What would you mind if one of your pupils wrote a school report about you?

[listsandbudgets]

Sorry to invade staff room but want your opinion before this is actually done.

DS (7) wants to write school reports for his teachers. He says he wants to email them to school. He's just dictated the following to me and hopes to write more!!

Mr. Smith should stop making personal comments about people's appearance and tuck his own shirt in.

Mr. Bloggs is excellent at maths but I'm worried his not read a book all term.

Mr. Jones is great at making people run about during PE but he needs to do more of it himself. He's usually a lovely man but spends a lot of time standing about shouting at us.

So if one of your pupils did this to you would you mind?

PS have obviously changed names of teachers :)

Honestly, I think if you did this right now, it would come across as super tone deaf.

The first and last ones have the potential to be quite upsetting at the best of times- and the last one sounds quite personal.

If they were purely positive and nice, then maybe- but right now I can imagine these actually really upsetting people. I know that sounds like an overreaction but teachers/primary staff are under a lot of stress right now.

Thank you. I'll talk to him about doing something else. To him its funny and actually well meant... but I wasn't so sure hence asking. His teachers mainly have a very good sense of humour but I don't want him to push it.

I think teachers are getting the rough end of the stick just now. Both DD and DS have had great distance learning provision but it must have been hard for staff to adapt to a whole new way of teaching while trying to deal with children who are also struggling to adapt.

Gah, no!!

It sounds quite rude. I wouldn't like to hear these coments from anyone.

He's going to write a story about William the Conquerer instead.

Very glad I asked.

Sounds incredibly rude! Amazed you're even asking!

His teachers mainly have a very good sense of humour but I don't want him to push it.

Bar the Mr Bloggs one, I don't think they are very funny though- just personal and edging into mean. When people are on edge anyway, that's not territory you want to get into.

Right now, I think it would come across as tone deaf to send in even if they were genuinely funny.

Just plain rude.

I think when children say random off the cuff remarks from the heart you can tell.
One child asked me if I was a man as I had a moustache.
He was closely examining my face and was 5 years old. No offence taken and I laughed. Clearly it was a genuine thought and I could tell from his face he was confused.
Had he been older and written this to me in a report it would have been offensive.

He has time to think about his words and be kind.

No. I’m also amazed you need to ask and haven’t pointed out to your ds how unkind his comments are, even in jest. I’d be devastated at the moment if any of my pupils sent me these.

Yup, those are just rude and unkind. Not funny.

Gosh, I don't mind a bit of banter with my children (slightly older in UKS2), but no. Out of context it comes across as rude!

Unless they were ONLY kind comments, that would be incredibly mean.

I’m baffled you felt those kind of comments might be appropriate in any way.

Rude. Why do you even need to check?!

I’m worried that you can’t see that these are rude yourself, without asking strangers opinions. How would you feel to receive something like this?

• comments

Do you have difficulty judging rudeness?
A "bantery" report would be "Mr Smith is great at Maths but his jokes need a lot of work"

If I read shite like that it might be the final straw right now.

Christ no. You actually had to ask if that was acceptable?

Now is a good time to teach your kid about banter vs nastiness and how jokes written down can lose context and seem much harsher than intended...

Thank you all for your feedback. I've taken it on board.

Very rude and I can't think of any colleague who would appreciate his "humour" - certainly not at this time.

How would he like it if I posted up something like - "Mrs Rachael is sick and tired of people thinking she is sitting at home on full pay (doing nothing) and is fed up taking hours to research and load work into her online classroom that hardly any of the children bother to do, and if they do, it's shite"

thought not

I wouldn't mind if a pupil wrote a thoughtful, genuinely funny and kind report about me. A colleague had this done by a girl in her Y5 class once and it was lovely. She'd structured it in the same way as the school reports and included all sorts of examples of what the teacher did well e.g. Ms X is an excellent reader and selects from a wide range of texts although she is very knowledgeable about and the class has benefited from her expert analysis of the book. Her writing is always interesting and Ms X uses her sophisticated vocabulary to draw the reader in... Ms. X has a strong, clear singing voice and her peers appreciate the leading role she has taken in singing assembly this year.

You get the idea. It was given as an end of year present and referred to some of the highlights of the year as well as class jokes or regularly used phrases. I don't think your DS needs to ditch the idea entirely and he could still have a lot of fun with it, but the challenge will be to keep it positive and kind.

One of my Y1's wrote me a report once, i still have it, it is one of my most treasured memories. "Miss Farm is always smiling and kind, she has nice hair, she is a good reader and she always tries her best at drawing". To be fair, my terrible drawings provided much hilarity in class. Done with kindness, its a really touching gesture.

Wow, incredibly rude!
I'm surprised you even asked to be honest. 🙄

Very rude and disrespectful
I would be upset to receive and as a parent I'd never allow my child to do this .