Life

A headteacher sent the best response to the parents telling his staff how to teach

Oonagh Keating. Updated January 27th, 2021

The issue of where and how children are getting an education is a political hot potato, as they have been shown to be horribly efficient spreaders of coronavirus.

Caught in the middle of the argument are the teachers who are delivering on-site learning for some children, as well as providing home-studying materials and remote lessons.

One headteacher had a tongue-in-cheek message for those parents who have been contacting his school with their hot takes on how the teaching staff should – well, teach.

And the paragraph in question …

“A number of parents have taken advantage of this new access to send highly critical messages of advice to teachers about how to do their jobs and questioning their training, skills and competence.

“Can I encourage all those particular parents, who now consider themselves to be educational experts, to sign up for teacher training at their earliest convenience, since there are never enough teachers and I suspect many will be leaving the profession after this year.”

from Burn GIFs via Gfycat

The head, Mr. Colin Dowland, told the Times Educational Supplement –

“Pupils and parents seeing teachers on their pre-recorded videos and seeing teachers live – which is really important for mental health – does give parents who might not think it through, the chance to message or email and say, ‘have you thought about doing this?’ or ‘how about doing it this way?'”

“And that is undermining for the teachers, who are trained professionals and have needed to learn a completely new set of skills in the last few months in terms of being video stars as well as IT gurus, mental health coaches, virologists and health and safety experts.”

He added that parents had responded well to his funny, but important, reminder to them to stay in their lane. Our phrase, not his.

On Twitter, parents, teachers and those who appreciate a good put-down all responded well too.

Mr. Dowland, himself, had this understated response.

Someone should pass the letter to the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, if they can find him.

READ MORE

This “government letter” about extra school is some next-level kid pranking

Source Mr B, TES Image August de Richelieu on Pexels