The Most Ridiculous Complaints Ever Made Against Me
Posted by: oldandrew in UncategorizedA natural hazard of teaching these days is the belief that parents should be able to hold teachers to account. This is, of course, ridiculous. Parents have only one source of information about what happens at school: their kids. As any realist knows children are prone to lying to their parents. This is not necessarily for malicious reasons, very often children find it embarrassing to talk their honestly to their parents about their life. Come to think of it, this is also true of most adults I know too. Therefore virtually any complaint formed on the basis of a child’s comments to parents is a string of lies, but as teachers aren’t actually considered to be trusted professionals the parents are listened to.
Most complaints are normally along the lines of “my child doesn’t get any homework”, which normally translates as “my child doesn’t do any homework” and can be dealt with by sending the homework to whoever is dealing with the complaint. However some are more serious. The complaints below resulted in a Headteacher lecturing me and turning up for “surprise” observations, a Deputy Head interrogating me, a parent confronting me in reception as I arrived at work, another parent turning up and threatening to attack me and several children being moved classes. The management strategy is invariably to appease the parents of badly behaved children. No parent was told: “if you don’t like it, go to another school”.
Complaint No 1: “He picks on me”
Made by: Kelly Winton. Alpha female in year 8 at the Metropolitan School.
What actually happened: I told her to stop interrupting me. I told her to do some work in lessons. She wasn’t the only child to be told this, although she was the only one (that week) to start yelling at me and verbally abusing me when I suggested it. A more general variation of the complaint was that I pick on the girls in that class. This probably had less impact as at the same time I was being accused of picking on the boys in the class. Another parental complaint from the same class also explained that expecting their son to stop interrupting me and do some work showed that I wasn’t prepared for “the realities of the multicultural classroom”.
Complaint No 2: “He won’t help me with my coursework”
Made by: Some very lazy year 11s at Woodrow Wilson School.
What actually happened: They wouldn’t do their coursework. My offer to help them any day after school was ignored. According to the complaint I couldn’t be found in my department after school. The fact that I was the one that used to switch off the lights in the departmental office at the end of the day would suggest I could, in fact, be found for hours after school (and have no life).
Complaint No 3: “He assaulted me.”
Made by: Kieran Kennings, one of the mental boys at Stafford Grove School (mentioned in this entry)
What actually happened: Kieran turned up to my form room while I was taking the register. He opened the door (into the Corridor Of Death) and refused to move. When the bell went my form group became trapped in the room, crowding around the door. I gently led Kieran out of the way by the elbow. Despite the law that states that teachers can use reasonable force to prevent pupils “engaging in behaviour prejudicial to maintaining good order and discipline” even the gentlest effort to prevent pupils from harming others can be subject to complaint. “You can’t touch me” is almost the catchphrase of any child engaging in behaviour that would get them arrested (or beaten up) out in the real world.
Complaint No 4: “He assaulted me”
Made by: Jason Birch, year 7 at the Metropolitan School.
What actually happened: A good question. I’m still at a loss to explain this one. I know Jason had decided he didn’t like me, the point where he called me a knob gave that away. I did tell him I’d be telling his father about this behaviour. Somehow that turned into a full-fledged accusation of assault, although given that we were both seated and at opposite ends of the classroom I’m not sure how this worked. Very strange indeed, but then the boy had been told that his behaviour was down to a “medical condition”, which in my experience usually means that the child will do whatever they like without fear of consequences.
Complaint No 5: “He threw us down the stairs”.
Made by: Year 7 boys at Stafford Green school.
What actually happened: I threw some year 7 boys down the stairs.
Okay I admit it. I lied about the last one.
The year 7s I threw down the stairs didn’t complain.
Discussion of this entry has now appeared on TES.
Entries (RSS)
March 4th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I’ve been there so often! Working with pupils with sebd makes it almost inevitable that there will be spurious and/or malicious complaints made by pupils.
I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I was accused of assaulting a pupil, whether or not I’d even touched them (we were trained to restrain and had signed parental consent to do so).
The major difference was that, on the whole, the parents were so relieved to have their children back in school - albeit special school - that they either ignored their offspring (as was their wont to do in most matters anyway) or were of a mind that we should “assault” their kids when they went off the school rule rails (”just give him a hiding” was a regular exhortation).
…and then the pupils also lied to us: “I’m gonna tell ma maw you assoltit me.” - always worrying (and generally led to exclusion as it was deemed to be a serious issue to lie about us) but rarely reported at home.
My one mainstream experience of a ridiculous complaint - a Primary 5 girl whose mother confronted me at my classroom door to complain that I’d told her daughter that it “served her right that she was bullied for being speccy”. As a speccy teacher I was able to convince her mother that it was less than likely!
Oh, the joys….
March 4th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Complaint Number Five rings a bell. I have indeed technically assaulted several children over the years - all of them bigger than me. I have kneed a boy in the balls to relieve him of a penknife he was threatening another boy with. I “accidentally” closed the door on a boy’s head because he wouldn’t completely leave the classroom as requested; whacked a boy on the knuckles with a wooden spoon because he would not keep his fingers out of my ingredients whilst I was doing a demonstration; shoved a girl down some steps because she had beaten another girl almost unconscious and I couldn’t break them apart; and stabbed a boy’s hand with a compass because he was doing that thing where the victim has to spread their hand on the table whilst the bully rapidly stabs between (hopefully but never inevitably) the outstretched fingers. I have frequently reduced unruly pupils to tears just to confirm that I am ‘ard and they are all mouth.
The thing that connects all these incidents is that none of the kids lodged a formal complaint because in every case they had done wrong and knew it. The other thing of course, apart from the tear-inducing bollockings, is that they all took place pre-1995.
March 4th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I don’t remember typing all that but it looks so familiar…
The worst of it is that so amny people will tell you that that’s the reality if kids today so it’s us that have to change.
March 5th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I’ve had a few threats to report me for assault which never came to anything, mostly because they were trying it on to see how easily scared I was.
One of my tactics for getting kids to sit down when I was on supply and didn’t know their names was to say, “Will the good looking boy with glasses, black, blond, red hair etc at the back please sit down.” On one occasion this was reported as, “Hey, the black speccy four eyes, sit down?” I pointed out that I was unlikely to use speccy as a term of abuse given that I wear glasses myself.
The best complaint ever came from a Jehovah’s Witness parent who claimed I was “corrupting” his twin daughters by doing the John Donne poem “License my wandering hands to go” with them. It was set for the A level course they were doing.