If the account is reliable - I too have a first grader - then the teacher sounds awful. It's perfectly normal for the other kids to attach labels, especially to kids they don't really know personally (ie, ones they only met last week that are in a different workstream to them). But seriously, there's something very wrong if the teacher is using the term class clown. Seems like she's given up on this kid, and is now only using him as a punishment example to get the others to behave! Rod for her own back, really, as she'll now have him in her class for two more years.
I'm struggling with the fact this this is a surprise to you - where did you do your schooling that was so different..? Mass schooling, like mass anything, is only suited to the middle 80%. And there's a whole other debate about whether the limited funds remaining are best spent on the top or bottom 10%...
This is a usual trend with high teacher to student ratios.
Ideally I've seen best results in the 5-10:1 ratios. Obviously these are hard to come by unless you're going private.
I gots to save me some serious cash if I ever decide I want kids.
I'd take it all with a pinch of salt, quite frankly.
You wouldn't believe the stuff that I discover that I'm supposed to have done or said, usually in the form of an email or worried enquiry at the school gate. Children get the wrong end of the stick all the time, then add their own special twist... which is why we invented homework books and school newsletters.
Furthermore, the decision to move a child down a grade is never made lightly. It is a bit weird for those of us from the Anglosphere, of course, where it is more usual to accommodate all abilities within the same school year, but Swiss teachers consider the (extreme) option of allowing a child to repeat valuable stages of the curriculum to be a perfectly valid way of preventing a child from drowning in work that is too advanced for him.
I find it particularly difficult to believe that the reasons for the child's move would have been discussed with the children. Sure, they would have been informed of the move, but I'd be very surprised if even a Swiss teacher said that it was because the child was the 'class clown'.
Swiss teachers can be very difficult to work with, but that does not mean that they are any less professional than those of us from Britain or the United States - merely that they are differently professional. Their values and methods may be fundamentally different to ours, but their concern for the progress of the children in their care is no less than ours.
Ultimately, the fact that a child has changed class is neither your business nor that of your children. The children, no doubt, have their own understanding of the affair, and I'm sure many of their parents have their own views, but none of this is important. This is a matter for the child himself, his parents and the school: nobody else.
What was it that a teacher of kindergarten children once said when she met the parents of the new intake?
"I promise to not to believe every detail your child tells me about his life at home, if you promise not to believe every detail he tells you about what happens here".
Run that one past me again?
i think the sadly infers - if a student is disliked by a teacher in CH then the teacher has more power (hence the sadly) to harm the student ́s future.
You seriously think that not liking a student influence the student's school career? If that was true, there are a couple of students who would have been sent back to primary school instead of staying in my class in High school. Personal feelings have no influence whatsoever on their grades. I even hate myself for giving this arrogant ****** ****** *** **** **** ********* that good grades, but I do because it is the grade she should get.
I've really disliked three students in my life. That is an extreemly low ratio. They totally ignore it and never noticed one second and even if they asked me later after leaving school, I would not tell them. Teachers don't think as like/dislike, that's child(ish) mind. we know what to look for and what the goal is in our subjects, that's it. And still we are human... I know, it's hard to believe.
I don't doubt your integrity for a moment, but I think it would be slightly naïve to state that no teacher's feeling for a pupil EVER influenced either marks/grades or has in any way negatively influenced a child's career.
Sorry Faltrad, but Longbyt is spot on.
Great that you can be so impartial. But I'd wager a lot of money that not everyone is like you.
Yes but apparently only to the right side of the room. This kid may grow up and have a split personality.
This child will grown up and the outcome will not be known until then. I would like to know how the child is doing now since last September when he was sent back.
I don't know. It's also a question of perception. Understanding assessment requires a long process, experience, a kind of feeling for it on the top of the list of criterias, expectations and descriptors of achievement level (called different names in different school systems). It is very difficult for outsiders to get into this matter (?stuff?= German Materie ). There is plenty of space for misunderstandings.
Real revenge on grades ? Frankly? Even in confidence, in the "between us teachers" mode, I've never heard such a thing. But other teachers may have, I don't know that.
I just know that my philosophy teacher in France hated me in high school, he was conservative catholic and I was openly anachist-existentialist... and this is a subject where grading is very very abstruse. I still did ok/good. Was I a genious degraded to only good student because he hated me? Perhaps. I won't be the judge of that.
I always preferred the teachers that didn't like me, as it was more fun! (plus, I was more likely to learn something new)
And, other than the fact that I normally did the homework for my next class during the current class, I was always well behaved (except in chem lab)
Tom
By the way... there are also very very few students I really liked, who really touched me as a person. Very few. Perhaps two. So even if I inconscienciously gave them better grades, that is still the most extreem low ratio of history of injustice.
There is not that much space for real personal emotions. There is so much going on with so many students. It's social, intellectual, pastoral if you believe this word has a meaning (I don't), but it's not comparable with anything general public know. It's different, and I like it like that.
Well Faltrad, if there were very few you disliked and very few you liked, sounds like you were a well-balanced teacher.
Musichick has put me to shaaaaaaame !!!!!!!
But.... nevertheless in this particular case I'd have been very difficult with the teacher.
Really?
Teachers usually like their students. And like their work. It is difficult enough occupation to stay in it if one actually does not like the kids. If he meant "favored" certain kids, I completely agree.
Philosophy. Made me chuckle. Everyone has a different philosophy of edu, dif approach. To say all teachers are objective is a nonsense. Good for those who are, but certainly, not all of the teachers are objective.
I hope that child is doing well. I always thought teachers who cannot deal with simple discipline rules used the class to complain, to have the kids push on the offender instead of the teacher. It's not very fair. But, honestly, it has the biggest impact on the teacher's image, not the offender. Kids figure out very quickly when the teacher just doesn't know anything better to do and use the classroom to complain and as venting ground. The respect quickly drops. The best is discretely pull the student aside, cooperate with parents, use the "reaseu" of the rest of the school team. Not threaten and constantly comment to the kids, trying to warn them "see that's what happens to the evil doers" and illicit discipline from them this way.
The Swiss school system really is unfair.
I was the class clown in the UK and got put forward a year....
We were always concerned about that when summer vacation rolled around. No one was ever 'left back' but was a highly rated public school in New York City when they still rated schools. We did have a kid in fifth grade that was so disruptive he was removed from the school.
Why is this an issue? How much self-esteem can a second grader have? Maybe if he feels like a chump he will correct his behavior. Better learn now rather than later!
Why shouldn't a teacher have some influence upon the child's advancement? Obviously the parent wasn't too interested in his/her child's behavior or they would have stopped it. The teacher also has to see that the other students' education is not suffering as a result of the misbehaving child.
I am not sure if I understood this question right..