advice on a male teacher at DDs school please

[happydappy2]

My DD in year 9 used to have a wonderful female PE teacher who went on mat leave & might not come back. Currently a young male teacher has taken over and the girls feel uncomfortable when he watches them doing PE. One of them has looked at his social media & seen who he is following on instagram....lots of female body builders who pose in skimpy barely there bikinis (as is normal for body builders) but also some young women who pose in a very sexualised way in barely there bikinis....lots of boobs & bum on show. (Not topless but good as.) One girl has asked me if that is appropriate for a teacher & I'm struggling with how I feel about this. I would have thought all teachers have to have squeaky clean social media or set it to private. I've asked the headmaster for his views but wondered what others thought-am I over reacting or is this not really OK?

Why are they so keen that we dismiss what these girls are saying and minimising and ridiculing the situation?

What an exaggeration. The OP was asked several times what exactly the teacher had done to make them feel uncomfortable as all she mentioned was "watching them doing PE". She now says she has no idea as she never asked them.

If an account is private you can't see who they follow... at most you can see if they are followed by anyone you follow.

If parent is concerned about a teacher at school it should be raised with the head

@chickenyhead

How can the objectification of women, not all of whom were bodybuilders, be so ok? I don't want my daughters believing that this is their role, to look a certain way in order that men follow them.

Yuck.

Just because it is normal, doesn't mean that it is acceptable or right.

The looking at SM came after the discomfort and somewhat seemed to confirm suspicions.

Please don't just dismiss their discomfort, until it is known what it arose from. He doesn't automatically get a free pass and OP is right to worry.

Shouldn't she find out where the discomfort stems from while/before she worries?

TBH I don't doubt that they are uncomfortable at all.

However whether it's because of him as a person(and his behaviour) or whether because he's a man and they're young developing girls in PE kits are two completely different issues.

@littlbrowndog

All these new posters. Hmmm

Your point being what?

@happydappy2

Checking a persons social media profile is NOT stalking

Your daughter deliberately sought out her teacher's social media in an effort to find something she could use as a weapon against him. It might not be stalking. But it isn't reasonable behaviour either. You asked if it was ok for a teacher to follow bikini clad women on social media. The answer is yes. A teacher can follow who the fuck they like on social media - if he was promoting racism, sexism or violence or sexualisation of teen girls or other safe guarding concerns you'd have a point. But a few models in swimsuits? Really? You're witch-hunting him for that and implying that your DD is traumatised by these social media images? You're either very naive or very unpleasant.

The only error he made was not having his settings private and the HT has admonished him for that.

You can put down your pitchfork.

Have the girls ever checked the female teacher's SM profiles?

I'd be amazed if they hadn't.

@SandMason

Yep I’m going to go all out and say that someone who views female bodies in this way has no business teaching PE to teenage girls. Full stop. Now more than ever girls need the message that they’re doing PE to keep themselves healthy and strong, not to make their bodies look a certain way for men’s viewing pleasure.

Jesus. Seriously. I follow bikini models on Instagram. Am I a danger to kids too? I’m not a man but still. This is totally and utterly ridiculous. Everyone is allowed a private life. You do realise that the majority of teachers have a sex-life, right? They may well be objectifying and sexualising bodies, which most of us do to some extent. That has no impact on their jobs as teachers and does not in any way make them unsuited to teach. There’s some serious unpleasantness on here, trying to disguise itself as ‘feminism’.

Of course teach girls to trust their intuition but presumably there is no reason why they’d have to be alone with this man at any point so I think risks are quite low. Maybe tell them to avoid being alone with him and trust their friends but do take it with a pinch of salt because there doesn’t seem to be anything of substance here based on what OP said.

Exactly, there seem to be a number of posters I haven’t seen before who are very quick to dismiss what those teenage girls are saying and accusing them of being manipulative and over dramatic.
These posters have no knowledge of the girls or indeed the teacher but claim that he is being unfairly targeted.
When the OP is arguing that a fitness professional following fitness accounts is exposing her daughter to sexualised material then there is a hint of drama about it.
Why are they so keen that we dismiss what these girls are saying and minimising and ridiculing the situation?
It's not dismissing to say that if he has behaved unprofessionally it should be reported and investigated, and if he hasn't then there's something unpleasant about this sort of gossip. I've seen countless teachers end up on the receiving end of witch hunts and gossip from students/parents who don't like the fact the teacher isn't their old one. Teenagers of both sexes can, and do, gossip about staff (eg I've heard students claim they know details about teachers' medical issues, that their parent got the teacher sacked etc and none of it has been true).
I don't think encouraging that sort of conduct is helpful and risks muddying the waters if there are genuine safeguarding concerns.

Vet it wasn’t my daughter who showed me the Instagram account. Another child from the school.

@Quillink

Have the girls ever checked the female teacher's SM profiles?

I'd be amazed if they hadn't.

I teach at a uni and my students Google stalk male and female staff and openly admit it. I don’t have SM anymore but found it quite intrusive and uncomfortable to hear about it. I was teaching once and they were googling a male colleague of mine and commenting on his photos. At the same time, I used to do the same when I was at uni.

The op wants a female pe teacher and is whipping up a froth to try to engineer that.

Reality the answer to your concern for your man, that you posted in response to me:

'What does this mean though in terms of consequences for this man due to someone’s ‘creep radar’? Should he not be allowed to teach that class? Should he not be allowed to teach at all? '

Is answered in my previous post

'Obviously a girl or girls getting uncomfortable isn't something you can act on. However, please do say to DD thanks for telling me. Keep an eye out for each other. Trust your instincts.'

I hope that sets your mind at rest.

Is this going to be one of those threads where people don't bother reading the actual conversation. And then cut and paste snippets to argue points that haven't been made?

@happydappy2

Vet it wasn’t my daughter who showed me the Instagram account. Another child from the school.

Why did the other child come to you to show it? Did you ask her for information?

@happydappy2

mistresslggi unsurprisingly the children aren't with me now, so I can't ask them what exactly makes them feel uncomfortable. The point of the thread was asking if it was appropriate for a PE teacher to follow girls who post pictures in barely there bikinis, posing in an overly sexual way (not just body builders-read the OP peeps.) showing lots of boobs & bums. That is the point of the thread.

It's obviously completely inappropriate for him to have that on his public social media. He should be fully aware of that already, but since he is not, the HT should be making it clear - his social media should be completely private because it is not appropriate for young teens to see, or to be made privy to, any element of the sexual life of their teacher - even if they are the ones who sought that information out. A male teacher working with young girls, especially a PE teacher, ought to be aware and conscientious about the boundaries between teachers and students. It's a safeguarding issue if he is not. So you are right to raise it and certainly the HT should be aware that it has happened.

It's right that teachers should be allowed privacy and children should be made aware that it's not okay to invade a teacher's privacy too. But we have to remember these are 13/14 year old girls. We probably all would have snooped on our teachers when we were that age, unless you were completely devoid of curiosity I suppose. Again, if you are teaching that age group, and especially if you're responsible for their physical education, you need to be aware of what the risks are and conscientious about boundaries.

Maybe from his point of view, he just didn't realise his students would look at his SM. If so, he now knows, and if he is a decent, professional teacher, he will take the opportunity to reflect on the set of issues that this touches upon.

Another thing that occurs to me is I would not have liked a male PE teacher at that age, either. It is a time when your body is changing and the idea of being physically vulnerable in front of a young male teacher must be mortifying to some of the girls, as it would have been to me. I'm not surprised some of the girls are saying they feel uncomfortable - I would think that they probably just don't want to be looked at in any way at all. I definitely didn't at that age.

Another thing that occurs to me is I would not have liked a male PE teacher at that age, either. It is a time when your body is changing and the idea of being physically vulnerable in front of a young male teacher must be mortifying to some of the girls, as it would have been to me. I'm not surprised some of the girls are saying they feel uncomfortable - I would think that they probably just don't want to be looked at in any way at all. I definitely didn't at that age.

I suspect that this is the issue too rather than this man doing anything wrong per se. I think that having a PE teacher of the same sex (as sport is single sex anyway) is generally a good idea although I appreciate that it could cause staffing issues at schools.

@happydappy2

Vet it wasn’t my daughter who showed me the Instagram account. Another child from the school.

Which girl it was is irrelevant. The point still stands.

You have no information about what his actual behaviour is because it didn't occur to you to ask basic questions as the girl's motivation - you've simply assumed the worst and are on a crusade to get a teacher sacked over nothing more than lax security settings and assumptions
That seems pretty unpleasant to me

I read this the other day, this thread reminded me of it.

Now this is totally aside from this teacher and the op. But. Time and time again, men who are abusive get away with it.

There is nothing wrong with saying to a child listen to your instincts. Thank you for telling me. Nothing to be done, but do tell me if anything happens.

Nothing wrong with that at all.

We have the idea being raised now that yr 9 children, in particular girls, are an absolute liability when it comes to stuff like this. That they must fancy him. Or, they just have taken against him. That they are in the wrong for looking at his public social media. Etc etc

Give children this message and they consume it.

Anyway. This is a harrowing read. But I think it's worth reading as this stuff does happen and I think saying children should stfu and you could ruin someone's life, and adults saying well. You know what children that are are like. It is not a good thing.

There is a space in the middle.

Anyway. Do NOT read if CSA is v upsetting for you.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/ztdfudx91d/the-boarding-school-monster-who-always-walked-free

It's good that the headteacher has warned the teachers to lock down their SM accounts to protect themselves from troublemaking, cyberstalking students.

You shouldn't be encouraging your daughter to make insinuations about this teacher because he follows fitness models on SM. He's a PE teacher, of course he's following fitness fanatics. I follow a load of fitness people online because that's what people who are into fitness do.

Teenage girls can be very bitchy and nasty if their behaviour is allowed to go unchecked. Teach your kid to not make nasty insinuations about people nor to join in when her friends do.

This is why men shy away from teaching. Who'd blame them. Ffs. Calling him a pervert for no valid reason other than they're trying to stir drama.

@happydappy2

Vet it wasn’t my daughter who showed me the Instagram account. Another child from the school.

By the way, where these inappropriate pictures the profile pictures of the women he follows,or did the girls looked at their accounts too?

queenofknives
Then it just needs owning as 'we want a female member of staff', which I would understand to be honest. I wouldn't have liked a male PE teacher at that age.

If there's real safeguarding concerns they need reporting. If there's just an off feeling then they have been fine to raise it and should be encouraged to report should anything happen. Alongside that the OP needs to keep her feelings about his social media out the way. It should have been locked down. The head has confirmed that. But the focus needs to be on real issues and not what people think of perfectly legal material on social media.

Have you told the child’s parents? Just you don’t mention that.

@Quillink

Year 9 not 9 years old, Jennifer.

👍🏻

I went to an all girl's school and so we got changed for pe at lockers in the corridor.

The music teacher was always wandering around that part of the building at pe changing time.

The music bit had it's own building separate.

Some of the girls thought he was creepy. I didn't. I was pretty naive though. Who can say?

He did nothing wrong and a few girls saying he's creepy did no harm to him.

What we do know as women, and often learnt as girls, is that men can make you feel extremely uncomfortable, vulnerable, without doing anything that doesn't sound completely trivial if you try to explain.

Which is why dismissing this out of hand is not good. You're imagining it, I'm sure he's perfectly nice, it's not fair on him, I expect you all fancy him! Etc etc. It means that they try to ignore the radar, and then I've day, they don't get away when they wanted to because they didn't want to been seen as unfairly judging a lovely man. I've been there. Not wanting to make s fuss. Nothing too serious. Nothing that couldn't be brushed off by adults who really really don't want to hear any of it because it makes things tricky.

See the creepy driving instructor threads on here as an example of that mechanism.

Teenage girls can be very bitchy and nasty if their behaviour is allowed to go unchecked.

Thread's been brigaded by MRAs