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Teacher not teaching properly

I go to sixth form college and one of my teachers is terrible. Due to Coronavirus, we’ve had to start online learning in conjunction with face-to-face learning. I already find it really hard to focus and even turn up to online lessons, but this is just ridiculous and it’s making it so much harder. She always either turns up to online lessons 40 minutes late, or doesn’t turn up at all - 80% of the time not even offering an explanation. There have been a few times where she has cancelled in person lessons too, sometimes offering the explanation that her doctors appointment took longer than expected. I understand if she’s ill or something, but that doesn’t excuse not turning up, cancelling lessons with no warning and being ridiculously late with no explanation almost every lesson. The least she could do is explain, give us warning, or actually tell us what to do instead of waiting around for her. Recently, she didn’t turn up to online lessons after 30 minutes, so I assumed she wasn’t going to turn up again. I left for a while and came back to find one notification that just said “Hi.” I scrolled up to see that she started a lesson just as I left my room which lasted 10 minutes, but I didn’t even get a notification for it anyway. She also sent a small paragraph saying what to do for the lesson and at the end of the paragraph she tagged me and two other students (half the class) who didn’t come to the lesson, saying that we are going to fall behind if we don’t come to class. I find it really unfair that she is blaming us for this even though she didn’t turn up for at least 30 minutes. Not only is she terrible at turning up, she’s rude to her students too. She teaches film studies which is a very opinionated and subjective subject, but when she asks for our interpretations of something she’s like “no i don’t think so” and just says we’re wrong even though film is ambiguous. As well as this, she sets lots of essays - which would be fine if she marked them. From September - November, she set us 6 essays but only gave us back 1 - which was poorly marked with not much feedback at all, as well as her only giving it back during the last week of term. The essay she gave back was also not remotely related to the film we’re covering in class, so she’s setting more work and expecting us to improve when we don’t even know where we’ve gone wrong to improve. I understand it takes a while to mark work, but I have other teachers with 80 pupils with work to mark and manage to give us work back within a week, whereas this teacher has a total of 9 students across the year groups. It’s really frustrating and I try really hard to do well and show her how enthusiastic I am about film because it’s what I want a career in. Which reminded me that I turned up early to her class once and we discussed a film she told us to watch (as a replacement for a lesson) I said it was okay, nothing great - which she replied “If you don’t understand why I told you to watch it, this isn’t the right subject for you.” I perfectly understood why she told us to watch it, i just didn’t think it was amazing. It honestly really hurt me to hear her say that and I didn’t even say anything in response because I was just so shocked and admittedly, upset. I know people are going to tell me to complain but can you offer advice on how to do it? I have bad anxiety and I struggle with stuff like this, I’m terrified that if I complain to someone, she’ll treat me differently. I could anonymously complain but I don’t really know how to do that, the school know my personal email. There is absolutely no way I could talk to her about it directly, either. I’d honestly end up having a panic attack in her face lol. I just don’t want me and my other classmates to suffer. It’s hard for everyone right now, but teachers have a duty they need to fulfil and she’s not doing it.Thank you :smile:
Reply 1
Avatar for Scotney
Scotney
20
@harrysbar can you please advise here? Thanks.
This is really awful and I think her head of department needs to know. I would send them an email saying that you are worried about how online learning is going and then list all of the things that have happened as objectively as you can. Encourage other students to do the same if you can and ideally get parents involved too.

Online lessons aren't easy for anyone but she is really not even trying to do her best. If you get no where with the head of department I would escalate it to the Head.
Reply 3
Avatar for bhiml
bhiml
OP
4
Original post by harrysbar
This is really awful and I think her head of department needs to know. I would send them an email saying that you are worried about how online learning is going and then list all of the things that have happened as objectively as you can. Encourage other students to do the same if you can and ideally get parents involved too.

Online lessons aren't easy for anyone but she is really not even trying to do her best. If you get no where with the head of department I would escalate it to the Head.

Thank you, I was wondering if I was just overreacting but this answered my question. The thing is that she is the head of her department, so I’ll have to email maybe head of A levels to see if they can do anything. Thanks again for the reply, hopefully this will resolve it. :smile:
Original post by harrysbar
This is really awful and I think her head of department needs to know. I would send them an email saying that you are worried about how online learning is going and then list all of the things that have happened as objectively as you can. Encourage other students to do the same if you can and ideally get parents involved too.

Online lessons aren't easy for anyone but she is really not even trying to do her best. If you get no where with the head of department I would escalate it to the Head.


Thata what I was going to suggest.
Original post by bhiml
Thank you, I was wondering if I was just overreacting but this answered my question. The thing is that she is the head of her department, so I’ll have to email maybe head of A levels to see if they can do anything. Thanks again for the reply, hopefully this will resolve it. :smile:

You need facts to complain not opinions - the time and date of lessons when they should have started and when they did, dates when work was handed in, etc let facts speak for themselves. Get all the class to do this and present to the Head of Sixth Form.

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