Teachers scream at rude, rowdy students on YouTube videos shot on students’ cell phone cameras. Dangerously Irrelevant asks:
Do we want students bringing to public attention these types of classroom incidents? Should students be punished or applauded for filming and posting these?
I’m not willing to blame the teachers without knowing what student behavior set them off. Apparently, harassing your teacher into a filmable rage is all the rage in high schools. The teachers’ rants are horrible to listen to. And, in most of the videos, the kids are horrible.
The teachers in these vids look absolutely powerless. The children are well aware that there will be only a limited negative consequence to the bad behavior, so they feel entitled to harasses, gaming the situation for entertainment. The older I get the more I believe that the reason so many kids do so poorly in our educational system is because there are few immediate negative consequences for failure, both academicaly and behaviorly. If a teacher tells a disruptive student to leave the classroom, the child knows that he’ll/she’ll be back again later in the period or the next day, with minimal punishment, while the teacher will be marginalized by the school admin. for being unable to deal with disruptive classes. You can clearly see and hear the frustration and powerlessness in the teachers’ voices and in their behavior. I’m a homeschooler, but boy do I sympathize with the teachers.
If a kid ever did this to me, I would file a lawsuit immediately.
These videos seem like scenes from a remake of that old movie staring Glenn Ford, Vic Morrow, and Sidney Poitier. Of course now it would be called Whiteboard Jungle.
And we wonder why teaching can’t attract talented people, especially in math and science. Let me choose: I can work i high tech where I will be treated as an adult and paid bonuses for outstanding work or I can work in a public school where I will harassed, underpaid, and unappreciated. Tough choice.
We would do better if we taught and enforced an ethic that teachers are to be honored and respected. It would lead toward more teachers who were worthy of honor and respect.
But in the present system the kids are in charge and it’s not at all unusual for the most disruptive and insolent and hostile kids to end up having more power than the teacher. So teachers try to assert themselves by yelling and puffing themselves up.
In most places, most kids would like it better if the troublemakers were quickly removed and set free to live their lives as they chose, somewhere else.
We are a foolish people.
No, no, no, no, no.
Aw man, come on. Good teachers don’t have these problems. They don’t. Good teachers would never let classroom culture degenerate to this point, and if it did, they would not resort to screaming, throwing fits, and cursing. Please. These are not accurate cross-sections of anything except the various ways bad teachers make bad situations worse.
I’ll bet all the money in my pockets that you can see these same kids at different points of the day acting in dramatically different ways. Why? Because student behavior is a function of educator quality.
Did you watch the first video all the way to the end? Did you hear what the girl in the front row said? “Sir, we’ve been sitting here for 1/2 an hour and you aren’t saying anything. You’re just standing there staring at us. Obviously, we’re going to get bored and talk.”
She’s right. Teach the kids. Be good at your job. Act like a human adult and not some petulant robot child, and watch all these little petty problems disappear.
I’d sure like some of the stuff TMAO is smokin’.
TMAO, what you say is generally true. The best way to deal with misbehavior is to come to class prepared, stay focused on getting the work done, and treat students with civility.
But if you believe no teenagers come to class without fear and primarily intent on showing off by thwarting the teacher’s will, I think you are naive. And if you believe soft approaches will always work with such students, I hope you never become my principal.
If people quickly judge the resulting contests to be caused by poor teaching, then the school will get worse, not better. I’ve taught both in orderly schools and in chaotic schools, and one of the main characteristics of chaotic schools is that the administrators mouth the same platitudes you do.
Err on the side of supporting teacher authority. But watch for weak teaching and do something about it. There’s not enough info in the videos to conclude that the problem is primarily teacher error; therefore, I’ll assume it isn’t.
Richard: You’re welcome to it. It’s called six years of successful teaching in a high-need urban school. Just enough years to know what I’m talking about; not enough years to scream bloody murder at kids because they were whistling, reading a magazine, not standing, or something equally piddling. Pack it, hit it, hold it, let it out.
Michael: You wrote, “But if you believe no teenagers come to class without fear and primarily intent on showing off by thwarting the teacher’s will, I think you are naive.”
Fine. So what? A good teacher can 1) handle it in ways that don’t fall back upon the silly and ultimately ineffective use of fear, 2) create in their rooms conditions that are more interesting and appealing than showing off. If you don’t believe that, please change professions. And I gotta tell ya, there’s nothing soft about sending kids the message that you’re gonna bust your ass every minute you’re in my classroom; you’re gonna worker stronger and harder than ever before; you’re gonna transform your hollow dislike of these processes into pride and joy. There’s nothing soft about establishing ambitious, aggressive goals, and employing the will to get kids there.
I hope that always works for you.
I think that Joanne is right on point here. While we shouldn’t excuse the teacher, every one of these videos that I’ve seen over the last few years indicates that the students were outrageously disruptive leading up to what was filmed.
I also think that TMAO has the right idea. Though “classroom culture” and other phrases are cruddy consultancy buzzword-eduspeak, there’s something to it. It doesn’t work with every group of kids, but if a teacher – like TMAO explains – brings a seriousness of purpose and the right focus, he can, at the least, lessen the problems.
God bless you TMAO. And likewise. God bless any teacher who thinks all student disruptions are his or her fault. As with most classroom issues, the truth is somewhere in between the ideal and the insane. As a teacher, I learned in my first year that screaming quickly loses its impact. So, I found other strategies. Did I become a better teacher? Absolutely. Did I still lose my cool from time to time? Yup. If you think that kids never make a sport out of pushing a teacher’s buttons, you’ve never been a teacher. Or a kid.
Robert, you are dead on. The answer is definitely somewhere in between. The kids need to be better, and the teachers need to be better.
Also, the schools in these videos need to crack down on cell phone use. At least one teacher seemed unfazed by the fact that a student was filming him.
There’s simply no place for this type of behavior in the classroom.
My only problem with the video in question is its incomplete context. Why should disruptive students get to be the directors and editors? There should be at least one video camera in every classroom in America and it should be running every minute from the time the school building is unlocked in the morning until it is locked up again at night. The footage should be archived to a publicly available web server accessible by the general public – yourschooltaxdollarsatwork.org. This will, of course, never happen so long as such decisions are left in the hands of interested parties who would be made to look bad by the exercise. Such parties include: (1) disruptive kids who don’t want to be in school and retaliate for forced attendance by ruining the utility of the experience for their peers, (2)incompetent, lazy and spineless school administrators who prefer to hide out in their offices and pretend classroom teachers can enforce discipline in some unspecified, magical way that requires no affirmative activity by the drones up front, (3) teacher unions, appalled at the idea the general public might get a look at what lazy, illiterate bozos a lot of their membership is. Until and unless this Iron Triangle is broken, urban public schools will remain the sinkholes of failure they are; existing for the sole purpose of providing patronage employment to dim-witted adults and educating children, if at all, only as an n-th priority afterthought.
TMAO,
You’re teaching at a middle school, right?
I may be wrong, but I think that some of the issues of bad school culture at the high school level don’t affect strong middle school teachers as much. In MS kids are younger and still expect teachers to be authorities in the classroom.
Certainly, good teaching is helpful no matter what the level, but I think that what you are preaching blames the victims in a lot of cases. No teacher deserves bad treatment in the classroom. (Some may deserved to be removed or fired, but as long as they are still being paid to teach, they should have the opportunity to do so without disruption or disrespect from the kids.) Suggesting that good teachers don’t get treated like this further empowers the kids who are ruining instruction from others.
“But if you believe no teenagers come to class without fear and primarily intent on showing off by thwarting the teacher’s will, I think you are naive. And if you believe soft approaches will always work with such students, I hope you never become my principal.”
The soft approach does not have to be the only alternative, the only opposite to strict discipline. It shouldn’t be assumed that teachers who argue for better classroom management are only promoting some kind of hand-holding campfire technique. There is a middle ground that is consistency, civility, clarity, effective conflict resolution, constant introspection on the part of the teacher, and high expectations. Along with that go a dozen little techniques and tools that good classroom managers know and use, including how to recognize and diffuse situations in which students are clearly trying to push buttons.
God bless any teacher who thinks all student disruptions are his or her fault.
And God bless my first mentor teacher. My first year was a continuous repeat loop of those videos. I could have easily gone down the path of blaming the kids, and ended up just like that. Instead, she refused to let me think those disruptions were anyone’s fault except my own – as a teacher I am responsible for the behavior in my classroom. I had to work, hard, to find a way to make a difference. But the hard work paid off, and I just don’t have that level of problem now.
Strict doesn’t imply yelling. If anything, effective management is far more strict than the teachers in those videos, while at the same time a lot more calm and collected. It has to be. The difference is that you need to make that strictness pay off for the kids. They want to learn – you just need to be able to teach them effectively.
Of course. Of course. And of course.
Still.
NDCe:
Aw man. “Blame the victim”? The TEACHER is the VICTIM? The adult who takes out frustration at their own professional inadequacy on a group of kids who act the way many kids will act in the absence of authentic authority is the VICTIM? C’mon now, really?
The teachers “should have the opportunity to teach without disruption?” Well all right. But I’m thinking students should have the right to be taught by a competent adult capable of maintaining a calm, secure classroom. And such disruption those teachers had to overcome! Whistling, talking, magazine reading, and not-standing! The horror!
We’re better than this, right? We can acknowledge that those folks on video (if no others) are the worst among us, deserving of nothing more than a good, clear view of the door. We can do that, right?
And yeah, middle school. ELA/ ELD 7th-8th combo.
I have to respectfully disagree with NDCe here. I’ve taught both middle and high school, all in tough areas. I’m currently teaching in a high school that is a little over 900 students over capacity (about 3,000 students at last count), and experiencing numerous difficulties for many reasons. I find this comment to be inaccurate in its omission of high school students’ expectations: “MS kids are younger and still expect teachers to be authorities in the classroom.”
High school students still expect teachers to be authorities in the classroom, though their idea of what constitutes authority may change. My experience has been that they are more overt in their testing or challenging of that authority, but not less respectful of it.
The idea that one teacher’s classroom management expertise should be evaluated by the grade level they teach is ridiculous. As tough as the school is that I teach in now, the middle schoolers I taught as a first year teacher would have chewed these kids up and spit them out.
“Suggesting that good teachers don’t get treated like this further empowers the kids who are ruining instruction from others.”
No one has suggested that good teachers don’t get treated like this. Every year is a new year for every teacher. Rather, the point being made is that good teachers know how to handle these situations when (or even before) they arise or, even better, know how to create a classroom environment which refutes or negates them in the first place.
Look. Are kids never the problem? Hell, no. Kids are *always* the problem. They are always asking questions. They are always experimenting. They are always figuring out what “works” for them and what doesn’t. And sometimes they make the most damaging, stupid choices available to them– read Youtube. This is because they’re kids: not miniature adults. Most brain-based research says our cognitive processes don’t reach full maturity until age *thirty-five.* So what *else* are kids in our classrooms supposed to be doing?
A lot more, you say? Damn straight. And this is EXACTLY why the *ultimate*, final, overarching, endgame responsibility of supporting the good in them, pushing them, challenging them, honoring their process of growth, not letting them get away with this kind of crap, showing them and teaching them not only our content, but an respectful, responsible, grounded way of living, is NEVER theirs. Never. Never.
It’s ours. Only ours.
TMAO: Since most of you here are teachers, I’ll speak as a parent. I would be appalled if I know my child had behaved in the way many of those kids did. I would expect them to understand, particularly at the high school level, that they will encounter less than ideal professionals in their lives, and behave with, if not respect, at least tolerance. Basically, I would expect them to act with a modest amount of maturity, even if the teacher did not. You seem to rightly have very high expectation regarding the teachers behavior, but almost none for the students. I think both students and teacher should be held accountable for their terrible behavior.
I’m currently student teaching and this kind of behavior scares me. I pray I never let a class get to the point where I react like these teachers did. I don’t beleive a could accurately assign blame to just the teacher, nor do I think students are entirely at fault. Without holding hands and singing “Ku-by-ah” (or whatever love-fest hymn you choose) mutual respect has to exist. My question is: am I going to be consistent and firm enough to give students the structure I believe they desire? and will I also be proactive enough to head off student behavior like this without losing it completely? Good teachers minimize these incidents, average teachers deal with them and poor teachers live them. I know I am young and niave, but hey, Ed school prepared me for every situation Right?
Please recognize the correct tone in my last statement.
It is embarrassing that such tech-savvy kids would display such limited camerawork. One of the videos provides a splendid shot of the ceiling for a long time.
In all seriousness, though, effective classroom management sometimes caters to the kids more than it should. Kids themselves have told me that a teacher should make sure they are working at every moment (and class discussion does not count as “working”). I have seen teachers do this very well: the kids come in, look up an answer to a question in the textbook, write them down, discuss, look up answers to more questions in the textbook, write them down, discuss again, and then the bell rings. There is minimal disruption in such a class, because they don’t need to listen to the teacher for more than a minute or two here and there. Since the teacher isn’t teaching directly, he or she can circulate, answer questions, and quell any problems.
If the same teacher brought in a primary source to read closely and discuss as a class, some students would be excited and interested, while others would likely interpret this as play time. Because students have established that they don’t have to listen to the teacher or each other for very long, and because we have accepted this, we are limited in what we can do. Sometimes the most interesting lessons are subject to the most disruption, because some kids are not looking to be interested. They are looking to be “engaged.” The two overlap but are not identical.
Classroom management does exist and is possible. No teacher has to resort to screaming (although it may be the prevailing culture in many schools). No one has a good day every day, but the good days can increase in frequency over time. Nonetheless, we should not conform to the overwhelming trend toward continual busywork and groupwork, even if it does help the students settle down. Students should be able to listen to the teacher and to each other. Without that, they will have a severely limited education.
I have to admit that in my recent job (I’ve taught in 4 schools in 4 years due to relocation) I’ve had to resort to raising my voice a lot more than in the past. Previously I was calm and straightforward about classroom discipline – the classroom had rules for the benefit of everyone and there were clear consequences for violating them. I would be able to solve a problem in moments, whether it be telling a student to stay after class, stay after school, or even head to the principal’s ofdfice in extreme situation.
In this current job, though, I am up a river without a paddle. Just the other day I had two girls (one who had been in our school for only 2 days) begin to argue and charge each other in my classroom. The only thing that prevented them from hitting each other was the intervention of myself and a teacher from an adjoining room as we had to physically hold them back from each other by standing in front of them. While we were doing this the girls both tried to grab us and shove us out of the way as an administrator was watching from the doorway. How did the administration react? It didn’t. Neither girl was disciplined other than being removed from class that day, and both girls are still currently in my class. Three separate teachers have spoken with the administration regarding the issue, and they have been told that since the girls did not land a punch on each other that it is simply a “classroom disturbance.”
I cannot assign any form of detention to my students (high schoolers) without first getting permission from their parents, many who do not have working telephone numbers. Our school has gone through 5 spanish teachers this year in one position because they are constantly quitting. This last one was greeted on her first day by a barrage of spitballs at the tardy bell. Again, not once has an administrator done anything to prevent this.
Yes, there are “inner city” schools where devotion and effort will win the students over to your side, but there are also schools where a certain population of students have also devoted themselves to disrupting the classroom and incompetent administrations not only fail to act but activewly handicap the faculty in classroom management. I have had students openly (and proudly) refuse to follow my directions since day one, and despite numerous write-ups, have never served a single day of detention, suspension, or the like.
Because of my school’s administration, I feel I am nothing more than a paid performer who can only endure the audience in order to survive.
I am a failed teacher. My wife is a super teacher. I failed because I could not handle the classroom management issues that effective teachers learn to handle.
I attended a large, mediocre public high school in the early sixties. I do not remember a single teacher, with the exception of one rather bizarre substitute, who had discipline issues with students. Class sizes were routinely in the mid-thirties. Study halls with over 100 students were silent. I do not remember any teacher posting rules in the classroom – we all knew what was expected of us.
I would say to the super-teachers that it would be fine if all teachers could manage student behavior as effectively as you do. They don’t because they can’t. Some get out of teaching, some learn how to do it on the job, others operate in a survival mode, protected by tenure. A certain percentage of ineffective teachers could learn these skills with adequate support and training but this, for the most part, doesn’t exist.
Effective school administrators make a difference here – up to a point.
The critical issue however is holding students accountable for cooperating with the educational process. This no longer happens except when super-teachers find a way to do it with the limited tools at their disposal.
You will never find enough super-teachers to staff our schools. But even if you could, is it wise to hold our teachers accountable for managing student behavior in the way that super-teachers do. As a parent I would expect my children to respect their teacher for who he is and what he represents. The ability to manage unruly, disrespectful students is just not relevant to that. It is a survival skill in a dysfunctional system.
I would be appalled if I know my child had behaved in the way many of those kids did. I would expect them to understand, particularly at the high school level, that they will encounter less than ideal professionals in their lives, and behave with, if not respect, at least tolerance.
It’s very easy to expect things of other people. The problems start when those other people have no intentions of living up to your expectations. Children think for themselves so you cannot control their beliefs.
So, let us say that, despite your expectations, your kids do not behave with tolerance towards some teachers. What happens next? Do you just shrug your shoulders and blame them for not living up to your expectations, or do you use your adult knowledge to do something about it? For example, perhaps you might reward your kids whenever they do display tolerance towards a teacher who is less-than-ideal: “Darling, I’m so proud of you, I got no phone calls from the school today. It sounds like you’re learning to tolerate Mr Stephens. Let’s go and get an ice-cream.”
I think what TMAO is saying is that in this situation a teacher, when confronted with kids who do not live up to his or her expectations, can do something about it.
And of course, as a parent, I suspect you are already aware, that when it comes to changing your kids’ behaviour, different methods have different success rates. And I think TMAO is arguing that teachers have responsibility for picking the best methods.
Out of curiousity, Stacy, what do you do when your kids don’t live up to your expectations?
@ TMAO
I like to think of myself as a rather good teacher. I have lot’s of things to learn, but am confident and deliver my lessons with loads of enthousiasm. Feedback by students, parents and collegue’s indicated I’m on the right track.
I’ve teached in an urban school for six years now. And, but for 1 class during 1 year, had no issues with class management. I was threatened with lawsuits by the father of the best pupil in the class, threatened to be beaten silly by another one. They made a sport of trying to get me mad. I’m very proud of the fact that they never succeded. I know collegues, people i know are very capable, who ran out of the classroom crying. I thank God i never did.
I’ve been part of a class, me being a pupil myself, of fifteen-sixteen year olds who deliberatly planned to stop teaching. We deliberatly used tactics, we knew would drive ‘them’ mad. This happened with good as well as bad teachers. Tactics ranged from turning a cross upside down for a Religion class to stealing a teachers keys and locking the in the classroom. I am ashamed of what I did now, but I don not think we could be stopped because we acted as a group and planned our actions during breaks.
You and I can not stop a group of young adults (please don’t make the mistake of thinking they are just innocent children) deliberatly plotting against you. Being a good teacher does not help if the pupils do not want to learn.
PS: please excuse me for language errors but my English is not my native language.
I am not terribly concerned about what to do to support or prevent the filming and publcation of what goes on in the classroom. The other concerns–regarding how to maintain schools in which inappropriate things don’t (or hardly ever) happen do interest me.
Kids don’t get to be in charge without the abdication of adults. I am old enough to remember when my local district decided to prohibit corporal punishment. Teachers, according to the union, weren’t happy–they handn’t been trained sufficiently in alternate methods. Several years later they learned that they also couldn’t put a(n elementary) kids’ desk in a box turned toward the wall for days at a time, either. What to do, what to do? Poor teachers, no behavior training, still. End result–the institution of time-out rooms in every school (each one staffed by a certified teacher, interestingly enough) and the beginning of in-school suspension. But it wasn’t enough. After years of lobbying and contract negotiations, the union finally succeeded in getting a separate “discipline school” for the “chronic disrupters,” (again staffed from the same pool of certified teachers).
Now, there are some protections for kids and families with regard to how kids get sent away. There has to be documentation, and some (unspecified) things have to have been tried first, and parents do have veto power. But, in my experience, it is far easier to make a troublesome kid worse, than to make them better–simply by refusing to follow any plans that are arrived at. Pressure on parents to “do the right thing” for their kid who’s always in trouble can get pretty intense.
But for all the effort and expense that has gone into these (non)solutions, very little has gone into getting teachers the training that they say that they lack. And this has been the situation for nigh onto 30 years since corporal punishment was originally ruled out. Am I to believe that the same group of adults who was able to bring about an additional paid staff position per building, and the creation of a whole new school, couldn’t in the same time frame figure out what they needed to do to take charge of the learning environment (for all children) within their own buildings? I have a big problem believing that teachers who know how to teach reading and arithmetic can’t figure out how to teach behavioral skills and expectations. Maybe they can teach behavior but choose not to–or maybe they’re not so hot with the content either.
Taking back the schools–from the students that we have given control to–requires acceptance of responsibility. It means that, like TMAO, teachers have to take on their disbelieving peers and call their bluff on what can and cannot happen. It means that when you don’t know how to do something, you find out what others already know. It means that you don’t wait for the administration to tell you it’s all right. It means that you bring things that rock the boat of expectations to a staff meeting. It means a willingness to look at some video of what goes on in your, and other, classrooms and identify the point at which things fell apart in order to try to do things differently next time. It means setting higher expectations for adults than for children and teens. It means building working relationships with parents–not just the ones who come to conferences, and before something bad happens in class.
I haven’t seen the Youtube clips–but I would take them with the same grain of salt that I apply to any student who tells me how badly an adult behaved–as well as to adults who recant tales of horror regarding students.
Supersub’s post illustrates what I think is a very important point that is getting little attention. In any job you have to have certain tools. Without those tools the job is impossible. As Supersub describes it, success at one school came routinely, if not easily. Success at the next school is a totally different matter. It does not come easily, if at all. It seems reasonable to me to attribute the difference to the tools he has available.
Just what are these tools that are needed to do the job? What must the school provide? Well, what did they tell you in ed school? Remember the course where they spent most of the semester on theories of discipline, cultural expectations, limitations of authority, chains of authority, what can and can’t be provided by state law, what can and can’t be provided by the the board of education, and the superintendent, and the principal, what must be provided by the teacher, what constitutes a punishable offense and what doesn’t, standards of courtesy and how to enforce them, the proper place of punishment, forms of punishment, school policies of discipline and punishment, philosophical perspectives of society and punishment, students’ rights, good students’ rights, parent’s rights, patterns of misbehavior, motivations of misbehavior, motivations of good behavior, and on and on and on?
Okay, I don’t remember that either. What my ed school had was idealism and ideology. They couldn’t be bothered with those petty details of reality.
My experience in teaching high school school and junior high was long ago. Discipline was hard for me, but in situations where I had the tools to do my job, I learned how to use those tools. But I was not the only one who had trouble with discipline, and I have no doubt that there are many schools that simply do not give the teachers the basic tools needed to do the job.
Excoriating ed school has it’s place. I make it a point to do it now and then. But I have also taken the time to try to formulate my answers to all those issues I raised back a couple of paragraphs. Here’s a link: http://www.brianrude.com/Dconten.htm
I have a big problem believing that teachers who know how to teach reading and arithmetic can’t figure out how to teach behavioral skills and expectations.
Really? Why?
When did it become the role of teachers to teach behavioral skills and expectations instead of parents? Not too long ago, it was expected that students would already have behavioral skills and expectations before they entered school, and the results were rewarded and punished at home.
We used to teach behavioral skills and enforce expectations by having concrete consequences, and enforcing them uniformly and immediately. This enforcement included corporal punishment, public embarassment, and meaningful expulsion.
Then the 1960’s came along and brought us the self-esteem movement and dangerous kooks like Dr. Spock.
Every animal on the planet that raises and teaches it’s young uses negative reinforcement to do so. There’s a reason for that…it works. We now have a society in which not only can’t educators use corporal punishment, but parents are afraid to do so also, for fear of being reported for abuse. The second most effective form of negative reinforcement, shame, is also out of bounds. I have parents who have actually filed complaints on me for embarassing or shaming their child. When I explain to them their child’s behavior deserved shame and embarassment they look at me like I am crazy. Shame and embarrsment have also gotten much less effective as popular culture has glorified and celebrated behavior that was once deemed shameful. There literally is no sense of guilt anymore…maybe a little chagrin at getting caught. The most popular kids at school aren’t the athletes or cheerleaders, they are the thugs. The ruder and more out of control you behave, the more popular you are. Academic success and good behavior is ridiculed (school boy, acting white). Politeness is seen as weakness.
There are problems with positive reinforcement also. Praise has been completely devalued, because these students have been receiving false praise for poor performance and effort for years. Rewards are ineffective because the students feel entitled to them regardless of performance or behavior. In my experience positive reinforcement doesn’t motivate those who don’t earn it to try harder, it motivates them to belittle and deride positive reinforcers. As for the students who earn positive reinforcement, they tend to be the students who are going to behave and succeed anyway.
Children are not civilized beings who can be reasoned with. You cannot get children to behave by explaining to them that it is the right thing to do. Children are barbarians. They must be civilized. How do you civilize barbarians? By making the price of barbarity too high to pay, and civilization a more attractive alternative. We are refusing to punish barbarity, and instead glorify it in our popular culture.
So what are we left with? Calling home? About half of the time, the parents side with the students indiscriminately. Much of the rest of the time, the parents have no control over their kids. (This year I have had literally half a dozen parents ask me how to get their child committed to Juvenile Hall) A significant number of parents are simply unreachable. Time outs, detentions? My students either ignore them or simply see them as the cost of doing business. Suspensions? 50% of my referrals to the admin are ignored. When students are eventually suspended, they stay home for a couple of days and watch TV and play video games. (I have students who if they were literate enough would be taunting me with “go ahead and throw me in the briar patch”) Expulsions? The district simply refuses to expel students. If they do, they immediately suspend the expulsion, and move the student to a different school instead. I currently have a student who has been expelled twice already this year. (once by a different district with a much better reputation who actually enforced their expulsion)
So, I have 5 classes with 35 students that I see for one hour a day, five days a week. At least half of them see no value in an education and expect (and fell entitled) for society to provide for them. They have no sense of shame or guilt, and no fear of corporal punishment. They know the worst thing that will happen to them is that eventually they will get a couple of days vacation at home.
For the sake of arguement, let’s grant that I am responsible for teaching them behavioral skills and expectations? How am I supposed to do that? And if I do try to do that, when am I supposed to teach them the subject matter material?
Tracy, I suggest that the expectations that parents and teachers can have of their children and students are very different. Teachers’ responses are contingent upon the environment they work in, parents’ on the the environment they LIVE in. I set realistic expectations based on my knowledge of them as individuals. Expectations are a moving target. If you didn’t see my first post, We homeschool our two sons, ages 9 and 11. So, I have an immediate response when my chidren behave poorly.
My original point was that the classroom is limiting. Teachers, even good teachers, even teachers with mad skills and super-duper powers are limited by the larger environment that the school provides. It’s obvious that some schools tolerate bad behavior displayed by both teachers and students in the video’s. I suspect that teachers can only “expect” what the schools are willing to support.
Ya’ll, really, this is simple.
I’m a teacher. I stand in my classroom and look around. If I can’t control this space, then that’s on me. And if I can’t, if I can’t control my room, promote a positive class culture, and create the conditions where teaching and learning flourish, then I should not cash paychecks.
I’m a principal. I stand in the quad and look around. If I can’t control this space, then that’s on me. And if I can’t, if I can’t keep a safe and orderly school, support my staff, and create the conditions where teaching and learning flourish, then I should not cash paychecks.
These are first principles.
There are no conditionals.
I’ll teach well UNLESS I’ve got kids who try to derail the learning process.
(Not good enough)
I’ll teach well UNLESS my admin doesn’t suspend when I think they should.
(Not good enough)
I’ll teach well UNLESS I have 90+ students.
(Not good enough)
I’ll teach well UNLESS I think some students have poopy parents.
(Not good enough)
If we want more from our education system, we need to start expecting a little more from each other. And ourselves.
If we want more from our education system, we need to start expecting a little more from each other. And ourselves.
But not the students or the parents right?
You’re wrong. It’s not that simple. For all of the rerasons I’ve listed above to begin with.
One more piece of evidence I want to leave with you. We are trying to manage our campus as a Professional Learning Community (PLC), that next bright idea that is going to save education.
One of the things we discovered last year was the problem everyone was having with classroom discipline. So we decided that more effective classroom discipline would be our common goal.
According to the tenets of PLC, our first step was collaboration. And as we discussed the topic, we discovered that the same names and behaviors were cropping up again and again.
Our next step was data collection. Now up to this point, every teacher kept their own records on classroom discipline, and the office kept their own records on school discipline. So we created a form, and put it on a shared computer server to record classroom discipline problems. Unfortunately we do not have 100% buy in. Some teachers are simply technophobic, some are afraid the administration will use the information to evaluate teacher performance.
An interesting thing developed however when we began the third step, data analysis. We examined the data we were able to collect. The students who were causing the biggest problems were causing problems in all of their classes. They were causing problems for new teachers and veteran teachers. They were causing problems for many types of management style. When we tried to look beyond the numbers, a general consensus developed that the biggest underlying problem appears to be an unwillingness to learn.
I didn’t mean to suggest that the behavior of the teachers in the videos was appropriate or that they specifically are being victimized. I’m willing to accept that their behavior is wildly inappropriate just based on the description of what the videos are: videos of teachers pushed to the point that students think it’s entertaining to film them and post them on You-Tube. (I haven’t watched them.)
But I think that at some schools, students have learned that ultimately there are no consequences for their misbehavior. And once these students, who aren’t really interested in learning for its own sake, who aren’t on track academically, and who know their parents will accept their version of events, realize there are also no consequences for deliberately disrupting classes and insulting teachers when they get bored, well then it’s a bigger problem than most teachers can handle, and at that point, you’re blaming the victims of student misbehavior rather than the people who could have prevented it; parents, effective administrator, or the kids themselves. I’m not sure that generalizing that bad student behavior is caused by bad teaching is really appropriate for a lot of situations.
Basically, the teacher has to establish himself or herself as the authority in the classroom, no doubt, but this authority is also something that can be destroyed easily and permanently by people who don’t back teachers up.
I didn’t mean to suggest that teaching middle school was fundamentally easier; I was just under the impression that the kids were less likely to doubt the authority of the whole institution yet.
It’s terrible in any case when a teacher loses control and yells in anger. There’s no doubt that’s what unruly kids want, and they feel they’ve won.
When kids act up in my class, I speak very quietly, all the while calculating how best to make such behavior inconvenient for the kids in question. I usually think of something.
I have a little more success calling parents than some my colleagues, and I wrote about it:
http://nyceducator.com/2006/08/startup-tips.html
It works very well for me. And I do yell for effect sometimes, but never in anger. My kids worry more when I’m quiet, as well they should.
This thread seems a microcosm of why simple problems don’t get fixed in education.
Each of the posts contain some truth. But they add up to nothing conclusive and become part of a nonstop dialogue and process that’s been going on my entire career while I’ve watched the things that really matter to me slip bit by bit away.
I think it was Descartes who talked about a group of people who were lost in the woods and were arguing about the best way out. Though any direction taken and held to would have led out of the woods, they couldn’t agree on a direction, so they were stuck there, arguing.
It’s what we are left with when we don’t grant anyone enough authority. I would grant teachers authority to teach. Kids who won’t grant it are going to find life getting increasingly unrewarding until they change their minds.
I’ve seen the end state of seventeen year olds who have been counseled and grouped their entire lives, and it’s not often pretty. All the warm people with their “I’m more caring than thou” attitude have moved on, having taught them little of real worth.
I would also grant principals authority to deal with teachers who don’t teach or can’t manage a classroom much beyond yelling.
For me, a bunch of kids provoking teachers so they can publicly ridicule them isn’t the best occasion to wax eloquent about how great teachers might have handled things. It’s a time to shake some kids up. Maybe get harsh and stern. Maybe demand in an authoritative voice an answer to the question “Who in the hell do you think you are?”
Great teachers use a large repertoire. Sometimes they even raise their voices. I’ve been in a classroom with “oppositional defiant” kids, one of whom threatened another with a large rock she had smuggled into the room. Her history suggested real harm might be done. I physically took her to the ground, while awaiting reinforcements from staff. It was a teaching moment, exquisitely targeted to the learning needs of the student.
I guess I could have gone to a phone and called her mother. Oh that’s right–her mother was in rehab. Shucks.
Sure, I would rather speak softly and normally I do. But years ago a quote by Eudora Welty stuck in my head, “To cater to is not to serve and it’s not to love very well either.”
I rarely punish students any more at all, let alone raise my voice. But figuring things out was a long, difficult process. If a teacher down the hall is losing control, I’m going to start with support for the teacher. I’m not going to begin by assuming it’s all his or her fault.
Get order. Establish authority.
Disruption works real well for the former student in their first job – and their second – and…
The trip to the principal should be a one way trip, at the discretion of the teacher.
Gahrie–despite your first long rant about the hopelessness of your situation and the failure of parents and all (I often wonder–are teachers better parents? Do their children have no behavioral or other problems in school? Just wondering)–it looks like your school is taking some steps in a helpful direction. I don’t much care whether you call it a professional learning community, all the adults on the same team or more heads are better than one. There is in fact some research behind what you are doing.
Having looked at your data (BTW–how are you dealing with your non-participating teachers–the one’s who don’t want to learn, I am supposing–should they be punished? Sent away?), what you have arrived at, by consensus, is a hypothesis–that the troublesome students don’t want to learn. Following through scientifically (and the researc of Sugai is instructive here), what you need to do now, is to test that hypothesis. I am not exactly certain how, but my best guess would be that you would need to create a situation for those students in which no learning was required. If the unwillingness to learn is at the base of the behavior, then their behavior should improve–correct? (Sugai would say that misbehavior is motivated by getting something desireable, or avoiding something undesireable). If not, then perhaps something else is the root cause of the behavior. Some additional questions that you might want to ask–when did they stop learning? Have they always avoided learning–presumably they have learned something, as I don’t hear that they are non-verbal, non-walking, or that they exhibit deficits in reading or writing. As you looked at your data regarding WHO had behavioral difficulties, did you also look at any academic information?
Having identified a discreet group of students that appear to have consistent difficulties, what resources are you going to draw in to assist in solving the problem? Social worker? Psychologist? Counselor? Parents? I mention those because most school systems generally have these personnel available. Others to consider, physicians, mental health workers, employment counselors. You mentioned that postive reinforcement doesn’t work because the rewards always go to the kids who have already learned how to be good. Are there rewards of any kind to offer to these particular kids for IMPROVEMENT in their behavior? Have you met with this group together to get their take on the situation? How do they define the problem?
Good luck.
Stacy – ah, I think we are using the word “expectations” in different ways. When I talk about expectations, I don’t mean to imply any action of mine if things don’t live up to my expectations, I may or may not act, but I may have expectations of things like the weather, which I definitely cannot control. You seem to be using the word “expectations” to include what I would call expectations and whatever you do to make your kids live up to your expectations.
As for teachers in classrooms, while I agree that many teachers are far more limited than parents, I’m not aware of any school district where teachers can’t establish expectations by rewarding kids who live up to them (or, in the bad cases, show any signs at all of moving towards them, with the long-run intention of shaping the kids to live up to their expectations).
Gahrie,
Let’s grant your premise that society as gone to hell in a handbasket, and that the youth of today are sorely lacking in comparison to the youth of yesteryere, etc. (man, where have we heard that one before?) Given all the societal decay, should we sit and wait for things to get better such that our approaches to teaching that utilize fear and shame are once more effective OR do we seek to train a new generation of teachers possessed of the skills to be successful with the current crop of a-moral teenagers?
do we seek to train a new generation of teachers possessed of the skills to be successful with the current crop of a-moral teenagers?
I’m, all for this…but….
1) We don’t attempt to train teachers in the skills to be successful with students now. I learned about Piaget, Skinner et al in at least half a dozen Ed classes, but not once did anyone ever attempt to teach me skills and strategies to use in a classroom. It was all theory, taught by people who hadn’t been in a K-12 classroom as a teacher in twenty years.
2) What the hell is wrong with fear and shame? Those were the primary motivators of civilization for centuries for a reason…they worked. Well we’ve spent the last 50 years discrediting fear and shame in our society and our classrooms…..do you think things are better? We don’t sit and wait for things to get better, we restore what has been taken away.
3) What skills are you going to give me that will allow me to deal with my crop of students who have no respect for any authority figure, characterize academic success as “acting white”, and lionize any and all anti-social behavior? Every strategy I have seen so far is a variation of “bribe them”, or “try harder”.
Simple Question TMAO-
Do you believe that a set of students could be so anti-authority that it would be impossible for you to control?
Supersub,
Simple Answer: Yes.
Expanded answer: Which is why we should not seek to control, but rather to lead and to teach. There are multiple sources of authority, and students come to trust, have faith in, and follow teachers for a variety of reasons. True, the I’m-the-teacher-so-you-will-listen-to-me argument is falling on hard times, but if that’s the only way you can validate yourself to kids, you weren’t at the top of the heap anyway.
Your choice of words is illuminating: “control” and “authority.” I would have phrased the question more like: Is there a group of students so poorly behaved you cannot lead and teach them? To which I would answer: Hypothetically, yes; thus far in my career, no.
Gahrie,
I agree teachers are not given adequate skills to mediate the various ways ethnic, language, and economic diversity affect student behavior and student achievement. Smart folks should get going on that.
I’m sure your students don’t have respect for “authority” figures. Having respect for “authority” figures sucks because you are respecting a figure, not a person, a title and a job description, not a human being. I bet they have respect for various people in their lives, though. My guess is adults aren’t much different. As teachers, we do well to stop puffing our chests out and expecting kids to kowtow to our advanced standing, and validate ourselves to kids in ways that are meaningful and authentic. This means meeting kids more than halfway. Like 98% of the way sometimes. This means doing things we feel degrees and adulthood and skill sets should put us above doing. This means taking that disastrous kernel of pride and buring it deep, keeping it untouched by things that occur in the classroom, far away from the affecting glances and behaviors of teenagers. “I know better; they should come to me!” Fine, but they aren’t. So now what? “I’m the adult!” Okay. Now what? “They don’t respect my authority!” Yup. Now what?
Pride is dangerous thing for the educator.
A very thought-provoking post. I responded to it here. http://adsoofmelk.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/smile
In essence, I feel fairly strongly that much of the disdain several of these students show comes from a decently certain knowledge that their actions will not result in any kind of serious punishment. Obviously, some of those teachers are poor classroom managers and that failure to manage has certainly exacerbated the situations the YouTube videos show, but there also appears to be clear teacher-baiting going on. I see a series of failures across the board — teachers, students, parents, and system. How saddening.