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Original poster

Don't Mess with Miss Beckles

71 replies

Whizzz · 28/03/2006 22:09

Did anyone else see this ?
Billed as being this radical guru & I didn't see much that was radical. Advice seemed to be things like tidy your room, do your homework & spend less time with your girlfriend.

Hmm...

OP posts:

jollymum · 29/03/2006 22:14

Private, not my choice, Ex Dh, and Ds didn't want to go. He's looking at colleges at the moment because he's been asked to erm leave sort of because he's unlikelt to get thegrades/have to attgitude to carry on in 6th form. He's developed a skin like a rhino and thinks the world owes him a living.

jollymum · 29/03/2006 22:15

sorry, spelling crap. Tired and grumpy!

jollymum · 29/03/2006 22:30

Kids. eh? Just gone up to check on Ds2. Bedtime 10pm (he's 13 in April) Doing his maths homework. Got in at 4pm and I asked, OMG, did I nag, if he had any homework. It got to about 8 amd littlest one in bed. Squeezed in a pizza and asked again. Checked in his non-existent book (in his brain, because he's lost it) and he NOW decided he has maths? I apparently have got him in trouble because he hasn't finished his maths.

This is what I meant, I can't really bollock him because he will have a BIG wobbly and wake the two smaller ones up, being loud and selfish. He has copies this from the oldest one and even the littley tells ME what I can and can't do. He's the most scarcastic 7 year old I know (but cutiepie with it}

Moomin · 29/03/2006 22:31

it's times like this i think state school teachers have a better time of it than private ones. I've taught in a rural cosy, m/c school where kids were very well-supported at home; big uni take up after school; some kids very nice but many were arrogant, defensive and smart-arsed. school i teach at now is city school, poor area, few prospects, kids can be 'rough' but very open and friendly on the whole - what you see is what you get: if they have a cob on, they tell you / show it then they get over it. they're not snidey, probably because they lack the intelligence, but i know which i prefer

springintheair · 29/03/2006 22:33

It's not a teacher's job to regulate a pupil's home life or even to interfere in it for good reasons like we're not qualified or trained to do that and, as shown on the programme, this could open up a huge can of worms which we may not be able to deal with. Teachers are in loco parentis when the child is in school which means we can't just 'give up' on a child however much we may want to. However, difficult the school is and however bad a teacher may be I have never come across a child who is not set targets even if this is to submit x piece of work on x date. There may be a limit to what the teacher can do if a student persistently fails to meet these targets after detentions, letters home, chats with form tutor, head of year etc. And huge things like attitude to academic work, drinking alcohol, parties, sex are a parent's responsibility and not a teacher's unless they're happening on school premises that is. One of my big problems with Miss Beckles is that she crossed the line between school and home life and I think this was wrong. If she had stayed in school and set small, realistic and measurable targets she may have been much more successful. If the parents needed help with their domestic situation which they seemed to then they should have enlisted/ been given help in the form of a qualified family therapist. Any professional (teacher or therapist) should make absolutely clear what they are able and aiming to achieve and set clear guidelines to do this. Beckles did not behave like a professional of any sort.

springintheair · 29/03/2006 22:41

If she had been sensible Beckles would also have taken the time to find out exactly what the students wanted to achieve themselves (and possibly the families which would probably be very different). It would have been a waste of time if the kids just didn't care about their results like trying to help someone give up smoking if they don't want to. And bloody ridiculous to tell a teen-aged boy to give up his girlfriend and none of her business. Much better to say 'you need to spend 1 hour in the library after school working on x' than 'you must not see your girlfriend for 5 days'. How stupid.

zippitippitoes · 29/03/2006 22:42

got lost here Jollymum has kids a private school rather than state, yes?

Moomin · 29/03/2006 22:43

yep

jollymum · 29/03/2006 22:45

If targets had been set at school they would have been and were laughed at. Kids like those just think about their social life and education comes second. They live in another world and assume things will just pan out, bacause they do. Those kids will fall in shit and come up smelling of orses. They7 are part of a chain and if they fail in one way, rescuers will come by way of "daddy" and sort them out. Therefore, by tackling the home life/crappy parenting/scared parents issue, she would maybe make school life easier (and hopefully the teachers' lives because the kids would have been easier in class) And BTW, were those kids smoking at home/on school premises? MY kid knows I know he smokes, but god help him if he smoked in front of me or his siblings. He knows it's stupid amd his stepdad is trying to give up, (smoker from 14), but he at least has that boundary. I'm losing him, like those kids and I would love someone (he's too old for Supernanny) to come in and tell him, baecause I;m running out of words and pateince. He's taking too much of our time and he needs to let the others have a lookin.

jollymum · 29/03/2006 22:46

OMG, I'm turning into a fish.Apolgies for the sp.

Moomin · 29/03/2006 22:50

lol at the kids smelling of orses

jollymum · 29/03/2006 22:54

Well, they all have at least two of the buggers One for the family and one for the au-pair

springintheair · 29/03/2006 23:01

You're right that there's a link between home life and problems and school life and attitude to academic work but I think it's the job of a qualified therapist to help with family problems and a teacher's job to teach. No reason why these things couldn't work simultaneously but they should be separate. Clearly those families had deep-rooted, long-standing problems. The parents found it difficult to discipline the kids and possibly also to encourage, motivate and show pride and affection for them. There also appeared to be conflict between the parents in some cases. These issues could not be solved in the couple of months before the students' exams. Maybe they never could be. In spite of all of these (dangerous) tv programmes like Supernanny it's not possible to give families instant make-overs the way you can do with houses. They're much more complicated than that.

Interesting you say that the kids don't worry about working hard because they think 'daddy' will bail them out when the real 'daddys' in the programme were actually conspicuously absent or ineffective.

I don't belive that teachers give up on their students lightly if at all. If a student is impossible to discipline or motivate this is a problem which has come from home and needs to be resolved at home. It's very hard for a teacher to deal with problems caused by poor parenting or family conflict they can only try to get the kid to do the class and homework set and pass their exams but at the end of the day it depends how much the kid wants this and has the background and support to be able to do it.

springintheair · 29/03/2006 23:09

Have to go to bed or I will certainly be a rubbish parent and teacher tomorrow.

MadameDeMars · 30/03/2006 16:52

Talked to a few of the pupils today. They were not impressed with Miss Beckles and apparently there were more than 3 children originally, but they couldn't abide her!

ScummyMummy · 30/03/2006 22:38

Not all the parents were horrid though. I thought Josh's mum was lovely, actually.

springintheair · 31/03/2006 07:58

Scummy, I didn't think any of them were horrid. Some just had different parenting styles from mine and at least one evidently needed a lot of help to get her family back on track. On a different sort of programme and perhaps if Miss Beckles had been any good we would have seen them in a completely different light. I agree with post about Dr Tanya. She's brilliant and I think she would have been so much better at agreeing a way forward and helping establish the frameworks for all of the family to make progress.

ScummyMummy · 01/04/2006 16:07

I thought Luke's mother was utterly horrid!

RTKangaMummy · 04/04/2006 21:01

on now

zippitippitoes · 05/04/2006 10:29

This Beckles woman is awful. I gave the programme another go and she has no idea how to motivate at all. last night's should have suited her but she cou;ld not get across the rewards of learning or doing well or even your own best at all..she is clueless

MadameDeMars · 05/04/2006 12:20

and she feeds into racial stereotypes!

I know the boy. I remember him from primary school.

I am finding myself more and more irritated with this woman. She doesn't have a clue!

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