Yes, I went through all the process of recording, reporting and following it up. When it actually happened in the classroom, it triggered me so much, I did use the opportunity to stress the amount of pain that a simple gesture symbolised as it had brought so much pain to humanity.
My school is very toxic and I am leaving at the end of this term. I suppose that the reason why I decided to write about the episode here was to get a feel about what other teachers had seen and to make sure I was not hallucinating. You see, in my school, the leadership team is in constant denial of reality. Behaviour is going in a downward spiral and they insist everything is spick and span.
When I reported it in my school, they said they would ask other students in the class if they had seen the gesture. I knew the student would deny it. He is trouble and is generally on report and always in after school detentions. Despite that, because none of his Y8 peers confirmed they had seen him do the nazi salute, the school dismissed the sanctions I had given, stating they could not do anything about it if no one confirmed it. Basically, my word was taking for granted and the school decided to give more weight to the student's denial.
As you can expect, the school has a very low teacher retention. I only started in September but the point here is that I find it extremely concerning that teenagers believe they can trivialise something like this and, even worse, get away with it. To me, this is unacceptable. I have two sons in another secondary school and know for a fact, how big of a deal it would be if this happened there.