Teacher made to apologise - “good afternoon girls”

[MrsMurphyIWish]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11976891/Female-teacher-forced-apologise-saying-Good-afternoon-girls.html

I’m a teacher and I have to apologise to a student for inadvertently calling a student by birth name and not chosen name. (Was early in school year and was calling the register in auto pilot). Had email from pastoral about how upset I had made them feel. I fell on tenterhooks round this student - especially at parent’s evening and reports as their parents are unaware so I have to use birth names. This is the worst that’s happened to me - I really feel for this teacher.

Quite.

The schools are not ‘safeguarding’, they are exacerbating mental illness amongst vulnerable students.

It’s like giving students with eating disorders access to a set of secret bathroom scales kept on school premises.

I took my DD out of the Big Top secondary in year 7. She’s homeschooled. Year 8. It’s not what I would choose at all but schools are trans-grooming factories and I say this as a woman who worked for many years in an industry where several of my friends transitioned… as adults who’d had many many many years to weigh up their options, consider their needs, and make an informed, adult (repeat that word for emphasis!) decision.

What was happening to my daughter was mental torture, headfuckery and grooming of the worst kind. Why, after airing my concerns, was school allowing a trans female from the Sixth Form block (on another site) to sit and have lunch every day with my then 11 year old daughter when NO other Sixth Formers came to the secondary site? My daughter is also a survivor of sexual abuse over a period of 5 years. She’s vulnerable. She had a safeguard worker who saw nothing wrong with having a 17 year old trans female make a point of seeking an 11 year old out to hang with. Trans or not, it didn’t sit at all well with me. Schools enable this grooming because they’ve handed power to the children, not even the parents. And teachers have lost all protection. But so many of them enable this BS so, in my view, many teachers are culpable.

My friend was at a parent teacher meeting and insisted that her daughter was not a boy called ‘Cody’. The school pretty much said, ‘The child’s word and wishes are bond. Your parental responsibility is trumped by your child’s wish to cosplay as a bloke.’ That’s my interpretation of the school’s ‘what baby wants baby gets’ approach to this horrible social experiment. The wheels fell off miles back.

Funny how I’ve had to go to court 3 times and pay for the pleasure just to try and release my daughter from the shackles of her abuser father’s surname. School wouldn’t allow her to use my surname without a court order/deed poll (couldn’t do the latter). But fuckin’ Cody the trans bloke can just shapeshift and pull a rabbit out of a hat and become anyone… and ‘their’ parents have NO say. They learn that the first name on their child’s birth certificate, the name they chose, is pretty much invalid. And they learn this during an 8 minute parent teacher meeting with a buzzer to time them.

I have a Yr 7 daughter so I see this from a parent’s point of view, as well as my own selfish desire to protect myself in the workplace. If my daughter was struggling with ANY mental health issue, I would want to be aware. I’m just hoping that with our parenting she feels she could open up to us. I am pleased with the secondary school she attends but I am also very aware that they too could withhold information from us.

If the child is a boy they shouldn't be in a girls school, surely.

Why are the girls who complained not called in to the head office for a lesson on respect and #bekind? Teaching them that they can make any demand they want and have it acted upon isn’t great is it?

How bizarre. Can't you see that a school environment that treats biological reality as a thought crime is teaching the next generation to trample women's rights? These girls are from professional families, and will grow up to be lawyers, politicians, doctors, academics. In a few decades' time, they will be running the country's institutions.

Actually many heads do get it and we could be in legal hot water if we socially transition behind a parents back. In my school the safeguarding leads have sent out a few reminders not to do this when I have highlighted it is without a parents knowledge. I love my school.

❤️

Thank fuck for you and others like you!

I think some posters are overestimating what individual teachers can do.
The Deputy Head or Head of Year makes the call that it is a 'genuine risk' to tell the student's parents. Class teachers do not get told the reasons for this, it is deemed confidential info and so can't challenge it.
And the poster who said 'how would you want your children to be treated' yes this worries me but right now I need my job to feed them and keep a roof over our heads. Things do not go well for teachers who refuse to comply with pastoral edicts from senior leadership, it is career and life ruining.

This, 100%. Wish I worked in your school @Boomboom22 !

This is very common all over the place. Parents have no idea what is going on and the narrative is that the student might be at risk of harm from 'transphobic' parents.

I would call their bluff and say this school is for girls only and if anyone here is not a girl, they have to leave. I think that would focus minds somewhat. Of course, I know schools won't do that and parents would protest if they did. That is because, deep down, no one really believes a single girl at that school is not a girl. They are playing along with it and I don't believe that is right, nor is it in the interests of the children.

I agree. SLT - captured. Unions - captured. Many younger teachers- captured. Teachers have nowhere to turn on this so I fully appreciate what the OP is saying.
If you complain you put a target on your back for 'intolerance' and 'transphobia'.
Teachers have been well and truly fucked over.

You are very lucky and our school sounds great. All the very best to you.

Disciplinary for not abiding to safeguarding.

Bollocks. Union reps only raise issues they are are asked to but you can take anything you like to the local union office as well.

You can't be disciplined for a safeguarding breach of you do things properly.

Get union advice but my ball park estimate would be: if you raise your concerns internally, follow any written policy the child is under 16 you can't be disciplined for discussing a kid with her parents.

I can absolutely say that 'pastoral' can't order a qualified teacher to apologise to a child.

A PP mentioned I should anonymously tip off the parents of the student … I could never do as the only person who will be truly hurt is the student. She is being failed by current policies.

We are overdue an Ofsted (last was 14 years ago). I’m just hoping something will be flagged then. But then again I don’t have much faith in Ofsted either.

I understand this and it is a really difficult decision. Much easier to make a stand if you are financially stable for example than if you are heavily reliant on your wage and have no buffer.

I left social work because I didn’t like the way I was forced to work against my values and the code of ethics we signup to as social workers. However as I social worker I did feel able to question my manager and senior managers if there were decisions made that I disagreed with. I always recorded these things too. Also our LA was so desperate for social workers they wouldn’t risk losing a good one unless there was a good reason. I’m hearing that teaching sounds quite different and that individual teachers have little power over their own practice. That’s so sad and not in the best interests of children either.

There is also the issue of what happens when the child has a sibling at the school:

• Do schools keep a social transition secret from siblings where the parents are not told? If so, how does the school manage this when the entire school community knows?

• Or will the sibling be informed but told to keep it secret from their parents? That isn’t acceptable and would be detrimental to any family, including the well-being of the sibling.

• Or will parents need to be told when there is a sibling? This questions the justification of treating parents without more than one child at the school in a different manner

• There is also the question of whether schools will attempt to coerce a sibling to support the social transition. Will they be deemed transphobic if they don’t support it?

In our case, our son was told “in confidence” that his sister was now a boy at school and he was expected to keep this from us (he didn’t).

I would have given anything to have just one teacher tell us what was going on.

I’m just reading updated posts and I’m so sorry if my own post is anti-teacher in any way. I just feel like those who should be allowed to make good, well-informed, and safe decisions are at the mercy of this crazy ideology compromising safety, rationality, and good decision making. I’m preaching to the converted and my concerns are almost boring because they’ve been expressed by too many without any effect.

The irony of a teacher who works at a girls' school having to apologise for calling her pupils girls...

If the child is not considered to be a girl, then it makes no sense for them to be in a girls' school.

Or perhaps the girls' school needs to rebound to call itself a school for ? "girls and some boys"? The mind boggles.

I do have genuine sympathy for children with gender dysphoria, and I would hope that all teachers would be sensitive and kind to a child identifying as trans. However, I don't think we are doing our kids any favours by trying ourselves in knots to pretend that girls aren't girls and boys aren't boys.

I feel shit that I’m complicit in this “cover up”. I’m sorry to all the families that have been failed by current policies.

I’m angry at the government for not giving schools absolute clear rules.

A PP mentioned pastoral should not have made me apologise. At my school it seems pastoral undermines us. None of the pastoral workers are teachers, that are student support workers. I absolutely believe they have a role in school but they do pit students against us - that’s an entirely different thread though!

I want to work at the school where the PP won’t give into students demands! Sounds like a happy place.

I have a very difficult student who believe they are trans (M-F).
(I personally think they hate themselves rather than hate being M but that’s just my opinion).

He regularly self harms and has been admitted to hospital several times for trying to take his own life.

All he wants to do is be called a girls name, have long hair and paint his nails.

The parents are completely against it (which is understandable).
But I find it a really difficult balance between not going against the parents and having to worry about him being in the bathroom for so long and watching his every move knowing that he’s going to try and hurt himself.

Dad is vile and abusive and mum is more open but is scared of dad but goes along with it.
In a private meeting with mum she agreed that we could shorten his name (eg Joesph to Joey) and that he can use the disabled toilet to get changed in but that his dad is not to know and when dad is there we use his full name.

I absolutely hate it because I’m constantly battling between what I think is right and keeping him safe.

Fortunately I don’t have many students with trans issues (SEND) and so I don’t have to deal with this regularly but I don’t know how mainstream teachers cope and it is almost impossible to not flip up and say their Christian name.

Unfortunately as teachers we have no guidance over things like this.