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Thank you for posting that. It clarifies much. A student repeatedly drops the f-bomb and then disrespects a teacher and the appropriate response is a "verbal warning?" That is emblematic of the problem.
Those of you reading this who aren't in teaching: when reference is made or implications are made that "extenuating circumstances" might change the common sense conclusion drawn about this scenario, this is precisely the sort of adult behavior that drives many from teaching. When you can't even count on your colleagues and particularly your administrators to back you up when it comes to obnoxious, defiant student behavior, it's completely demoralizing.
Observe the institutions in society that work and then observe how they specifically do not use these sorts of failed strategies to shape behavior. The ultimate irony and cynicism about this is that many of these folks do not and would never employ these failed strategies with their own kids at home because they know deep inside that they do not work.
There's someone here arguing that students should be expelled for chewing gum? I missed that part. You think that chewing gum in class is comparable to a stream of expletives and openly, verbally disrespecting a teacher? Is this an example of the sort of cognitive gymnastics you performed in real life in these situations for rationalization purposes?
Just reading through the thread, I've taught college and in adult settings, but not elementary/middle or high schools. The thoughts running through what passes for my mind as I read on include, exactly what "extenuating circumstances" could possibly excuse a student's flinging a stream of expletives into a teacher's face, the abysmal lack of respect, or even decency shown on the part of the student towards the teacher???? In what universe is this type of behavior deemed as acceptable, or at least tolerated and excuses made for the student???
Never mind, it's a rhetorical question, I see it as a consequence of a culture in which personal achievement through one's own hard work and efforts, personal responsibility, accepting the consequences of one's own actions and choices, consideration of one's fellow human being have been tossed out in favor of the "me first, to hell with anyone else, entitlement without effort to anything one wants, and blame on others for any negative consequences one faces as a result of his/her actions" way of life.
Teachers leaving due to student behavior is not new and has been going on for decades.
Schools have no recourse with bad behavior. Years ago the first school at which I taught had "Saturday detention". Kids who got too many demerits would have to come all day on Saturday and clean gum off the sidewalks, help wipe down tables or pick up trash. Kids hated this so getting demerits was avoided by most. But then a parent complained and it was decided that the school had no legal standing for for a child to come on Saturdays. So the program was scrapped and bad behavior escalated.
We used to be able to have after school detentions but again parents complained and the school had to end those too.
There is this attitude that if a student is disruptive then it's the fault of the teacher for just not being good enough. Not being a good enough classroom manager, not making the lessons as fun as they should be, etc. Fault was never placed on the student for not wanting to behave or learn. Parents were never held accountable for reinforcing good behavior on their end.
Unless you have taught in such an environment you have no idea how quitting seems like your only option to keeping your sanity.
There's a school in our state that uses Saturday detention and fines students for disorderly conduct for misbehavior. Unsurprisingly, it's a high-achieving school. Again, the proven effective vs. the proven failed strategies. My school, which struggles, sent a contingent of teachers down to observe this school to incorporate their methods into ours. As one of our teachers relayed to us, the first thing the principal at this model school told us is that "Everyone in this building is held accountable." That meant administrators, teachers, students, custodians, everyone. Our teacher described it as a serious academic atmosphere. That's because you cannot have academic achievement and such an atmosphere unless you have discipline under control and students under control. In the current education atmosphere, the description of "students under control" violates basic dogma hatched by people with PhD or EdD after their names. Or, as with most of the fads in education, just someone with a mysterious credential who's found a new angle to sell to the education industry.
We have a private K-8 Christian school nearby and those students sometimes end up at our school for 9-12. They stick out like sore thumbs: respectful, know how to address adults, non-disruptive, mature. That's because:
a. They have involved parents who tend to be disciplinarians. Their kids generally go farther in life, as a result.
b. The school, on its page regarding school discipline puts it bluntly: "We do not allow the choices of one student to affect the learning of the other students." When you practice that and kids know that they will be held accountable for that, behaviors quickly change.
Or, you can go the "verbal warning" route and see how far that gets you in the less "privileged" school districts.
I have an utterly incompetent principal, so when all this was relayed to her about this model school, she proceeded to rationalize why we can't do any of these things. Excuses and rationalizations, starting with her fear of offending parents with the Saturday detentions and fines for truancy. Public education is loaded with incompetent administrators like her who have no leadership abilities and no courage.
There's a school in our state that uses Saturday detention and fines students for disorderly conduct for misbehavior. Unsurprisingly, it's a high-achieving school. Again, the proven effective vs. the proven failed strategies. My school, which struggles, sent a contingent of teachers down to observe this school to incorporate their methods into ours. As one of our teachers relayed to us, the first thing the principal at this model school told us is that "Everyone in this building is held accountable." That meant administrators, teachers, students, custodians, everyone. Our teacher described it as a serious academic atmosphere. That's because you cannot have academic achievement and such an atmosphere unless you have discipline under control and students under control. In the current education atmosphere, the description of "students under control" violates basic dogma hatched by people with PhD or EdD after their names. Or, as with most of the fads in education, just someone with a mysterious credential who's found a new angle to sell to the education industry.
We have a private K-8 Christian school nearby and those students sometimes end up at our school for 9-12. They stick out like sore thumbs: respectful, know how to address adults, non-disruptive, mature. That's because:
a. They have involved parents who tend to be disciplinarians. Their kids generally go farther in life, as a result.
b. The school, on its page regarding school discipline puts it bluntly: "We do not allow the choices of one student to affect the learning of the other students." When you practice that and kids know that they will be held accountable for that, behaviors quickly change.
Or, you can go the "verbal warning" route and see how far that gets you in the less "privileged" school districts.
I have an utterly incompetent principal, so when all this was relayed to her about this model school, she proceeded to rationalize why we can't do any of these things. Excuses and rationalizations, starting with her fear of offending parents with the Saturday detentions and fines for truancy. Public education is loaded with incompetent administrators like her who have no leadership abilities and no courage.
It’s too bad that can’t be the theme of every school. Instead we have shifted from doing what is best for the majority of students to focusing on what might help select individual students - this is not just a problem in education, it has been a national cultural shift. That loss of doing what’s best for the collective, even if it is at a cost to a minority of indivuals, is also the shift seen in the beginning of the downfall of most formally “Great” or dominant nations or empires.
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It’s too bad that can’t be the theme of every school. Instead we have shifted from doing what is best for the majority of students to focusing on what might help select individual students - this is not just a problem in education, it has been a national cultural shift. That loss of doing what’s best for the collective, even if it is at a cost to a minority of indivuals, is also the shift seen in the beginning of the downfall of most formally “Great” or dominant nations or empires.
I could not agree more and this disproportionate amount of time, resources, blood, sweat and tears we devote to the most disruptive students at the expense of the rest of the students is what I call "misplaced compassion" and I'd like it to the title of my book someday. It's no less than a tragedy. I have two assistant principals whose jobs are quite literally now consumed with behavioral issues the entirety of their workdays. One is leaving after one year at our school. His quote to me: "I've never seen anything like it," with regards to behavior. And my school is hardly atypical. Just in my state alone, there are many cases of students attacking teachers and the warehousing of students rather than the education of students, like in the infamous Milwaukee Public Schools.
I sometimes wish I could also write down and publish every piece of misbegotten dogma in education and then debunk it. One of them is this idea that it is unhealthy if a child has any fear towards the adults in their lives. As with millions of other boys (and probably girls), one of the primary things that kept me from misbehaving most of the time as a kid was the fear of my father and what he might have in store for me if I did. He never laid a hand on me but he had a multitude of ways that were much worse on those occasions I did cross the line. And when I did, I lived in dread the remainder of the day until he came home. That was a good thing and I was better behaved because of that fear.
We won't talk much about this in polite company, but the ever-growing domination of K-12 education by females plays a role in misbehavior. My wife teaches elementary and of the 86 staff members at her school, there are two males and one is a custodian. It's a school with 70% of kids on free or reduced lunches. BTW, the boys glom onto that male custodian, as most of them come from single-parent homes and, fortunately, he's a great guy and is willing to go beyond his job duties and volunteer for lunch duty and other things that allow him to interact with the kids. But especially with boys, when you eliminate adult male authority figures, you will see misbehavior. My wife taught a few years at an impoverished Indian reservation further west and her final year, they hired an administrator who was like 6'8" and 250 pounds. He mostly roamed the halls and it had a dramatic effect on misbehavior, as students were a bit intimidated, though he was a nice guy. That was a good thing, not a bad thing.
Or, and I'll just throw this out as a possibility, you were the one in the "exceptional school." Just a thought.
And I don't believe for a nanosecond that you ever told a parent to "do your job."
Tootles.
I want to step in here and say, first, Phetaroi, I’ve always appreciated and agreed with your posts, but on this one...There is something very wrong in schools. I just finished the school year at a high school and I am seriously wondering about the state of affairs. I do see students just pushed through. I do see them not being held accountable for anything. I do see the lack of respect. I do see that administrations are lax and do not support teachers. I see teachers being unconcerned with student behaviors unless someone notices the inappropriate behaviors and that teacher’s failure to intervene. I see so many things that have me very concerned.
I think teachers fear students and their parents. I think some teachers no longer care.
Just one example, I as a special service provider, went to get a student for a class and several students were using Snapchat...NOT related to the social studies/ government lesson I observed taking place. I asked the teacher about it. Guess who was called to the principal’s office and reprimanded, as well as being told that teachers use cell phones in some class work. All I could do was stare at the principal, dumbfounded, and say that I did as well. Btw, this was months after the incident. WTH?
I could go on, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, and, seriously, maybe this is a Titanic moment. I work in a small town, village really. I can’t imagine what a large inner city school must be like. All generalizations aside, I think from what I’ve read in recent years, added to my own observations, that there are many, many schools in this predicament. What to do? I personally, do not know if I will return to ANY ‘school culture’.
I could go on a rant even more here , but will save it for my book. This might be the summer of the first draft.
Just reading through the thread, I've taught college and in adult settings, but not elementary/middle or high schools. The thoughts running through what passes for my mind as I read on include, exactly what "extenuating circumstances" could possibly excuse a student's flinging a stream of expletives into a teacher's face, the abysmal lack of respect, or even decency shown on the part of the student towards the teacher???? In what universe is this type of behavior deemed as acceptable, or at least tolerated and excuses made for the student???
Never mind, it's a rhetorical question, I see it as a consequence of a culture in which personal achievement through one's own hard work and efforts, personal responsibility, accepting the consequences of one's own actions and choices, consideration of one's fellow human being have been tossed out in favor of the "me first, to hell with anyone else, entitlement without effort to anything one wants, and blame on others for any negative consequences one faces as a result of his/her actions" way of life.
But they've got good self esteem, eh?
A teacher colleague described it as a lack of empathy and I agree. I see it rarely in students. Very sad.
I want to step in here and say, first, Phetaroi, I’ve always appreciated and agreed with your posts, but on this one...There is something very wrong in schools. I just finished the school year at a high school and I am seriously wondering about the state of affairs. I do see students just pushed through. I do see them not being held accountable for anything. I do see the lack of respect. I do see that administrations are lax and do not support teachers. I see teachers being unconcerned with student behaviors unless someone notices the inappropriate behaviors and that teacher’s failure to intervene. I see so many things that have me very concerned.
I think teachers fear students and their parents. I think some teachers no longer care.
Just one example, I as a special service provider, went to get a student for a class and several students were using Snapchat...NOT related to the social studies/ government lesson I observed taking place. I asked the teacher about it. Guess who was called to the principal’s office and reprimanded, as well as being told that teachers use cell phones in some class work. All I could do was stare at the principal, dumbfounded, and say that I did as well. Btw, this was months after the incident. WTH?
I could go on, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, and, seriously, maybe this is a Titanic moment. I work in a small town, village really. I can’t imagine what a large inner city school must be like. All generalizations aside, I think from what I’ve read in recent years, added to my own observations, that there are many, many schools in this predicament. What to do? I personally, do not know if I will return to ANY ‘school culture’.
I could go on a rant even more here , but will save it for my book. This might be the summer of the first draft.
You're going to be disappointed...because I don't disagree with most of what you said. But as we have talked about in a few posts here and there, we have to be careful not to assume that all schools are what we read about here in certain posts. I can go way back to the 1970s when I first began teaching, when I had three different schools in three years. The first one was in Greece Central Schools outside of Rochester, NY. I don't know about now, but at the time it was a fine school system and I was in a really good middle school. One year later, and thirty miles away, I was in a superb high school (the only downer being a principal who was a total jerk...former military...former gym teacher). Then, one year later I was in as bad a school as I have ever seen, short of inner city. And guess what. It was just 4 miles from that first great school that I was in. I remember the first time I was observed by the department chair in that school. The previous they had gone through 13 teachers in that classroom, and when they hired me they said, "Just keep a lid on things so that the police don't have to come to the school". A month or so into that year the department chair came in and was stunned. Kids were doing a science lab, every kid had a science notebook in which they were recording data and writing conclusions. And I couldn't understand why he was so amazed; to me it was just what's supposed to happen in a science classroom. A year later I moved to a junior high in Prince George's County, Maryland. The school was under court ordered busing, a guidance counselor had a bottle of liquor in his desk drawer, a teacher had a party for 12 and 13 year old kids who had won gymkhana, and she served these children pizza and beer as a reward. Two years later I was "drafted" to transfer to a new middle school just a mile away (and across the interstate beltway), and worked under the best principal I ever knew...followed by another principal who once decided to have a fire drill in the middle of state testing. Class sizes ballooned under a tax relief measure (TRIM), and teacher loads went from 5 classes of about 25 students each to 6 classes of 40 students each. I sought a job in Fairfax County Virginia where I remained for over 20 years and worked in heaven.
Now going through all that...what is my point? We can't paint all schools as being the same. All the terrible stories I hear here...I pretty much believe (although I don't agree with all the solutions that some posters have). But at the same time, I've talked just recently with several staff members at my old school. And they tell me that the school is as great as ever, they love working in the community, and they still think Fairfax County is tops. There are great schools in this country...and there are lousy schools in this country.
Everything you wrote in your first paragraph, I believe. But as a retired administrator, I'll just say a word about principals and vice principals. There are some real ringers out there. I canned a ringer vice-principal. And I've know others that should have gotten canned. But what we usually don't know is what orders from superintendents principals work under. For example, a high school principal (who I very much disliked...and our kids at my middle school moved on to her high school) took over as principal of the high school and fired a handful of teachers each of her first two years there. She was severely criticized, especially by staff. But later we found out that she was under direct orders from the superintendent to do just that. One of the elementary schools that fed into our middle school had a principal who...well if it was possible to tar and feather a principal, the community would have done just that. The community raised hell about her...and she got transferred and at her new school she became one of the most beloved and respected elementary principals in the county.
Your second paragraph...no argument there.
Third paragraph...I can't judge the situation. But sure sounds like a total failure of a situation.
Your fourth paragraph...my heart aches when I hear teachers want to leave education...most of the time.
Sending a kid out of the room is not seen as weak. Teachers have a responsibility to the kids in the class that want to learn. If there is a kid that is disrupting learning for the class, I send that kid out. I am not their parent, I did not raise them, I have no control over their lives, I am there to teach the class. Kids appreciate it when the disruptive kids is removed, I am usually thanked and the class can resume as it should.
Not doing anything is weak, allowing a kid to disrupt the learning of others is the worst thing a teacher can do. Our schools would be 1000 times better if we could just remove the trouble makers permanently. Every year it is the same kids over and over again that cause disruption. They go for detention, the vice principal speaks with them, and maybe their parents, but nothing changes. These kids simply don't give a crap, and neither do their parents. They should be kicked out of school permanently. If this happened, you would see a vast improvement in schools across the country.
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