I’m calling for a return to the parent being the teacher’s best friend.
Parents – should we really be carping from the sidelines about teachers and schools on social media? Should we be naming teachers, with no thought to the devastating consequences for them and their families? Simply because we aren’t keen on them, don’t rate them, or our kid doesn’t like them?
Teaching in the UK has to be the most difficult profession going. They are under more attack than ever from this Government. All too often, their love of teaching and affection for the kids is quickly extinguished by the stress of ridiculous performance indicators, by horrific time-tables and workloads.
Teaching numbers are in huge decline. Let’s face it – these people that we call ‘teachers’ – are all too often taken for granted. We expect them to be on the ball, each day, every day – that they should have their eye on (our prizes) – when they have to attend to waaaay over 150 of these wee prizes of ours each week.
These people need to be made of STRONG STUFF in order to deal with what is hurled at them today. They look after our most precious assets, have to pick up a lot of the crap that our kids are subjected to at home and yet we all too easily trash them and sneer at them on social media. As parents, surely we should be rising above the playground snipes ourselves at named individuals – and setting an example to our kids at use of FB, Twitter, Instagram etc blah blah.
If we lose more and more teachers – with one of the added pressures because they don’t want the added strain of being trashed by local parents on social media all of the time – ask yourself this; do you want to be the one stepping in and teaching our future generations?
Please folk – more #ParentTeacherSolidarity for 2018. Keep bitchiness about teachers OFF social media. Get constructive and involved with the schools instead. They’ll be glad that you aren’t buyinf in to the pressures that seem to be keeping parents even further and further away from face to face communications with parents. They’ll snatch your hand off. They need YOU!
Well said Chris. How can we expect the students to respect their teachers if parents don’t.
A wise parent once said; ‘you don’t HAVE to like them. I don’t like lots of your teachers. But they’re not there to be your mates.’
I do think that lots of parents would benefit from work-shadowing a teacher. If you have teachers in the family you’ll be let off, because you’ll already know what this profession – in this current climate – can do to a person.