Is my son's teacher overreacting, or am I underreacting

In My Humble Opinion
41

While I understand where the teacher is coming from in worrying about what will happen if the “he was naked in a picture!” story goes home to other parents, she is now showing a pattern of not using logic in her interactions with either kids or parents.

The photo showed less skin than a typical beach or swimming pool picture would. The picture was not inappropriate, the child’s comment, while wholly innocent, was inappropriate for the school setting, only because of the uproar that it could cause. But he couldn’t know that, because he’s six. As the teacher, it was her place to make an age-suitable explanation to the kids about how, even though they’re outside, hot tubs are like bathtubs, so when people get in them, they don’t wear clothes, but that it was okay that the picture was taken because you couldn’t see any of the child’s private parts. And use that as a teachable moment, hey, kids, it’s not right if anyone, even mom or dad, wants to take pictures of you that will show your private parts. If someone wants to do that, tell someone you trust.

But no, instead we get a letter about “naked pictures” when no one could ever prove that the child in the picture was naked by looking at the picture itself.

The “sloppy” thing is another point of poor logic. As Beadalin pointed out, it’s not instructive. It doesn’t teach a damned thing, it just pokes at the kid who may be doing as best as he can, physically. Six year old boys don’t have great fine motor skills, and some won’t develop those skills for a few more years, but they can improve their handwriting when given direction on concrete things to concentrate on, which Beadalin enumerated.

Moreover, it’s now five months into the school year. If the “sloppy” thing has been going on for all this time, at what point does a good teacher stop and think “you know, this approach that I’ve used now for more than half of the school year isn’t getting through to this kid, maybe I need to try something else.”? I’d think that point would’ve happened sometime before the winter break. Just repeatedly denigrating the kid’s efforts isn’t cutting it.

42

I’m pretty sure it’s not the picture but the fact your kid was going around telling everyone he was naked.

This leads to talk and talk leads to “sexual harassment”

Talk like this gets around and the next thing you know you have your husband and kid naked in a bathtub doing God knows what. Of course that never happened, but that’s rumours for you.

Suppose your husband and you get divorced and it turns nasty and someone remembers the time your kid was naked with Daddy? It sounds 100 times worse that it was.

I can pretty much assure you it wasn’t the picture so much as the kind of talk the picture lead to.

I think it’s a good time to teach your son, not everything that goes on in the house is appropriate to share. People don’t need to know EVERY detail of your lives.

And I know, kids seem to love me. They have Tae Kwon Do classes for kids where I work out, and often I’ll be resting a kid I don’t even know will come over to me say, “Hi,” and start to tell me all sorts of things, I’m sure his parents don’t want him blabbing all over the place. Whether it’s job loss, fights, drunk grandma, etc etc :slight_smile:

43

Win.

If I were the teacher, I would have directed the discussion somewhere else immediately and not wasted my time worrying about what the other kids might be thinking about a completely innocent situation.

Plus, it’s a helleva lot less work.

44

It just seems odd that any mention of being naked is now considered verboten. Like, mentioning being naked in the shower or something. I mean, sometimes people are naked. If the kid was going on about the family trip to the nudist colony, that’s one thing but it’s sort of sad that a casual mention of, oh yeah, I happened to be naked this one time is suddenly inappropriate seems depressing.

45

I don’t know enough to say that the teacher isn’t overreacting, but I do think she was right to react in some fashion. For one thing, she doesn’t know the true origin of the photo. She also doesn’t know the family situation. As the mom, you do know that this photo was in fact taken by the child’s father, your ex-husband, and you are OK with that. She probably has other kids in her class who are being taken care of by the “uncle of the week” when there’s an unexpected snow day. If for some reason that photo and conversation had taken place and it had not been taken by the child’s father, or if you did not agree that this was appropriate behavior for the father (like he had done it before with creepy friends around), I’m pretty sure you’d want to know about it.

In a day and age where photos are easily published worldwide–accessible to virtually everyone you (and your son) will ever meet–it makes sense to be more cautious about photos than we were in another time.

I don’t think either “sloppy” or “please write neater” would help this kid. It sounds like she’s treating that as a lack of effort when in fact it is a lack of skill. Fortunately, the ability to write by hand is losing its importance in this same day and age. 6 is not too early to start learning to type :slight_smile:

46

I think the teacher has a valid point. It’s not the non-existent nudity that is the problem, but the sharing of naked hot tubbing in class. Would it be okay to share a picture in class of your son’s head peaking from behind the shower curtain? I don’t think so. Would you show yourself like that at your workplace? It’s a minor faux pas but still inappropriate. She was wrong to embarrass your son over it though, if she didn’t speak with him in private.

47

Divine, I was a classroom teacher for twenty years. The teacher went too far.

I would suggest rewriting what you had to say in Post #38:

Word it so that it is genuinely polite and written as a note to the teacher. Tone it down just a little. Let her know that you are aware that she is a new teacher concerned with doing a good job, but that you see the situation entirely differently.

Let her know how you see it and what you think she could have done differently to handle the situation.

I would include my phone number in case she has any questions or concerns.

Just be assertive and pleasant. There is no need to put her on the defensive, but I would let her know that you think that the situation shouldn’t be exaggerated.

48

Yeah, it’s like the tons and tons and tons of times that my essays came back with “poor descriptions.” I would ask the teachers how to write “richer descriptions” and all they’d be able to tell me is “just describe better.” Well, gee, thanks a lot, that was about as helpful as a chainsaw for a haircut.

I finally was told how to write better descriptions when I was already a college graduate, it was while doing some writing for a MUD (text-based internet game) and the guy who taught me is a computer programmer.

The “naked” thing reminds me of these kids who fall down, don’t get scrapped, and wait to see how grown-ups react before either going on or wailing their heads off. The teacher managed to bring attention to the nakedness and turn it into a Bad Thing, same as those parents who jump on their li’l choochie-coo going “ohmygawdyoufellareyouhurtareyouallright…” yes, of course your kid is crying - before you are scaring him, genius!

49

Teachers overreacting. Not worth your time to react in a meaningful way. I might forward her email to the principal with a note ‘are you kidding me?’ and never follow up again.

50

This could have been a teaching moment in the classroom, if this flake could have kept her head, per tumbleddown’s suggestion.

Now it’s a teaching moment for you: tell your son that teachers are human and can do idiotic things, just like everyone else. You can also tell him that there’s nothing wrong with the human body, and “naked” isn’t a dirty word, but even the mention of nudity can make some adults freak out. Also, talking about nakkidity in class can lead to a lot of laughter and disorder, so that’s why it’s not a good idea.

It makes me sad that so many people, including some in this thread, seem to jump straight from “picture of kid’s head while kid was naked” to “OMG, this may be over the line and too much like porn!”

51

Did the child who asked what he was wearing also get a note to his parents about his inappropriate question that creates a hostile learning environment, etc?

52

And if you’re a new teacher and you’re concerned about this, here’s what you do: YOU GO TALK TO YOUR PRINCIPAL. You don’t send a note home first. If the principal suggested the note, then the principal is a tool.

Yeah, when you’re six, being naked is the second-funniest thing in the world, behind only farts and poops. If you can’t handle the hilarity this engenders in six-year-olds, find a different job. I do a lot of long-suffering eye-rolls, and when things are out of hand I explain to my kids what’s appropriate for school and what’s not. Yesterday at lunch a kid really wanted to tell me a joke, but then he stopped and said, “Buuuut…it’s MAYBE not APPROPRIATE for school, Mr. Dorkness.” I congratulated him on his excellent judgment in saving that joke for after school.

I strongly disagree. When a child is in big trouble in my classroom, I say, in my steeliest teacher voice, “John, come here, please.” The “please” is always part of it, because I want to teach them to make it second-nature. “Please be neater” is a rookie mistake only because it contains zero teaching content.

I often deal with handwriting errors. I might write a note on a spelling test like this:

I’ll underline the problem letters and write my sample letters very carefully. If the problem persists, the next note might say,

I’ve also handed papers back to students and asked them, with a non-negotiable “please,” to rewrite it in their best handwriting so that I can read it. I’ll point out the things that need to happen (e.g., letters need to be based on lines, erasures need to be complete, etc.), and I’ll sit by them helping them with the first few words until they have the hang of it. If they object or malinger, they may find themselves completing it at lunch or at recess; and when they finish, I have another pep talk with them about working hard the first time.

Using terms like “please” and “thank you” doesn’t dilute the power of an instruction. Rather, it builds a secondary instruction in social lubricants into the primary instruction.

53

“Please” attached to a request from an authority figure rarely denotes “optional,” if ever. That’s an important fact about the English language that we’d be failing to teach if we didn’t employ the usage with our students from the beginning.

“Please” does not mean “this is optional.”

54

Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill. You never how said teacher or principal will react even in the face of reason. A negative reaction from either will just cause undue stress over a situation that is already over if you can just let it go.

In summary note from teacher = mole hill, or would you like to go mountain climbing?

55

Ok, teacher chiming in here…

First let’s talk about ‘sloppy’. You can be specific: ‘please have your letters touch the top of the line’, ‘please leave a space between your words’, ‘please form your ‘a’ correctly’, ‘no sentences falling off the bottom line’, etc. Be specific and let them know exactly how they can improve, and yes, I would always say ‘please’. Sloppy is, well, it’s just sloppy.

As for the hot-tub. I think you should talk to the teacher and to the principal. I understand why she may have got worried about the ‘naked’ picture but she should have talked to YOU or your husband about it, not your son. It is almost certainly a question of inexperience, but she needs to learn too. Maybe the school aren’t giving her the support she needs. The first year of teaching is tough and she should have a mentor guiding her through it. Speak to them too.
Oh, I see Left Hand of Dorkness has it covered! Funny we both picked ‘a’…

56

This I have to agree with. Whenever my mom told me to “please clean your room” or “please wash the dishes,” I’d have been insane to interpret it as “optional.”

57

I heartily appreciate all the feedback. I’m leaning towards having a face-to-face conversation with the teacher (perhaps with principal present). That way there’s less room for misunderstanding.

This is also the teacher who lectured the parents at Back-To-School Night about the flu epidemic, handwashing, sending in hand sanitizer, don’t send your kid in if he’s got the sniffles - and then in the next topic, told us, as part of a reading program, she would be sending a cuddly stuffed frog home each night with a different child, so the child could read to it. When I asked her, “How often does this nomadic frog get washed?” I got a blank stare. “Uh, so, the only time this frog gets washed after being handled and sneezed on by every child in this class and their family pet, is if I do it myself?” So I washed the frog when it came INTO my house, and when it went OUT again. And included a note saying so for the next parent.

This is also the teacher who told us we had to send in snacks for the class’s morning snack time, but told us “Healthy snacks please, and no peanuts, and nothing with wheat in it.”

I said, “NO WHEAT?!?!?!? What’s left?”

“Well, pretzels are ok.”

“Uh, pretzels contain wheat. They’re made with flour.”

“…Oh.”

This is also the teacher who paired up the kids by 'Good reader with a poor reader", so that the good readers would encourage the poor readers to do better. Yeah, my son’s partner was REALLY happy to be paired up with someone who would show him how much worse his reading was compared to my son’s, and physically harrassed my son until he complained to me and I had to come in to speak to the teacher.

This is also the teacher who corrected my son in science class, she told him that pirhana live in the ocean, they don’t live in rivers; last I looked, pirhana are freshwater fish, and the Amazon was a river.

This photo thing is the latest in a series of annoyances that I am trying to attribute to inexperience and youth, rather than incompetence. I wonder how many other things she says and does that I don’t hear about, and how many things she is doing to the other kids in the class.

58

Eeesh. I think you’ve got an excluded middle here: can’t it be both inexperience AND incompetence?

Things like the stuffed frog, and the “no wheat, no peanuts” thing sound like inexperience to me. I know I made plenty of boneheaded mistakes in my first year (and second year, and am still making them–hopefully fewer than before). I was super-lucky to have a series of excellent mentors and even better co-workers, who allowed me to steal from them wholesale. Snackwise, for example, I got organized enough in my second year to set up a snack calendar for parents, after taking the structure for a snack calendar from a co-worker. I also took her list of snacks: instead of telling parents what not to send, I give them a list of 10 acceptable snacks to choose from. (Fortunately, my one wheat-intolerant child has very accommodating parents, and they send in a daily wheat-free snack for him in addition to volunteering to send in a monthly snack for everyone).

I can totally imagine making the stuffed-frog mistake. In fact, I’m kind of curious whether a plush frog really presents a disease hazard: I was under the impression that flat nonabsorbent surfaces like doorknobs were the highest hazard, and that absorbent surfaces presented a fairly low transmission risk.

And the piranha one is initially understandable. I once insisted to a child that Pluto had no moons; I was completely convinced this was true. But I went home that night to check, and upon discovering I was wrong, I wrote him a letter apologizing for the error and telling him about what I’d learned, thanking him for prompting my new learning. It’s acceptable for a teacher to make an error of fact, as long as it’s outside of the standard course of study, AND as long as they’re willing to correct it.

59

Well, only if the anchorman announced that he was pants-less. There was no ‘assuming’ going on in the classroom.

60

Still, does it really matter? The photo was fine before the kid announced that he was naked in it. But you can’t see his nakedness! The only thing that changed the photo from OK to not OK was the knowledge that he was naked in the part of the photo that you can’t see. This is ridiculous, and IMO doesn’t warrant a chat with the kid about inappropriate pictures. The picture wasn’t inappropriate.