The Teacher Thread - Page 27

What?

Thanks.

Beat them until they love school? You're not seriously advocating child abuse in place of meaningful change.

Seriously? Child abuse? Isn't that a bit much? The conversation was on children acting out against teachers. I could care less about them loving school.

I have an issue with calling it "child abuse," but it certainly can be abusive. I actually knew a guy who had it happen to him at 16 as utterly ridiculous as that sounds.

"The annual crop of infants is a potential invasion of barbarians, and education may be conceived as the first line of defense" Bernard Lonergan, SJ, Topics in Education, p. 59. Teaching is a tough job, particularly in the first few years. But it's so essential to society. Thanks for doing it.

I taught jr. high for one year. Toughest year of my life. Taught high school for a year. Also tough, but way better. College is better still, but they can be a pita too.

One thing that helps me get through it is the thought that our job is to plant seeds (or time bombs) that will bear fruit (go off) years later. Students email me or tell me directly once or twice a semester that they hated my class all year/sem. but now a week/month/year/decade later, they realize it was the most helpful thing to them. You'll hear that too.

My parents and grandparents would lament that my generation has it so easy and doesn't appreciate the comforts and opportunities we enjoy, such as education. They had wars and depressions to get them to appreciate what they had. I don't know if the kids of today need that, but they need something. What helped me appreciate education was six months work as a supermarket bag boy in high school. Not a world war or a great depression, but enough to get my ass in gear.

Great questions. My first thought is to get them a book or certificates to book stores. But maybe a better idea is to treat everyone to a round of drinks and the special people to a one-on-one meal.

Early in my teaching career, I worked at a military boarding school. The main form of punishment was marching tours with the students basically walking in a square for 45 minutes or various other sorts of physical drudgery. However, the same students always marching just like how the same students are always getting detentions, suspensions, etc. I think punitiveness can only go so far. I've had much more success with incentives and giving students some degree of control and choice. Little things like going to the office and getting me some pencils when you finish your work go a long way vs. raising my voice and assigned lunch detentions.

I'm not much of a believer in corporal punishment myself, but the threat of corporal punishment cannot be understated. That's one of the major discipline problems in today's school - kids KNOW they can get away with anything and not have a finger laid on them.

I am late for my second job so I can't contribute much.
I don't believe in corporal punishment either. I just can't see myself hitting anyone. However, I or the principal should have the power to suspend a student. The student who spit on the chalk board was in class the next day. His only punishment was detention. Essentially 15 minutes after school, in the computer lab/library. This is not acceptable. He should be put in another class, ROP, or something else. NOT back in the class to do more spitting.

I think of it like this(simply):
Students who ruin the class, should be kicked out of class, so the class can learn.

I work in Texas, a state that still " swings the board." I really question how good it works. I have swung it before and I saw no difference in discipline. I have not swung a board in over 20 years.

I assume that at-home suspensions were given under the impression that the parent's would further discipline the suspended child while he wasn't in school. But if the kid will just engage in leisure activities or worse (dealing on the corner, perhaps?), then at-home suspensions counterproductive. And unfortunately, the type of student that gets suspended is likely to have a dysfunctional home life such that they're unlikely to be appropriately disciplined; indeed, they are likely to be neglected or overly punished (i.e., abused).

As someone who had both in- and out-of-school suspensions (one each), the in-school suspensions had significantly greater deterring power, since I just played video games the one day I was suspended at-home (blame my parents).

As a student, the whole idea of suspensions confused me. I was once given a day of in-school suspension for violating my high school's tardiness policy; that is, the school punished me for missing class by taking me out of class! The administration sent a clear message: school is about obedience, not education.

If a student is hell bent on not learning, you're not likely going to change his behavior with a spanking, oss, iss or after school detention. Especially if you are teaching 7th-8th grade where the students have failed once or twice and are just biding their time till they're 16 and free to drop out (depends on the state though). Parents even told me that they were going to do that and were prepping them for that. But yea, it's tough. You can't just kick kids out every time they're being disruptive or you lose control of the rest of the class generally and your punishments lose meaning. I mean, it depends on the disruption. Students understand violence is an immediate write up and to the office for some kind of discipline, but chatting to a friend or being annoying is a finer line and younger students will have trouble relating to you and understanding the grey area. It depends on the kids though. If it's just some chatty smart alecky kids, you should be able to handle them or you're in serious trouble. Same with lazy kids who don't want to work and try to get others off task. If you're at a truly shit school with tons of severe headcases, lack of parent interest, etc... then it's rough. You have to mold your lessons around keeping everyone active and immune to those disruptive ones. For middle school, i found breaking them into small groups of 3-4 (varying the types of students in each group) works alright. Usually only 1 cut up ends up in each group and you'll by more than likely have 1 student who wants to learn and another who is in between. But they seem to focus more like that and usually the 2 normal kids keep the cut up in check and no kid wants to be seen as the "weak link" so they usually try to help a little. Especially if you make it to where each group has to report back to the class as a whole for accountability. I dunno. There are other strategies out there are circumstances, parents, schools, students where you're going to be pushed and annoyed regardless. I will say that with students with habitual suspensions and skipping class, it's really tough. Not just 1-2 kids who never show up, but the ones who aren't terrible but just miss more than average, it's annoying as shit with grading, assignments, ongoing projects, group work, etc... Especially when you don't have home sets of books and you're discouraged from letting kids even take any book home.