One example of this is what happened to me today. Poor “Joey” got an F on his essay because he didn’t follow directions. Mommy sent me a vicious email saying that I don’t care about my students because Joey has really been trying at home…and can’t I see that? How dare I not notice that lately he has been turning in his work. Then, she showed up at my classroom door after school and began to yell and scream at me for failing her son.

This is a great profession. Yeah, I feel I can change the world.

Has anyone seen the TV ad where the student is eating a candy bar and the professor (it is, horrors, a college setting) is being mocked by a cartoon finger pointing at him, long hair being drawn on the blackboard behind him, etcetera?

How about the reportage on TV showing student cell-phone footage posted on the internet-a teacher is taunted and provoked beyond endurance (several students ‘humping’ him, or beliefs being raucously denigrated). When the teacher responds in anger, his or her actions are caught on cell phone. Sport?

I tried to fight the plagiarism battle my first year teaching. A kid copied word-for-word 18 out of 21 sentences in a government project. It was fairly uneventful until the kid got kicked out of NHS for it. The parents then proceeded to appeal it all the way to the superintendant. Rightfully she sided with me. There was no arguing it…although the parents did try to claim it was “incorrect citation” because she included a link to factmonster.com. I desperately wanted to teach the kid a lesson before the stakes were higher but I doubt she learned anything at all from the whole ordeal…she wasn’t even present at any of the many meetings. From that moment, I lost a little of my “spark”.

I then learned the hard way that there is a lot of pressure to pass as many seniors as possible when I was “strongly encouraged” to allow 2 kids who failed my final to RETAKE it the MORNING of graduation. This was after I had already told the students it was not an option, a god-mother, and an angry mother who informed me that it wasn’t up to me and her baby WOULD walk at graduation the next day. Magically the test scores went from a 43 and 52 to “passing” overnight. I did not administer the retake but I was assured that several people signed off on the scores.

Things like that make me want to walk out the door and never ever come back again…but then again, the off time is nice and every once in a while, a kid comes to visit after they finish with their college finals to say hi or to appologize for being such a pain in the tail or to thank me for helping them…times like that make my heart swell and remind me of why I do this job.

At which level? Kindergardeners certainly aren’t going to manage themselves (but if the only thing the K teacher manages to teach is to sit down and shut up, that’s enough for the next year’s teacher to work with). High school students should manage themselves.

I suspect that a large part of the problem is that administrators don’t hold back kids that desperately deserve it, and that the system attempts to educate many kids beyond what they will ever be interested in or find a use for. Boys that don’t care for math, history, or reading shouldn’t be in college prep classes, they should be in shop classes – where they’re likely to learn that reading and math are essential for things they want to do. Kids that cannot behave themselves in high school shouldn’t have been promoted to high school. Kids that can’t read, write, or do arithmetic at an 8th grade level shouldn’t be in high school where they get in the way of others learning – and so on down to the early elementary grades.

So here I was with this class with not one of those disruptive boys left and what happened?

Three or four boys who had previously been sitting in my class quietly doing their work suddenly became disruptive. They stepped into the void and replaced them.

The problem, in other words, was me. Or partly me.

Where I teach summer school, administrators and some teachers seem to see those six weeks in July and August as their sweet revenge for a Sept-June of frustration and impotence. After the first week — at which time students are counted and teaching positions for the summer are secured — students are discharged at a fairly rapid pace, sometimes two and three per day. Zero tolerance. A math teacher across the hall from me sends them home till September if they are late to her class more than once, talk while she is talking, or fail to pay attention to her instruction.

Mostly the kids who are kicked out are probably taught a good lesson and those who remain probably have the opportunity to learn more.

There are always at least a few kids who are unjustly dismissed and have no recourse since — as the administration is quick to point out — “summer school is a priviledge, not a right…”

That is regrettable — it makes often alienated students feel even more marginalized. But then so does a school culture devoid of discipline….

Our school has an excellent, clearly defined discipline policy. It’s all down on paper.

The problem is the way the system is structured. Administrators are pressured not to enforce discipline policies and teachers are pressured not to complain.

Imagine a city police force where an officer is looked down on or even punished every time he writes a speeding ticket. The chief of police will be able to boast that statistics show the streets are safer than they’ve ever been and yet the accidents will keep piling up.

It’s really not that difficult to maintain discipline in a classroom.

What’s difficult is to maintain discipline in a public school classroom.

Or, to “put it another way, to “teach” the “p-s” ways of doing/learning for his/her own “thought-through reasons!