Do teachers ever get it wrong with discipline?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop overreacting. Let’s pretend the teacher is 100% right. You haven’t failed as a parent. Good grief. Your kid is trying out different behaviors as a young child. You talk to her, keep it moving and take a closer look at things.

My kid pushed our next door neighbor down on the playground in 4th grade. She had her reasons, but pushing someone isn’t acceptable. She apologized. We all moved on. Other than that, she is the kind of kid that wins character awards at school. It isn’t like her one time physical aggression means she is headed to prison some day.

It’s not overreacting and it’s different from your child who had one incident in 4th grade that was probably justified.

I would be horrified if a teacher told me that my daughter was exhibiting mean girl behavior. At this age it’s easy to identify because most at this age aren’t mean yet and if they are they don’t hide it well.

By third grade everyone knows who the mean girls are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and I wouldn’t use that kind of language with a parent, even if it were true. I would probably say that the child is a social butterfly but sometimes needs reminders to be kind to everyone and to be inclusive. I’d tell the parent that the child is very confident academically and requires reminders that not everyone finds the work easy, so we don’t comment on the difficulty of assignments. Have you gotten that type of feedback before? If not, I wouldn’t worry.

Sugarcoat it? No. Teachers need to call the nasty mean girls out and let them know it’s unacceptable. How does being cruel to another child turn into being a social butterfly?

It’s almost March so the teacher has had time to get to know your child and apparently doesn’t like her attitude. I would ask for a conference for the three of you and they can both tell their story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My first grade daughter’s teacher called me yesterday to relay something that she says happened in the classroom. She said my daughter made a comment to another student and ascribed malicious intent to it, specifically describing her as a “mean girl.”

This is the first I have ever heard from this teacher about anything, other than our brief conference that was entirely focused on test results. I am shocked and so upset that this happened so I talked extensively to my kid about it and she has reported a very different story - it seems like there were multiple kids in this incident and she was not the leader of it, and the teacher didn’t know that.

I have been very very hard on her and am punishing her and supporting the teacher in front of my kid, but I honestly don’t think she is lying and that the teacher got it somewhat wrong. The teacher also implied that she thinks my kid thinks she’s smarter than other students, which, again is something I have never seen and is DEFINITELY not something we have ever told her or emphasized. Her little brother has special needs including borderline low IQ so we are very cognizant of this particular issue.

I have never gotten this feedback from her other teachers and I have more contact with them than this one. The feedback that we generally get is that she is kind to friends and does well academically but is a little too chatty at times, but a good kid.

Never a bully or mean girl comment. This teacher basically said she is arrogant and a bad kid. If what she says is true, I feel like we have a huge issue (and honestly that I am a massive failure as a parent). But she is also very young, and again, I just do not see this streak in her. I am very involved in the school and in her life (volunteer when I can, Girl Scout troop leader so I see her in a setting with classmates) and I am shocked.

I am not generally one to push back or be super defensive of my kid for a lot of reasons, but this feels very different. What would you do? And please be kind, I am incredibly upset and alarmed by this situation.

Catholic school?