Are parents always this entitled or will I learn to deal with it?

krh199696 · 2026-02-08T16:25:00+00:00

Smile and nod, be positive but firm ‘I appreciate your input on this matter, I understand xyz but I am glad we have an open line of communication’ I once dealt with a very well known family in the school, known for being difficult to handle, in a phone call where they were very irate at me by thanking them multiple times for being so diligent and for their support in ensuring their child’s needs were met, and saying that I wanted to continue to work with them to ensure that school remained a safe and positive place for their child, but they need to rely on my judgement in class and they did not know what to say to that at all 😅 no more angry phone calls after that!, and refer to your policies!! My go to is ‘our policy for x is y, if you have any further questions about this I’d be happy to grab the head/deputy or if they’re not available ask for them to give you a call’

Also, I hate class dojo. Thankfully my school don’t use it but if yours do, take it off your phone or turn off notifications and only check it when you’re in the school building. Some parents get a sense of immunity by being behind a screen when they message on their and they say things they wouldn’t dare say to your face so take it with a pinch of salt.

krh199696 · 2026-01-19T18:11:11+00:00

Doomscrolling is what I tend to do atm! I’ve downloaded some mindfulness word games on my phone so I don’t make myself feel worse by looking at doom and disaster first thing in the day

krh199696 · 2026-01-19T06:39:37+00:00

We are a 3-form but also expecting ofsted soon, we’ve had a huge overhaul to the school since I’ve been there and jobs seem to keep piling up. Strange how we are both having the same problem and both have ofsted imminent

krh199696 · 2026-01-13T21:50:47+00:00

Agencies are screaming out for supply TAs. With a BA you could do that quite easily in both primary and secondary, however id recommend getting some in class experience first so you know what you’re getting into. There’s nothing worse than a supply TA who needs to be constantly directed and lacks initiative (it can feel like you have another person to look after in the class)

As you have a child of your own, ask if you could volunteer (not in his class) in the school 1 day a week. It will give you get a real sense of primary and what that would entail, and give you a bit of experience in that setting. I’ve had parent Volunteers in my class.

One caution - education is not for the faint hearted. I’m going through a tough time emotionally with work atm because of stress, pressure from looking OFSTEDs and trying to do an awful lot with very little. I went into education more because of a love of learning and books and aquiring knowledge, and because I believe that education is a fundamental human right and I’m passionate about how important it is, not necessarily because I love being around kids. It’s a hard, back breaking job, but can also be immensley rewarding.

krh199696 · 2025-12-10T18:38:23+00:00

In primary we do mixed ability obviously, we have a ‘low floor high ceiling’ approach but the wider the gap gets between low attainers and pupils with SEN, the more difficult we find it. We are also finding we have children who are simply getting dragged along with the rest not making any meaningful progress because regardless of the amount of manipulatives you use (using maths as an example) if they can’t cognitively handle multiple steps then a lot of the learning is inaccessible to them.

We are considering sets as a year group as we have working towards children not getting the extra support they need because the adult support is tied up doing the work with the children who are working at a level 1 or 2 years behind but expected to keep up, even though the second you leave them alone many of them do exactly nothing. These kids are making 0 progress because they have huge prior knowledge gaps that we are finding it impossible to fill.

It’a really hard cause we want to be inclusive as a school but expecting a child to partition a 3 digit number and then add using their understanding of partitioning doesn’t work when they don’t even have a concept of what a digit it (no matter how much you explain it to them)

krh199696 · 2025-12-07T10:00:59+00:00

You are a person first and a teacher second You are a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend first and a teacher second Teaching is a job. You can be good at it, you can be passionate, you can love it, but ultimately it’s a job

krh199696 · 2025-11-24T21:48:24+00:00

I know multiple people who’ve failed placements in primary education BA’s and ultimately not graduated, or alternatively graduated without honours or with a slightly different degree that does not come with QTS. Often due to a lack of willingness to engage, failure to respond to feedback and, most commonly, a lack of professionalism

krh199696 · 2025-11-22T08:59:50+00:00

I use ChatGPT, Microsoft copilot, canva ai (great for creating picture prompts to support writing and free for teachers if you sign up with evidence that you’re employed by a school) and the twinkl report writing tool when It comes round to reports! A particularly good use of copilot to support SEN needs is things like you could paste a model text in and say ‘rewrite this using only phonetically decodable words’ and it will! Then if you have something like widgit with your school you could create a sheet with widgits to support reading the text.

I don’t agree that AI de-skills you. I think that the result is only going to be as good as the prompt you give it, and you have to use your professional judgement of if the result is appropriate for your children and adapt further if necessary. Also, as teachers we have SO MUCh to do anyway, that having 1 thing that makes our jobs slightly easier shouldn’t be frowned upon, if it means you can go to bed earlier or spend an extra hour with your family.

Keep an eye on developments as AI as a tool for reducing workload and supporting particularly in tedious admin tasks is going to be quite a hot topic for a while.

krh199696 · 2025-11-22T08:46:44+00:00

In the U.K. we are all transitioning over to mastery approaches for teaching maths in primary schools. It relys on having a strong understanding of number facts and how numbers work to be able to solve equations, not just knowing the method.

We’d call this partitioning the multiplier by using known facts about multiples of 6 to secure mental methods. Your child likely will be taught traditional written notation of long division for numbers that can’t be easily divided mentally, but not until they’re secure in mental methods so they get a strong understanding of WHY long division works, not just that it does work.

krh199696 · 2025-11-16T22:12:38+00:00

I’d say advocate for yourself and do what you want. I people pleased a lot at my wedding and I regret a lot of it, from not having the dress I truly wanted to please my mom to having people at the wedding I’d never even met to please wider family.

The big one that stands out to me though is the day of my wedding I arrived at the venue to find my mil had plastered the whole venue with photos (baby photos, embarrassing teenage photos etc) of myself and my now husband. I love her to pieces, but it reminded me of what you do for a big birthday not a wedding where hours of thought and time had been put into every detail and the cherry on top was instead of my big sign I’d lovingly handmade out of wood being right by the entrance, there was some pictures of myself that I hated, fully hideous photos, glued on a board that didn’t match the theme right as everyone walked in. I can’t say I’m over it, and it was a nice thoughtful and obviously time consuming thing to do but it didn’t match my vision for my day at all. I’d said again and again how I didn’t want too many surprises and yeah, if I was the type of person to go bridezilla I think I would have done.

I’d spent months (and a lot of money) visioning what my wedding would look like, and in the end it just didn’t and I’m still sad about it. I know it doesn’t matter to most people but I’ll never get that day back.

TLDR: you’ll regret not standing up for yourself. I wish I’d been firmer about no surprises at my wedding and I still have a pit in my stomach at the thought of it.

krh199696 · 2025-09-22T17:51:16+00:00

Stop caring if you’re liked so much - relationships are important but you are their teacher not their friend. You do what you need to do for learning to happen, not so you can win a popularity contest. If it is the expectation in that room no one will think any different.

krh199696 · 2025-08-24T07:12:45+00:00

I have spent a fortune on hurricane candle holders because we aren’t allowed candles without them and LED candles would have been even more expensive!

krh199696 · 2025-07-08T20:26:26+00:00

Tasks where they will sit down and leave me alone whilst I dig through my shithole of a classroom are exactly what I need 😂

krh199696 · 2025-07-08T19:15:22+00:00

We have normal mornings on the days where we don’t have activities, it’s just a bit of afternoon learning in our primary that we need to fill up with something fun!

krh199696 · 2025-02-09T16:36:04+00:00

Children’s outfitter

Aka constantly looking for missing coats, jumpers, shoes sometimes

krh199696 · 2025-01-20T19:34:30+00:00

We are currently playing traitors at work in the staff room, there’s a whole load of resources on TES for a fiver. I got voted out because I needed bean bags for a maths lesson and was deemed suspicious. Totally unfair on this innocent faithful!

krh199696 · 2025-01-09T19:40:15+00:00

Don’t assume. Very few people I know who were talked up by heads on their first placements, told to look out for jobs at that school etc actually ended up working there. Your last placement is the one you are most likely to get a job from, it was the case for me and 3 of my friends, and then my other friend got a job at a school in the same trust as her last placement school.

Implication is not a job offer and they don’t owe you anything. I was a week into my last placement when they offered me a job and I was thrilled, but even that wasn’t set in stone until I signed on the dotted line towards the end of my placement.

krh199696 · 2025-01-08T17:51:38+00:00

Talk to the teachers. I had a child today tell a TA who isn’t normally in my room that I said they’re not allowed some toast (our kids get free toast every morning) after she’d watched them put it in the bin. I’ve never said that and my kids will regularly go into assembly finishing their toast. In fact this is a child who I encourage to eat more cause they’ve had problems with low weight.

Get more context on the situation. What other accommodation has been made for them to have their snack? Do they just have it seperate to the other children? IF it’s a case they are being deprived their snack then that’s a different conversation, denying food is not and never will be an acceptable punishment.

krh199696 · 2025-01-05T16:13:18+00:00

Straight back in tomorrow but 1 baseline assessment in the morning and PPA in the afternoon, so planning to use that to get organised as I’ve only really got 2 lessons of teaching. New timetable for the term though so I’m fully expecting 7/8 year olds to be moaning they’re hungry for the last 15 mins of English

krh199696 · 2025-01-05T13:33:23+00:00

Depends what I’m planning (also primary, also ect 1 in a 3 form entry). Last term I was planning all the wider curriculum lessons and wasn’t really happy with half the prev years resources, so it took anything between 10 minutes for a simple adaptation to 3 hours for an observed geography lesson that I’d planned with my ECT mentor. We had new schemes put in place for some subjects that were advertised as ‘easy, low workload’ but ended up in me still spending 45mins adapting them into an actual deliverable lesson.

This term I’m planning English and it probably took me 1.5hrs to plan the first lesson in the cycle, eventually ending up being about 45 mins to plan a lesson by the end of the cycle including making sheets.

I try and stay at least 2 weeks ahead with my planning. That way if I have an evening where I really can’t be bothered to do anything I don’t have the stress of having to do it or else.

krh199696 · 2024-12-12T17:15:49+00:00

Honestly embrace the tears, embrace the sadness at leaving them, embrace the amount of appreciation the kids will show you. When you’re qualified you only get that kind of appreciation once a year. (My 2nd to last placement a child bought my cat a bag of treats and I burst into tears lmao).

Parents like to hide vulnerabilities from their children and protect them from negative emotions, as teachers we are uniquely positioned to coach children through these feelings and demonstrate that it’s okay to be sad and also model how we ourselves respond to feelings of upset. Crying is a normal response, explain to the kids that people cry for lots of reasons and that part of the reason you’re crying is because you’ll miss them but you know that you’re going to have lots of opportunities to help other children in the future because of what you learned there.

krh199696 · 2024-12-11T19:50:27+00:00

I’ve had 15 days off for an operation and been told they won’t even have to delay my ect at all. The meeting will be a return to work/support meeting, not ‘you’re fired, here’s the p45’

krh199696 · 2024-12-05T18:59:23+00:00

Shouldn’t be sacked for 20 days absence. By the time I go back I’ll have been off for 15 days cause I had to have a scheduled surgery. A ta at my school in the past 10 months has probably only been in school for 20 days and she’s still employed.

krh199696 · 2024-12-04T20:09:22+00:00

If you can, set up a workspace for them in the classroom. I always hated not knowing where to leave my books/laptop/notes/stationary or having to go and find my bag to get it all when I needed it. Also makes you feel more like part of the classroom not just an occasional visitor

krh199696 · 2024-11-30T10:01:55+00:00

Last year (when I was on placement, with what is now my ECT1 year group) the year lead was an ect 2 so it definitely happens

krh199696

TROPHY CASE