.

cory you are right that different levels of jobs are treated differently by employers. I was really referring to skilled jobs, where it is not easy to replace the employee and where a great investment has been made in the employee. For instance a top performing salesperson would not be easily dismissed by the employer because the employer values their skills. Any behavioural issues would have to be dealt with using good man management techniques, you cannot dictate to highly skilled and educated people.

Checkout staff may well be treated in a more brusque manner by employers, who feel that they can bully the employee and easily replace them. But even for these jobs, the most enlightened employers do not treat their staff in this manner, and thereby gain respect and improve the productivity and goodwill of their employees.

Good personnel and man management is an art and requires experience, empathy and an understanding of human psychology. Needlessly escalating issues and crying wolf will be detrimental in the long term, good managers gain respect and cooperation by fair and disciplined treatment. You do not put a manager into a position of power if they are not able to command the respect of their employees and this is not obtained by dictatorial behaviour. Such behaviour will only create confrontation and lead to disruptive behaviour.

A recent example of poor man management is the alleged headbutting of a football player by a manager because the player objected to a day's leave being cancelled. Confrontation situations like this, and also classroom situations, can be solved by good personnel management techniques.

In this case the teacher could have benefitted from these techniques to make her life easier in the classroom. It is not the teacher's fault, her employer should really provide some form of continuing education to help her manage these situations more effectively.

It's easy to see that you don't teach, and have no idea of the dynamic in a classroom. Dealing with upwards of 32 16 year old students all with differing needs and levels of attainment in a mixed ability class, in the confined space of a classroom, normally without a TA, can be like herding cats. I am sick to the back teeth of people in 'management' telling teachers how to do their job. Our job is to teach a subject to students, not to have to take on board 'good personnel management techniques'. We'd all be working in HR if we'd wanted to do that. Standards in education are slipping not because a 43 year old with a degree says bollocks on MN; but because students are allowed to be disruptive in school and aren't dealt with effectively and firmly enough early on by SMTs or their parents.

You deal with adults who are totally different to children. With adults in employment you have a carrot and a stick. If you are good at your job, you'll get paid for it, if you are not, then you won't, as you may be on warnings, and then lose your job, with all the attendant consequences. Having worked in another sphere for 10 years before I went into teaching, that is how it worked.

With children, especially those in KS4, there is no stick that can be effectively wielded by the teachers; as we are not allowed to use strong sanctions with the students, and they don't in many cases give a damn. They are also, when they disrupt a class, interrupting teaching time and the learning time of others. Perhaps you think that having to deal with disruptions that then eat into class time is an acceptable use of a teachers time; and don't mind all those who want to learn being failed by the disruptive children about whom you are so concerned. I do mind and I don't like having to interrupt a lesson again because certain students don't feel like participating.

I don't know where you work, but where I worked, putting my head on the desk in front of a client would have been cause for a reprimand at the least; in my highly skilled and educated dh's job it could cause death or injury or damage to millions of pounds worth of unique equipment. 'Sorry, we dropped the periscope (the only one in the world), as Sir had his head on the deck, he wanted a bit of a rest'. I don't think so. If you are in a job you are paid to work, not put your head down; that is what your lunch time is for.

How do you know, apart from the OP's post that the child was sent out for 'no reason'? You only have her side of the story. This teacher could have been dealing with constant low level or high level disruption from the same student for weeks. SMTs are scared in some schools of removing students from the classroom, so they have a word with them, they promise to be good, you have them back in class, and it happens again and again ad nauseum and ad infinitum.

I am by no means a dictator, (and I would like to see your evidence for saying so). I do however have a set of rules of how I expect students to conduct themselves in my classroom. Every student from year 7 to year 12 copied these into their books, and the consequences of not adhering to the rules were explained.

When you have students coming into school who haven't got to bed until 0100, and they are 12, then yes, bedtimes are important. If the children are too tired then they are disruptive and don't learn; hence the notes in the planner. The same children would try to get through their day fuelled by Red Bull either given to them by their parents for breakfast, or purchased at the local superstore on the way to school. There are probably 3 students like that in every class. Some teachers see upwards of 18 different classes a week, minimum, depending upon the subject they teach. The implications are obvious.

'The children that you have had removed for "stepping out of line" so that you could do your job have been failed by you, but I guess you don't care about them, so long as it made your job easier.' Mmmm, you'd know all the kids I taught would you? The ones who I removed who have gone on to Uni and good solid careers; for whom the penny eventually dropped that it was their education they were hurting, and their own prospects, by their behaviour. Some, yes, whatever you did, you couldn't help, but then, neither could anyone else, and it wasn't for lack of trying either.

'Teaching is not done in vacuum, a teacher has to teach real live children and inevitably some will misbehave.' I think most teachers have figured that one out, and that we also possess 'experience, empathy and an understanding of human psychology' because we cope with the disparate needs in some cases of up to 600+ differing individuals a week, let alone any contact we may have with colleagues. Teaching is an art imo.

I've worked on both sides of the fence, teaching and not in teaching, so I have experience of both worlds, and teaching was by far the hardest of the two. I suggest you do a couple of terms in the classroom in a comp dealing with students, planning and marking, and the compulsory Masters degree course that is now being introduced, and then see if you have the time or the energy to apply your personnel techniques.

scaryteacher it looks like you indulge yourself scaring your classroom. It doesn't appear that you have much empathy for the children. Maybe if you were a little less smug you might learn a few things that could improve your teaching.

I agree that teaching is an art, one that it would appear that you are not very adept at.
Classroom management has aspects in common with other forms of management, hopefully the "compulsory master's degree" will teach you that.

Blimey O'Reilly, I have read all this thread and may I just say that I would prefer Scaryteacher to teach my children than you, Claig.
I am not entirely sure why it is that a person with absolutely zero classroom management experience thinks she can come on a thread like this and tell an experienced (and,from what I can tell, excellent)that she is doing her job all wrong - but I would suggest that a couple of weeks of observation in a secondary school classroom might well destroy some of your smug assumptions. Constant low-level disruption is one of the most demoralising aspects of the classroom experience both for teachers who want to teach and for pupils who actually want to learn something. Teachers who employ a zero-tolerance policy for this type of behaviour ultimately create a classroom environment that makes it easier for their pupils to learn in, something Scaryteacher clearly knows from experience and you, Claig, clearly have no idea about whatsoever.

I didn't say that scaryteacher is doing her job all wrong. I just don't think that having a zero tolerance policy of excluding children for minor issues will solve low level disruption, on the contrary I think it will eventually escalate the problem. I am not a teacher but I remember that when I was at school low level disruption was never dealt with in this way, teachers were able to deal with it without these exclusion measures.

Obviously teaching methods have changed since I was at school, and I was just offering my opinion, which scaryteacher referred to as "utter bollocks", which is why I continued the conversation with her.

omg.

claig, do you have any idea what constant low level disruption does in a class of 16yo? where maybe (on a good day) half of the class actually want to learn, but the other half are actively (but only 'at a low level') winding each other up to see who can cause the most disruption by 'minor' offences? so that they can pull the 'but i only...' line and 'she was bang out of order' and sucker their parents in?

...the total carnage caused by a 'low level' disruption, such as, oo, i don't know, putting your head on the desk whilst your mate yawns loudly just as the teacher has finished explaining something? and then they sucker their parents in - 'but he only.... my johnny can't be held responsible for what the rest of the class did...' even when darling johnny spent the rest of the day getting kudos from his mates for the amount of disruption he caused? yes, once, whatever, but every single time they look at their planner and go, 'maths next...' (snigger)

low level disruption wasn't quite the same in our day, because then (assuming you are about the same age as i am) there wasn't quite such a pfb mentality with parents, and somewhere along the line, teachers were able to exert a little bit of discipline and were given a little bit of respect. visit a school. fly on the wall. or have a couple of bright teenagers who spend their lives frustrated because they can't get their work done due to the 'low level disruption'.

zero tolerance is fine in my book. and having experienced life in and out of a classroom, the world of 'work' bears no resemblance. talking to them about work is irrelevant - they will say 'i don't need maths to be a hairdresser'. or 'i don't need science - i'm gonna work with my dad.' ' i don't need to pass my exams, i'm going to....'

it is truly fascinating talking to experienced teachers about crowd controlling utterly uninterested children. far too simplistic to suggest that the teacher or methodology is at fault.

OK Claig - I'm not adept at teaching,(and you are judging by what, posts on MN?) which is why year on year, I got the best GCSE results in my department. That's why I mark GCSEs each summer to get insight into how the Chief Examiner's mind is working because I'm not bothered.

I think Claig you are extremely smug - I don't 'indulge' myself in scaring my classes - that's difficult when one is 5'2" and damn sight smaller than most of the kids I teach. I tell them what the rules are in my work space and ensure that they are adhered to.

I have no empathy for children which is why my tutor group, my year 11s and my sixth formers used to come and use my classroom as a base (with me in it, because I have no empathy) each break and lunchtime except when I was on duty.

I also think you are losing your argument. I have impugned your opinion as utter bollocks, not your professionalism or your ability to do your job. I note that you are not extending me the same courtesy. It fascinates me that non teachers think that they know how to run a classroom and do my job, when I wouldn't tell them how to do theirs.

Incidentally zero tolerance for low level disruption works and gets the message through. Sometimes teaching is like playing chicken, whoever blinks first loses. I try not to be the one who blinks first.

madwomanintheattoc you are right in our day parents had respect for the teachers and the schools and would take the side of the school over disciplinary issues.

I can imagine how stressful low level disruption is and am interested in techniques to try to stop it. It seems that removing children from the class works, according to the teachers in this forum, so I am wrong about this. From the case in question it seemed to me that the teacher had excluded the child several times over the past few weeks, and was now reduced to excluding him for putting his head on the desk. It seemed to me that this course of action had not worked, because where do you go next, but I assume that as scaryteacher said you then work upwards through the disciplinary levels until the child is removed permanently from that class. It just seemed to me a bit excessive for minor issues, which never used to be dealt with in this fashion.

scaryteacher, I apologize for criticizing your professionalism, I did go over the top.
From your posts, I wrongly felt that you came across as uncaring, an attitude which I would not usually associate with a teacher.

Never underestimate your size, it is commonly held knowledge that small people are far more forceful than taller people, who are often gentle giants. You just have to think of terriers and great danes.

You are right, I now realize that the zero tolerance system does work.

Apology accepted Claig.

The problem with the low level disruption is that it is not in isolation. The student plays up, and plays to a gallery of the others in the class, some of whom will imitate, some of whom will egg the perpetrator on. If you do not deal with it quickly and firmly, you are setting yourself up, and those who want to learn, for a hard time for the rest of the year.

In most workplaces there are rules of conduct that are observed by employers and employees; be they health and safety rules, non aggression rules, politeness rules. I set out very clearly what the rules of behaviour are in my work space and I uphold them, because to do otherwise, to assume that students know the rules, is a mistake. Spell it out at the beginning of year 7, and each subsequent year, and it eventually filters through. Explain each time they disrupt a lesson the consequences - 'you've interrupted me, that's 5 minutes off your break time X' is effective, as is, 'I'll see you at lunchtime to finish the work'. However, sometimes, removing the irritant from the classroom works and resettles the rest.

If I had spoken to my teachers in the late 70s/early 80s as I have heard some children speak to theirs, my life would have not been worth living either at home or school. Those who were disruptive (and this was in a comp), knew what the sanctions were and didn't want to go there with some teachers.

If you are teaching a class every day and know that there is going to be one child in there who disrupts each lesson, then your patience runs out, as do your sanctions. teachers are left with nowhere to go by the system; and you would not believe how often the phrases in Mad woman's penultimate paragraph are trotted out.

scaryteacher, I agree it is a very hard and often thankless job that you do.

I am intrigued to know, if these techniques and sanctions work, why do we have a rising problem of indiscipline in classrooms, to the extent that many competent people are even put off from entering the profession. Or is this just a myth that the newspapers use to sell more copy?

If you've got a job, you have usually coped with school and have achieved some sort of examination grades worth having. Or you have a good attitude and a willingness to work that is of equal value to an employer.
Pre 16 education is one of the first filter levels, after GCSEs you find out whether you are heading to college, apprenticeships, employment or a NEET future.
Scaryteacher has all those combinations within her class at the moment. Not the filtered product that claig is familiar with.

We have a generation who are well aware of their rights, but fewer of them accept the responsibilities that go with their rights.
Ask the Government strategists why more and more is being added to the Primary curriculum that is less to do with Reading Ritin and Rithmatic and is more to do with attempting to shape minicitizens well from as early as possible, because the other influences that used to shape children's attitude have weakened in many cases. So schools are the last resort to give them all PSHCE, citizenship, Rights and Responsibilities....manners and an awareness that they don't function in isolation of others' needs and wants.
Sticking plaster on an arterial haemorrhage in many cases.

It's not a myth - but teachers can't be expected to stem the tide of what society deems permissible, or of what parents allow their kids to get away with.

My 14 yo ds knows what I expect of him behaviour-wise in a classroom, and if his teachers tell me that he has behaved inappropriately, then he loses privileges at home.

Imagine a group of teenagers on a street corner egging each other on to misbehave. Put them in a classroom - the setting is different, but the behaviour and at times attempts to intimidate aren't. Some don't grasp that that they have to modify their behaviour according to the context/surroundings they are in.

On the other hand, some of my students are charming and eager to learn, and they are what makes the job worthwhile.

yes it seems that society's problems are being dumped on teachers, who are then not given the proper backup and support when they try to deal with these problems.