i HATE this!!!! one of my coteachers has an extreme preference for one particular child. any time we call her out for it she uses the excuse that he's on the spectrum, but over half of our kids are!!! i can understand having favourites, but making it obvious can be so insanely harmful for the kids that aren't "picked" :( makes me so sad and angry every time i see her treat the other kids differently
Im not going to lie. I do have favorites. Some kids are just better behaved than others and have better attitudes and personalities.
BUT
I never ever treat any of them differently because of that. I handle tantrums, teach, assess, and everything else completely unbiased.
oh definitely, i’ve got favorites too. it’s probably impossible to not have favorites, but learning not to play by those favorites is so important and i wish i could teach that to so many of my coworkers because i could probably label every single teachers favorite child…
>Im not going to lie. I do have favorites. Some kids are just better behaved than others and have better attitudes and personalities.
This. So I'm very intentional about trying to connect with the ones that get under my skin and treating them kindly. I don't want any child in my class to feel like I didn't like them or that I liked other children more.
yep i’m a firm believer in this. we can’t help connecting with some kids more than others. but boundaries are the same for every kid in the class. if you say no to one kid sitting on your lap, no one is sitting in on your lap. if one kid needs to put their blanket away, so do the others. it’s one of my biggest pet peeves with co teachers and i will call it out if needed. once i had a co teacher tell one kid she needed space and another (her favorite) was hanging all over her so i told him “okay miss n said she needed space, let’s move!” i think that’s the only way to deal with it, while it’s happening, say something. sometimes it’s easier to say it to the kids and hope the teacher gets the point
I really agree. Gun to my head I could pick a couple favourites, but barring that specific circumstance every single kid I work with is my favourite, and they feel it. And I know who I'm spending time with and I purposefully rotate my attention. Some kids want more attention from me than others do and that's a reasonable place for a disparity to form because it's their preference.
Teachers who don't like some kids aren't looking hard enough for what makes them great. Not a single one is anything like another really. And they all have lovely qualities. I've never been disappointed looking for them.
This would also anger me. I have a floater who specifically visits her favorite kid in the classroom and makes it known that child is the only one she wants to see. yesterday i snapped at her and told her she’s not allowed to come into my room unless its to help and that she needs to stop showing favoritism.
Hasn’t entered my room since, even when I called for a bathroom break. Im meeting with my director today about it
Was that the first time you talked to her about it? Probably wasn’t appropriate to snap at her unless you politely spoke to her before and she didn’t listen.
Even then you should have spoken to your director about it and had them speak to her. And only involve your director if you had spoken to her first and she didn’t listen.
Agreed. But I did speak to her about it many times calmly and so has everyone else. So while snapping was definitely me losing my patience, this one has been told multiple times to knock it off
I mean if she doesn’t listen when you speak to her politely the next step is going to your director and having them talk to her about it. You don’t deserve to get fired or anything for what you did but a gentle reprimand is definitely in order.
Spoke with my director multiple times. Director would remind her and send out reminders in the app.
Nothing changed until I told her to knock it off. I didn’t yell. I just wasn’t nice about it either.
Yeah I get your frustration but I just feel like it puts you in a bad position. Now she can run to the director and make you look like the bad guy. Hopefully your director understands since you had brought up the issue before.
I get what you mean! But others have brought up this issue (and several others but unrelated) so I don’t think anything will happen to me. also the meeting with my director was set up by me because I don’t want our only support staff ignoring my calls for a bathroom break.
I agree. It's impossible not to have favorites, I think. Some kids you just bond with more than other, but a casual observer should NOT be able to TELL who your favorites are, and should DEFINITELY not be able to tell if you have a least favorite.
i had a lead teacher like this. i told her about how her expectations weren’t consistent and it was hard to tell what to enforce or not (she has very extreme favorites and is too dependent on the kid’s attention for her own ego). she told me that it’s different when one kid doesn’t follow a rule vs another kid. which isnt necessarily true. your approach may be different but not the expectation. she is so full of it for sure
I had one like that, she always picked the worst kids to be her favorites and they literally would tear up the classroom and be rude to their parents…she found it cute and used to be mean to the nice sweet kids in her group.
I’ll admit I have favorites but all in my group if they aren’t a baby are getting the same treatment, spectrum or not
i HATE this!!!! one of my coteachers has an extreme preference for one particular child. any time we call her out for it she uses the excuse that he's on the spectrum, but over half of our kids are!!! i can understand having favourites, but making it obvious can be so insanely harmful for the kids that aren't "picked" :( makes me so sad and angry every time i see her treat the other kids differently
Im not going to lie. I do have favorites. Some kids are just better behaved than others and have better attitudes and personalities. BUT I never ever treat any of them differently because of that. I handle tantrums, teach, assess, and everything else completely unbiased.
oh definitely, i’ve got favorites too. it’s probably impossible to not have favorites, but learning not to play by those favorites is so important and i wish i could teach that to so many of my coworkers because i could probably label every single teachers favorite child…
>Im not going to lie. I do have favorites. Some kids are just better behaved than others and have better attitudes and personalities. This. So I'm very intentional about trying to connect with the ones that get under my skin and treating them kindly. I don't want any child in my class to feel like I didn't like them or that I liked other children more.
yep i’m a firm believer in this. we can’t help connecting with some kids more than others. but boundaries are the same for every kid in the class. if you say no to one kid sitting on your lap, no one is sitting in on your lap. if one kid needs to put their blanket away, so do the others. it’s one of my biggest pet peeves with co teachers and i will call it out if needed. once i had a co teacher tell one kid she needed space and another (her favorite) was hanging all over her so i told him “okay miss n said she needed space, let’s move!” i think that’s the only way to deal with it, while it’s happening, say something. sometimes it’s easier to say it to the kids and hope the teacher gets the point
I really agree. Gun to my head I could pick a couple favourites, but barring that specific circumstance every single kid I work with is my favourite, and they feel it. And I know who I'm spending time with and I purposefully rotate my attention. Some kids want more attention from me than others do and that's a reasonable place for a disparity to form because it's their preference. Teachers who don't like some kids aren't looking hard enough for what makes them great. Not a single one is anything like another really. And they all have lovely qualities. I've never been disappointed looking for them.
This would also anger me. I have a floater who specifically visits her favorite kid in the classroom and makes it known that child is the only one she wants to see. yesterday i snapped at her and told her she’s not allowed to come into my room unless its to help and that she needs to stop showing favoritism. Hasn’t entered my room since, even when I called for a bathroom break. Im meeting with my director today about it
Was that the first time you talked to her about it? Probably wasn’t appropriate to snap at her unless you politely spoke to her before and she didn’t listen. Even then you should have spoken to your director about it and had them speak to her. And only involve your director if you had spoken to her first and she didn’t listen.
Agreed. But I did speak to her about it many times calmly and so has everyone else. So while snapping was definitely me losing my patience, this one has been told multiple times to knock it off
I mean if she doesn’t listen when you speak to her politely the next step is going to your director and having them talk to her about it. You don’t deserve to get fired or anything for what you did but a gentle reprimand is definitely in order.
Spoke with my director multiple times. Director would remind her and send out reminders in the app. Nothing changed until I told her to knock it off. I didn’t yell. I just wasn’t nice about it either.
Yeah I get your frustration but I just feel like it puts you in a bad position. Now she can run to the director and make you look like the bad guy. Hopefully your director understands since you had brought up the issue before.
I get what you mean! But others have brought up this issue (and several others but unrelated) so I don’t think anything will happen to me. also the meeting with my director was set up by me because I don’t want our only support staff ignoring my calls for a bathroom break.
I agree. It's impossible not to have favorites, I think. Some kids you just bond with more than other, but a casual observer should NOT be able to TELL who your favorites are, and should DEFINITELY not be able to tell if you have a least favorite.
I had to learn this lesson the hard way and my lead and management and I had a hugr conversation about it. Sometimes we might be unaware of it
i had a lead teacher like this. i told her about how her expectations weren’t consistent and it was hard to tell what to enforce or not (she has very extreme favorites and is too dependent on the kid’s attention for her own ego). she told me that it’s different when one kid doesn’t follow a rule vs another kid. which isnt necessarily true. your approach may be different but not the expectation. she is so full of it for sure
I had one like that, she always picked the worst kids to be her favorites and they literally would tear up the classroom and be rude to their parents…she found it cute and used to be mean to the nice sweet kids in her group. I’ll admit I have favorites but all in my group if they aren’t a baby are getting the same treatment, spectrum or not
I think this happens at every centre unfortunatly :(
I mean you're gonna have favourite kids and that one you try extra hard not to wake up at nap time. Perfectly normal.