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Jul. 13th, 2008 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caz963Took the kids to see Kung Fu Panda yesterday, which was a lot of fun. Interesting to see the Beeb advertising in cinemas - this time it was the Cbeebies channel for under sevens. Must be costing them a fair bit.
And then the trailers - Wall-E of course, which I'm looking forward to; I didn't realise there was yet another Mummy movie on the way, but Elinor wants to see it... maybe I'll send her with Grandad for a change!
We had a good day - except for one thing about which I'm going to rant now.
We went to the park first because we had a bit of time to kill. The girls like the spiral slide there, you know the sort of thing, where you climb up the stairs in the middle and the slide winds around the outside. Well, after a few minutes I got fed up with watching the number of kids who were climbing up the outside of the metal stairs, which meant they were very close to the kids who were coming down on the slide itself - in fact, Elinor narrowly missed one of them at one point. There appeared to be no-one supervising these kids and after watching Abigail nearly get a boot on her head, I went over and quietly - but firmly - told the kids they should get down and use the stairs properly - which, after a few funny looks, they all did.
Then one kid - who was about 9, I reckon - started climbing up again. I asked him to get down and use the steps like the others.
"But my mum says I can climb up here."
"I don't care - it's dangerous. What if you fall off? You'll hurt yourself."
"But my mum said I could."
"I don't care - you could hurt yourself and the other kids."
Then the mother - who I reckon was probably about my age (and who should therefore have known better) comes over and tells me to stop bullying her son!
I said - "Look, he could fall off and hurt himself -"
"That's my business and his."
"No it's not, if he hurts someone else. My kids are playing on the slide and if one of them were to knock him off, you'd be the first to complain."
She didn't answer that - but anyway, it had started raining and my kids were off the slide by then. As I was walking away, a couple, who had two younger kids with them spoke to me - the Dad said "Typical - there's always one irresponsible person who spoils it for the rest." and his wife/partner said "Yeah, I'm a childminder and you wouldn't believe the sort of things I hear from kids and their parents." I said, "Yes, I would - I'm a teacher. We're fighting a losing battle; what hope have we got with the kids when the parents behave like that?"
Needless to say, that incident put me in a bad mood for a bit - and reminded me of a couple of articles I'd read earlier in the day. One from the BBC - Adults give young a 'bad example'. and this from the TES, Bad behaviour drives out new teachers.
In the first one, it's suggested that adults need to take responsibility and not provide bad role models with behaviour that is greedy and aggressive. You think?
And schools minister, Ed Balls says - quite rightly - parents had to "play their part" in promoting better behaviour.
"When I talk to heads they say behaviour is one of their main concerns. Some talk of giving detentions to pupils only for the parent to come in and demand their child is let off."
I've heard that a lot - I give a kid a detention only to be told "my mum says I don't have to do detentions."
And the headline of the second article is -
The first major survey into why huge numbers of new teachers quit the profession has revealed that they are driven out by badly behaved pupils and heavy workloads.
It gives the actual number leaving as two out of every five new teachers. Personally, I think the behaviour issue has to take precedence over the workload one right now. If we didn't have to spend so much time doing paperwork for detentions and then supervising them, perhaps we'd have more time to do our actual jobs, like preparing lessons and marking etc.
And according to this article in the Times, 2,200 badly behaved kids are sent home from school every day. Which, let's face it, is what most of them want. I had a kid removed from a class last week - who, incidentally refused to leave several times and was only finally persuaded to go when the Head was called into the lesson - and when told he could be sent home, the kid's response was "fine - then I get to play my X-box all day".
To be honest though, although in some ways it's galling to let the kid have his own way, I'm starting to think - "Fine. Sod off and let me teach the other 23 kids in the class."
I'm now starting to rumiunate on just how much these kids are missing out and how hard it's going to be for them later in life. I feel so bloody sorry for them - they really have no idea what they're going to be facing when they get older, and of course, there's no way of telling them that. I remember pulling a face when I was younger and my mum used that oft-quoted phrase "your schooldays are the best days of your life" - and of course, looking back on it, she was right. No responsibilities, no bills to pay, and I got to find out stuff for free!
Yeah, okay. I'll stop talking now.
And then the trailers - Wall-E of course, which I'm looking forward to; I didn't realise there was yet another Mummy movie on the way, but Elinor wants to see it... maybe I'll send her with Grandad for a change!
We had a good day - except for one thing about which I'm going to rant now.
We went to the park first because we had a bit of time to kill. The girls like the spiral slide there, you know the sort of thing, where you climb up the stairs in the middle and the slide winds around the outside. Well, after a few minutes I got fed up with watching the number of kids who were climbing up the outside of the metal stairs, which meant they were very close to the kids who were coming down on the slide itself - in fact, Elinor narrowly missed one of them at one point. There appeared to be no-one supervising these kids and after watching Abigail nearly get a boot on her head, I went over and quietly - but firmly - told the kids they should get down and use the stairs properly - which, after a few funny looks, they all did.
Then one kid - who was about 9, I reckon - started climbing up again. I asked him to get down and use the steps like the others.
"But my mum says I can climb up here."
"I don't care - it's dangerous. What if you fall off? You'll hurt yourself."
"But my mum said I could."
"I don't care - you could hurt yourself and the other kids."
Then the mother - who I reckon was probably about my age (and who should therefore have known better) comes over and tells me to stop bullying her son!
I said - "Look, he could fall off and hurt himself -"
"That's my business and his."
"No it's not, if he hurts someone else. My kids are playing on the slide and if one of them were to knock him off, you'd be the first to complain."
She didn't answer that - but anyway, it had started raining and my kids were off the slide by then. As I was walking away, a couple, who had two younger kids with them spoke to me - the Dad said "Typical - there's always one irresponsible person who spoils it for the rest." and his wife/partner said "Yeah, I'm a childminder and you wouldn't believe the sort of things I hear from kids and their parents." I said, "Yes, I would - I'm a teacher. We're fighting a losing battle; what hope have we got with the kids when the parents behave like that?"
Needless to say, that incident put me in a bad mood for a bit - and reminded me of a couple of articles I'd read earlier in the day. One from the BBC - Adults give young a 'bad example'. and this from the TES, Bad behaviour drives out new teachers.
In the first one, it's suggested that adults need to take responsibility and not provide bad role models with behaviour that is greedy and aggressive. You think?
And schools minister, Ed Balls says - quite rightly - parents had to "play their part" in promoting better behaviour.
"When I talk to heads they say behaviour is one of their main concerns. Some talk of giving detentions to pupils only for the parent to come in and demand their child is let off."
I've heard that a lot - I give a kid a detention only to be told "my mum says I don't have to do detentions."
And the headline of the second article is -
The first major survey into why huge numbers of new teachers quit the profession has revealed that they are driven out by badly behaved pupils and heavy workloads.
It gives the actual number leaving as two out of every five new teachers. Personally, I think the behaviour issue has to take precedence over the workload one right now. If we didn't have to spend so much time doing paperwork for detentions and then supervising them, perhaps we'd have more time to do our actual jobs, like preparing lessons and marking etc.
And according to this article in the Times, 2,200 badly behaved kids are sent home from school every day. Which, let's face it, is what most of them want. I had a kid removed from a class last week - who, incidentally refused to leave several times and was only finally persuaded to go when the Head was called into the lesson - and when told he could be sent home, the kid's response was "fine - then I get to play my X-box all day".
To be honest though, although in some ways it's galling to let the kid have his own way, I'm starting to think - "Fine. Sod off and let me teach the other 23 kids in the class."
I'm now starting to rumiunate on just how much these kids are missing out and how hard it's going to be for them later in life. I feel so bloody sorry for them - they really have no idea what they're going to be facing when they get older, and of course, there's no way of telling them that. I remember pulling a face when I was younger and my mum used that oft-quoted phrase "your schooldays are the best days of your life" - and of course, looking back on it, she was right. No responsibilities, no bills to pay, and I got to find out stuff for free!
Yeah, okay. I'll stop talking now.
