Contempt for teachers

[StolenChanel]

Just that really. Is anyone else noticing there seems to be a general rising dislike for teachers? Admittedly the only places I’m noticing this are Mumsnet/Twitter, but these are reflective of real people’s views. I’m wondering if this is translating to real life or is it just more concentrated online?

I was thinking that yesterday. There seems to have been a huge surge recently in threads complaining about teachers.

It’s definitely a thing and seems to be more noticeable since covid. Since everyone ‘home schooled’ their DC and decided that teaching was easy. Obviously helping your child fill in a worksheet is exactly the same as planning for, teaching and managing a class of 30! 🙄

@Foostit I agree! I think a lot of parents have misunderstood what we actually spend our time doing. They can’t see why our workload is so high when they’ve “done it themselves” too.

It’s making the job harder because not only do we still have gaps to plug following the lockdowns, an increase in additional needs in the classroom, a broader range of pastoral and safeguarding issues to look out for, but now we’re also dealing with children who have picked up on their parents’ negative attitudes towards the profession. The threads on MN recently have been full of people complaining about teachers, and it’s still September!

It’s way better on here than it was during Covid when all schools were doing was sending home one worksheet at week and photos of the class teacher sunbathing in their garden.

@noblegiraffe I wish that had been my experience during lockdown! We were following our usual class timetable with online lessons from week 1.

This was my experience too, live online lessons from the start.

MN is not typical of my parent cohort. I still have a lot of support, even if I'm new to the school and therefore automatically hated and tested to the hilt. I actually think the summer holidays often provide perspective to those who have to deal with their own children for extended periods of time and find it wanes as the year goes on, until parents have to spend 2+ weeks actually seeing what happens when they say no to their children. I have had numerous phone calls to confirm this, but talking to parents is essential.

Of course, many get it right without the holidays. But the complainers are often those whose children will act the exact same at home when told no, and that often happens after 2-3 weeks. How many parents have we had on here saying they cannot wait until school starts again? I had one before summer holidays even started...

Anyway, while most parents are fine, some just feel helpless, because their children won't do what they need to, with or without help. For those, specialist support is needed that mainstream cannot provide (but is expected to) and the helplessness is let out on teachers.

Recognise it for what it is.

Can't have been, MN would only have it that schools and teachers were useless and lazy.

I actually left MN for a bit at the time because it was so bloody awful.

Yes I never tell anyone I am a teacher.

The last couple of weeks on here have been awful for people complaining about teachers!

Teachers who…

haven’t given their child a reading book on Day 2 of term.

teachers who say it’s fine to have squash if the child really hates water (despite the school rules) as long as it’s in an opaque water bottle. What a bastard.

teachers who don’t sit all of the ‘naughty’ boys together on one table to keep them out of the way.

teachers who force someone’s child to join an ‘SEN’ club at lunchtime.

I’m sure there have been others!

I've definitely noticed an increase since covid of parents in real life being more entitled and aggressive. I disagree that it is just an MN thing. I had a parent ring me up to complain about a member of my team because she had sat her child next to a child with SEN. Don't get me wrong, most parents are lovely, but when I first started teaching, I knew if I rung a parent up, they'd probably be on side, now I feel myself dreading having to do phone calls as I never know whether they'll be on side, or whether it'll result in a complaint.

That's not just you, Ofsted, the DfE and councils have all recorded an increase in complaints as well as schools https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/schools-train-senior-leaders-tackle-rising-parental-complaints

I mean, some of them will be fair enough because schools don't have enough teachers, SEN support etc, but definitely parents are arsier in real life, post-covid and more likely to come in 'guns blazing' from the off, assuming the worst.

I've stopped phoning parents and switched to email because of it. Paper trail.

We have to ring home if a child surpasses a warning to a negative point for behaviour. It just makes me dread giving negative points rather than foster home-school relationships imo.