How did teachers perceive your self-esteem in school?
 

Teachers write more on report-cards and bring up more points of encouragement or concern than academic progress per-se and self-esteem happens to be one of them (at least from my experience), so how exactly did teachers perceive you to be in terms of confidence (whether it fluctuated by the year or not)?

I made a few comments that were suggestive of me lacking in self-esteem much earlier in the school game and those followed me even into Year 10 (when I was probably at my most well-rounded in stuff like that) so that’s why I included that option about things following you long after the time that they were actually potentially relevant. They literally took notes (I’m guessing) and complained about it still being a problem for me three years later based on one random baseless assumption or the other. So despite me being a good student I was seen as inherently lacking in more self-confidence than I actually was towards the end.

There was nothing like that on school report cards in my day :joker:. Actually... There's nothing like that on my daughter's high school report cards either :think:. Maybe this is an area-specific thing?

They focus on "merit" (academic performance), "endeavour" (work ethic/how hard they're trying regardless of outcome) and "attitude" (or something similar, I don't think they call it that, but it's basically "are they nice and polite or a little arsehole")

Yep same on both counts (my school reports vs my children's)

They never singled it out specifically on report cards but they’d normally make a few comments which pointed in that direction (you were either perceived as more confident or more lacking in it, in various counts). It wasn’t a separate official classification or anything but it was implied here and there:

“ such a bright little boy but so very anxious “

My skuke report aged 6


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That's what I wrote on your report card to James last year Zizu.

FWIW my daughter is always let down by her "attitude" score but it's basically because she "back chats" teachers, i.e. questions them and their reasoning and tells them if she thinks it's stupid :joker:. No deference to authority at all. So proud.

And that’s where I was the opposite to your daughter (is DD the Mumsnet term?). The problem I had was teachers assuming things about me lacking somewhat in self-esteem based on things I said when I was literally 11 were true even by Year 10. I got great report cards on both sides of year 10 and no doubt they were singing my praises about a dramatic return to form after a bad performance in Year 9 but there were still a few complaints here and there about things that were made to drag on since the early days of key stage 3. With my French teacher it was just a case of the fact that my French didn’t quite catch up (not consistently) after Year 8 and obviously she didn’t know me after year 9 (she’d semi-retired from teaching at that point). So a certain negative impression stuck with her for a while after the actual time it was relevant.

It’s not nice when people assume things about you on your behalf and make them relevant when you’re long past that stage. There was just a really negative barrel of assumptions about how I basically hated myself in high school and I totally didn’t. There were a few things here and there but nothing that should’ve dragged on as a point of concern years later. I may or may not have called them out directly on it but it bugged me for years after. Right to this day, even.

None of my teachers gave a tinker's cuss about any of us. My brother's class was described as "dole queue fodder" by his Tech drawing teacher. I was bullied relentlessly from day 1, and I wasn't the only one. It was a bear pit of a school.

in my class we got an A if we didn't attempt to stab the teacher :laugh:

Not school shank-anigans threatening to land every naughty kid a U.

They were not interested back in the day

Us Gen Xers were tough :laugh:

Did any of the teachers even notice that you were being bullied?