Behaviour Incident Advice

[Teacher4Life]

Hi people,

Would very much appreciate some teacher insights into a recent incident.

A teacher gave a group of five year 10 students a lunch detention for stealing a ball off of a year 7 student and refusing to give it back. This teacher didn’t tell them at the time they had a detention for this (a mistake I know). These boys found out they had a detention and truanted a lesson to find this teacher to challenge them on it which caused disruption to that lesson as they were at the door uninvited and didn’t knock. The teacher had to go out into the corridor to diffuse it and send them away.

This teacher felt intimidated and unsafe as these boys are behaviourally some of the worst in the year. When this teacher raised the intimidating nature of five boys en masse truanting to confront him in the middle of a lesson the deputy head checked CCTV straight away. He concluded no evidence showed there was any obvious intimidation. When the deputy was challenged on not taking the word of a teacher and checking CCTV he said since all the boys are black ethnic minority ‘intimidation’ is a loaded term. As such he said compelling evidence must be there. This is strange since a level 4 behavioural event on our policy uses that exact term.

My overall impression is that the teacher should have consulted the boys about a detention they issued. However, I think feeling intimidated as a teacher is not something that should be challenged. Also, how does CCTV provide compelling or non compelling evidence? I would have thought a factual description of the event even without seeing it unfold could even be interpreted as intimidating. If the word intimidation is associated with stereotyping black ethnic minority children then I don’t think it should be in the behaviour policy?

Any insights would be appreciated.

I think I would ignore all this crap about the word intimidation and focus on the fact that the boys were missing from their lesson and disturbed the teacher in her lesson. They had no business challenging the detention in this way whether she had mentioned the detention at the time or not. This kind of shit is why teachers are leaving the profession.

I agree that the behaviour of being out of class and disturbing another lesson should be an issue, regardless.

However, if the teacher involved is female and the DH is male, then I think it also needs to be raised from this point of view- that he is not able to judge how a small female teacher would feel in that situation. I'd potentially get the union involved to make this point if I felt my rep would be sympathetic.

I've been in that situation as a female teacher (most of the boys were white, though), over a basketball I'd confiscated in the corridor. All of them were taller and bigger than me, and they effectively had me trapped in a classroom, arguing. I think they genuinely did not mean to intimidate, and it was a useful point for it to be explained to them how it can come across.

In Y10, boys have often had recent growth spurts, and are not aware of their size.

What does the deputy head look like?

@Postapocalypticcowgirl thank you for your insights, much appreciated.

@TortolaParadise he is BAME (black minority ethnic).

Surely they should also be getting another sanction for truancy, disruption and defiance, as well as the original one for the football?
In my school they would all be in isolation for this.

So is the truancy of the lesson to challenge the teacher not being sanctioned? Regardless of whether they were being intimidating or not, that behaviour is clearly not acceptable. Union advice would be advisable, but it depends how happy this teacher is in their job in general. If the behaviour policy is so crap that this sort of this is let slide, and teacher's aren't supported by SLT, changing this culture is going to be virtually impossible, it's got to come from top down. If that's not likely to happen, it's perhaps best to find a job in a different school.