Another strange teaching aid has wormed its way into UK schools – the Class Dojo “behaviour tracking” app. At first I thought it might be a handy wheeze, a sort of spying device, bugging the classroom and at last revealing the truth about what really goes on in there. Did teacher really shove/shout at/bully/snooze at his/her desk or pick on little Bobby, or not? I feel rather sensitive about this problem, having been unjustly accused, as a teacher, of “marking my Sandra’s neck for life” and “throwing my Tony in the corner”.
I promise I did neither, but parents often believe what their child tells them and come rushing in, roaring at –or punching – the relevant teacher, before checking if the accusation was a porkie or not. It was bad enough 20 years ago, but now parents seem to be even more ferocious when protecting their children. An ex-headmistress chum recently begged me to report on the enormous amount of punching, bellowing, and now suing, of teachers, which is going on.
But the Class Dojo doesn’t even spy usefully. It’s just a chart of the class, with an avatar of each child, so that teachers can ping instant marks of praise or shame on to the chart – “real-time updates” – for everyone to see, including parents at home/work. “I can keep their parents in the loop with instant messages and reports,” says one app-besotted teacher.
Oh, thank you very much. Haven’t we all got enough to do, without another screen to be glaring at continually? How are the parents and kiddies going to get any work done if they’re glued to this app, watching for plus or minus points? Perhaps things might improve if everyone would just mind their own business, and let the teachers get on with their job, which, in case you’d forgotten, is a profession, as in legal and medical.
“I’ve got a degree and PGCE from a decent university, but it counts for nothing,” says Fielding, enraged by the general attitude to, and bossing around of, teachers. “We know what we’re doing. Why don’t they bloody ask us what’s needed?”
He’ll be lucky.
