Discipline at school

aliasojo

C'mon guys, some of you are being pretty horrible.

The OP just wanted to run something by other people for opinion. Even if you didn't agree with her thoughts, there's absolutely no need to have a dig.

daisiegg

DCodd wrote: »

We don't know the facts and the reasons behind the punishement but this course of action in itself is not really an issue. However I doubt it happened as your son has said. If the class was misbehaving then I would suggest that a supply teacher wouldn't be able to make the whole class stand for 20 mins with their hands on their heads as this supply teacher must have lost at control of the class for the entire class to have been involved to that degree. .

This is what I had thought as well, that for the teacher to lose control enough for the whole class to warrant that punishment, then the teacher wouldn't have been able to get them to do it! - and then if the supply teacher DID manage to get the whole class to stand in silence with their hands on their heads, why leave them for 20 mins? The teacher would have been so relieved and delighted that s/he would then have gradually got them sitting back down working again (the penalty for misbehaving then being to stand back up, of course). There would be absolutely no sense in just leaving them there, from the teacher's point of view.

daisiegg

shop-to-drop wrote: »

I think the answer here and in general is more discipline not less.

I think I love you!

I WISH more parents thought like this. We get parents phoning up to say their little princess will NOT be doing the detention because she has a nail appointment to attend.

Taadaa

I never said l would complain, but l would like to know why this particular form was used. The reason being that there is something quite humiliating about it. If you want respect, you have to dish it out, that includes to kids. Maybe they were running riot, but really if this is the most effective discipline the teacher can come up with...l don't doubt being a teacher is hard work but that doesn't excuse poor discipline. As l hve said, l would want to speak to them to get the full story.

gingin_2

daisiegg wrote: »

I think I love you!

I WISH more parents thought like this. We get parents phoning up to say their little princess will NOT be doing the detention because she has a nail appointment to attend.

Out of interest, if a parent says that, what do you do? Do you reschedule it or do you have to let it go because the parent won't let them attend?

j.e.j.

welshsue wrote: »

Are teachers still allowed to make children stand with their hands on their head?.

My eldest has just come home from high school and the whole class were made to do this today for 20mins. He is in agony now with his shoulder.

Just some advice please before I go to the school. This was a supply teacher.

Thanks

IMO it does sound like a stupid punishment, whatever the reason/circumstances!

Can you get someone else's version of events, to see if it backs up what your son is saying? I'm not accusing him of lying, just that at the moment I guess it would be his word against theirs.

daisiegg

gingin wrote: »

Out of interest, if a parent says that, what do you do? Do you reschedule it or do you have to let it go because the parent won't let them attend?

Well, I personally would have to pass it on to someone more senior, just being a lowly teacher and all. But how that person deals with it depends on the situation. If the parent is genuinely saying "they can't do the detention THAT NIGHT because we have other plans" but isn't saying "they can't do the detention", they would reschedule to a mutually convenient time, much as it makes the blood boil that the parent thinks the nail/hair/tanning appointment (yes, we've had all of these reasons) is more important than detention. Ultimately if we want to keep a child after school we have to have the parent's permission and if they won't give it, we don't have much of a leg to stand on.

However, if the parent is actually saying "they will not be doing the detention", it's a different matter. This happens too - there are some parents who are so blind about their own children that they 'support' them in completely the wrong way. I teach one girl who is a nightmare and cannot be disciplined because she laughs away the threat of a detention, saying "You can put me in detention but I won't be doing it, you'll be hearing from my mum" - and it's true, mum phones up like clockwork.

It then depends on the individual situation. There are ways this can be escalated, like changing it to a number of lunch-time detentions (which the parents can still complain about but can't really do anything about), or escalating it to an internal or external exclusion, etc. Of course, lunch-time detentions aren't much use if the child knows they don't have to do after school detentions, because they can just not turn up to the lunch-time detention and the natural punishment for that would be an after school...but oh, mummy won't make them do that!

However at my school, unless it was a real problem pupil in lots of ways (and the girl mentioned above is not considered to be this because she just happens to be an A Grade student - so no way the school is letting that statistic get away!) to be honest, they would probably let it go, partly because they're a bit scared of parents, and partly because there aren't other straightforward avenues to go down. So yes, often if a parent phoned up to say their child cannot do a detention.......their child will not do the detention.

daisiegg

Taadaa wrote: »

I never said l would complain, but l would like to know why this particular form was used. The reason being that there is something quite humiliating about it. If you want respect, you have to dish it out, that includes to kids. Maybe they were running riot, but really if this is the most effective discipline the teacher can come up with...l don't doubt being a teacher is hard work but that doesn't excuse poor discipline. As l hve said, l would want to speak to them to get the full story.

I would completely agree with you - IF it wasn't a one-off incident with a supply teacher. Chances are the school won't be able to give a 'full story' anyway, especially if the teacher was just there for one day and is now gone. Even if the teacher was still there, it would still just be a case of their word against his - sounds unlikely there was another adult in the room. If it was a permanent teacher and if they used this method more than once and if they seemed to have general problems with discipline overall, definitely speak to the school about it, of course. But basically with it being a one-off supply teacher I just think there simply wouldn't be anything the school could say or do, so it would be wasting their time and the OP's.

starrybee

I thought you originally meant they were made to do a headstand ahaha :eek: - I was going to say blimey, I couldn't do one for a few seconds without losing my balance as a child, let alone 20 minutes!

Anyway, like other posters have said - is it just your child's word that it was 20 minutes? Chances are they could easily be exaggerating for some extra sympathy

dundeediva

Priority one - take your son to the doctors pronto!! If any child of school age is having "agonising" pains following 20 mins of standing still with his hands resting on his head i would be seriously worried for his health (unless of course he has a pre-existing condition in which case i would go MENTAL at the school )

Priority two- Calm down. He is a child. Someone, if not everyone was taking the p*ss in the class because there was a supply teacher in, we all know what it was like, no matter how old you are or which school you went to, all supply teachers got the mickey taken out of them and that was a given.

If i were you i would let it go and tell him that thats what happens when the class misbehave. Granted it maybe wasn't him who caused the problem but the whole class had to pay the price. I used to be made to stand against a wall holding a bit of paper up to the wall using my nose only. For half an hour. If it fell i had to do it the next time and so on. It's not going to kill him. Think of it as a bit of character building