No offence taken, HowlerKarma. I know that can be the case for some. My son is great, he really is. As I have posted before, he has never had a tantrum in his whole life (except for a short, recent one over losing at chess to an adult). He has always been very reasonable, and he is a great communicator. He also loves rules, and is very pedantic.
I have heard from other parents that she isn't a very good quality teacher: she is disorganised, she is overly strict, and isn't very friendly with the parents. I see her with other children and she isn't nice to them, either. On a recent excursion, the was a boy who had just moved to the country two days beforehand. He did not want his dad to leave him. We were about to leave, and Mrs F wanted him to stop crying. All she did was repeat over and over, "Stop crying now, go eat your snack". Then she brought in five different teachers to tell him to stop, with them saying ceuel, unhelpful things, like, "Gee, you'd think it was the end of the world", with an eye roll. This boy cried for about two hours. All he needed was to be told that he will see his daddy in a few hours.
I was originally happy my son had her because she was strict. Despite my hippy dippy parenting my son is naturally inclined towards authority. His previous teacher was quite pedantic and he loved her. But she isn't strict in the same way. She has incredibly high expectations- which my son is capable of, but my son expects manners from her, too. She also lacks the routine my son craves; their class is always the last out of class, and my son rarely gets to do his weekly show and tell (I don't know about the others), and whenever she gives him the requested confidence-building assignments (like, making his own physics book and teaching the class) she doesn't end up letting him do it.
My son doesn't have a problem with any other adult; he has quite a few different interactions of different pedagogies through basketball, chess club, and tuition. I don't think the other kid would be aware of her lack of routine, etc.
One of the times he cried when he had a.writing assignment and wasn't sure where to start. Rather that help him arrive to a conclusion, she just repeatedly questioned why it was so hard for him to know what to do. I can't think of the other time. I know there have been a couple of other times he has refused to talk to her.
Once again, she isn't a bad, evil teacher... Just perhaps old and exhausted lol (she has a lot of time off for a sore back). She doesn't believe in gifted children, and the first thing she said to me at the beginning of the year was that she wouldn't give my son harder work because there's too many kids to give him something different; all get students get the same work because it's it's too hard for her. She changed her tune, I thought, when she started giving him an unorganised bunch of random maths stuff. Also, a recent complaint also brought about extension in all areas- which Mrs F was not happy about. That may be why she has done a 180 on her changed view on my son.
Sorry, I am on my phone so it is hard for me to respond to every question!
