My daughter is starting high school (USA). She's brought home 4 things I am "required" (?) to sign. 3 they are just normal lists classroom rules. The 4th is for gym... Ugh. It is every bad gym teacher stereotype spewed across four pages of text, with lots of all-caps, plenty of phrases like "you WILL...", "NO EXCEPTIONS", "you will be ABSOLUTELY SILENT", etc.
Most of the rules and "expectations" are pretty reasonable but the angry, accusatory tone is unhelpful, and the missed-class rules are openly punitive rather than educational.
So I wrote a note to that effect above my signature, and clarified that my signature meant I had read the document.
Kid was concerned about my annotation. I offered to tell the gym teacher I lost the document and request a new one, but kid decided to just let it ride.
Many thoughts, including
- This is how you make most students hate PE
- This is how you keep negative #stereotypes alive (I'm actually aware that Not All Gym Teachers, but this doesn't help)
- This is how you tell the kids there are two tiers of students: the athlete ingroup, who are used to this kind of communication and know this gym teacher (who is also a coach) will be sympathetic to them despite the strident tone, and everyone else, the outgroup.
This school is generally pretty good, but there are always issues, usually of exactly this kind: a subset of teachers or administrators treating all kids like criminals regardless of their behavior.