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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 16, 2016 20:49:07 GMT
This is not the environment of my grandchildren's schools. Respect for teachers and classmates is necessary to continue to be a student. My kids attend public schools where the kids are really nice and pretty well-behaved. Many private schools have kids with behavior issues who have been pulled from public school. All everyone is telling you is that this isn't a public v. private school issue. This was my experience where I went. Some of the bad apples were the ones that the public school booted, and since the parents were paying full boat tuition the private school admins let a LOT of things slide and/or looked the other way. It wasn't typically the middle class kids that were running the halls and creating havoc. It was the upper income kids whose parents paid for the new football uniforms, and the school didn't want to rock the boat. Yes, they too had a code of conduct, but nothing was ever enforced. In the seven years I went to that school, I never knew of a single student that ever got kicked out for bad behavior but there were plenty of them who should have been.
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Post by maryland on Apr 16, 2016 20:51:09 GMT
Reading these responses makes me so sad and worried. I'm a Grandmother, and oh so grateful that my grandchildren are in private schools. Happens there too...and in Charter schools. ALL THE TIME Exactly!
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raindancer
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,095
Jun 26, 2014 20:10:29 GMT
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Post by raindancer on Apr 16, 2016 20:53:43 GMT
My student screamed at me for 50 minutes "I hate you. You're stupid.", threw objects at me,kicked backpacks and walls, and tried to run away from school. Why? I asked him to switch one school supply that wasn't working for another one that was working. No consequences because he has an IEP. Not one thing happened. I teach general ed and this is what your children witness in first grade. Thank you MergeLeft for starting this thread! I've taught 20 years and have seen such a shift in how we are 'allowed' to address children. For my district, it comes from the parents and the constant threat from them of being written up or sued. I know every generation says the next is going to 'hell in a handbasket', right? This isn't about music or the way they want to dress. For many years now, my peers and I have noticed children don't have 'healthy fear' anymore. They know nothing will happen to them for their (age inappropriate) bad choices or lapse in self control. They have been raised in environments where they can make all the decisions for themselves about what they want and they're praised for it. The majority of the children do not fear consequences for their actions because they know there will be none. The violence I see in six year-olds is very scary. Every time I meet with the parents about ways to support their child in changing and managing their behavior, the parents either blame other students or me. Every time. I worked with children 15 years ago, and while not a teacher, I worked with a very difficult population of kids. And before that my parents did foster care in the early-mid 70's and since my dad was a cop, they took in the troubled kids...who also went to school. This isn't new. It's not generational. You are just getting old.
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Post by 950nancy on Apr 16, 2016 21:07:33 GMT
Ok this might be long. Have you ever wondered what happens to the joy students have when starting school? the little ones just can't wait to start school and they love their teachers. Then little by little they change and soon they hate school and are problems in class. I blame this on our system and on the teachers. I taught in a low socio-economic district for a decade in the middle school. I was a teacher in the special programs for the at risk students - the programs changed through the years but it was all for the at risk students who were discipline problems, who had probabtion officers, who were two years behind and so on. At first I had an edge because I taught a subject that was fun. Then I got the reputation that helped. I was not their friend but was a sort of den mother. I was a vocational home ec teacher who used the suject matter as a excuse to interact with the students. But the techniques and attitude I brought to the classroom can apply to all subjects. I think the turning point for me was when we were required to take a workshop called Discipline with Dignity. I did not buy into the whole program but there were parts of it I liked. One was to make learning fun again so students did not want to disrupt the classroom. Another was the idea that students appreciated being treated with dignity and not like babies. If they were in the wrong, I did not talk down to them but talked to them calmly and applied the consequences. But, for the most part, I felt that if a student was misbehaving it could be a failure on my part to keep the student engaged and learning. I would look at the "rewards" they were getting with their inappropriate behavior and work to remove the rewards. Sometimes students had to work out in the hall. Sometimes students were ignored. Sometimes I would give the student what he wanted in a positive way - students wanting attention became their group leader and got the attention. Students who would not stay in their seats were given chores to do that got them up out of their seats. Students who would not stay quiet were asked to lead discussions and so on. There was no ONE answer but many. But the best one was the keeping learning fun. Even when I moved to the high school, my classes did a lot of out of seat activities. We cut out magazine pictures, we made posters, we made group reports, students talked to each other about the subject. For me, interaction with the subject was not reading a book, but physically interacting in some way. Disrupting a class is hard to do when the class is already up and moving around making posters, talking and the like. Teacher centered learning did happen a lot but in small doses. Paperwork happened too, but in small doses. I also made sure that students had lots of opportunities to earn good grades. Everyday there was a warm up that got the students working right away. Each week that all warm ups were turned in meant an A for the student to be added in to other grades. Every assignment could be done over if the student wished to make a higher grade. Do over work could earn up to a 90. Sucess can be fun, good grades become addictive. OOPs did not mean to go on and on. But, believe me, the teacher can make a difference. It is not easy and takes a lot of grunt work. But, you just have to think outside the box. You have to learn to let go of the things that are not working, to be more cncerened about the student learning than earning a good grade, and to be willing to find legitimate ways to pass out those A's. You can't be stingy with A's. I saw so many teachers who taught from their desks and did not do much of anything but hand out worksheets, or assign reading textbooks and answering the questions at the end of the chapter. These teachers give the students a false idea of what learning is about and make it much harder for the teachers who really want to teach. . This may be happening still in some places, but I have never in my eight years of teaching seen a teacher who doles out seat work from behind a desk. No one survives in this profession teaching that way any more. We are all leading a three-ring circus of entertainment these days, it seems, to keep our screen-addicted students engaged. For myself, as a choir director, everything we do is active and participatory. We have multiple opportunities for success each day. And yet I have students who were shoved into choir because no other elective was open, who don't want to be there, who refuse to participate in what we're doing and choose to be disruptive instead. I'm engaging 97% of the students in my classroom, but the other 3% can easily derail us. We would have been fired. We were expected to use best practices all day long. We were expected to engage the kids and have them up and working in groups and increasing their movement. We were expected to have them in text 80% of the time in reading. In math, we were expected to have the students modeling different learning modes throughout the entire period. Teachers who did not do these things within the first three years of their career were let go. We still had some poorly behaved kids.
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Post by happyOCgirl on Apr 16, 2016 22:04:32 GMT
I worked with children 15 years ago, and while not a teacher, I worked with a very difficult population of kids. And before that my parents did foster care in the early-mid 70's and since my dad was a cop, they took in the troubled kids...who also went to school. This isn't new. It's not generational. You are just getting old. I agree...I am getting old! I wonder how I will make it to retirement. The difference, too, is now these students are 'mainstreamed' into general education when they used to be in a special education setting. I have students with 40 IQ's and others that are academically 4 years behind their peers (with severe emotional needs) placed in a class of 30 - 32 with just myself and no aide support. I have always had students with various needs. It used to be you might get 1 severe student a year - maybe - and then we (parents and school) would work together to get the child the help they needed. No, we are talking 10+ with severe needs every year. All students deserve better than this.
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Post by stampinbetsy on Apr 16, 2016 22:46:57 GMT
From the moment a child enters kindergarten they are in an environment year after year where things happen daily that any parent would be shocked to hear are happening. I am constantly amazed by how little the parents of my students know. Kids don't go home and talk. The ONLY way a very disruptive violent child got removed--finally---from my room was when the other parents said "Enough".... When I was still teaching first grade, we had a first year teacher who had a student who was new to us. It turned out that he was seriously disturbed, had knowledge way past what a first grader should have, and spent an entire semester acting out in her classroom and basically terrorizing other students. He scratched the crap out of another student's chest at recess, then threatened to kill him if he told anyone. The victim's parents got suspicious when their son started refusing to take his shirt off in front of them (which he typically had no problem doing). The mom (who was also our school librarian) finally got her child to tell her what was going on. She went to the principal as a parent. It still took until after Christmas break to get this kid sent to alternative school. The teacher had a notebook full of referrals for just this kid - it seemed like she was writing him up every.single.day. I'm not sure why it took so long - we had disruptive students before that we got way more support in dealing with than this kid. Good administration can make such a difference.
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my3freaks
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,206
Location: NH girl living in Colorado
Jun 26, 2014 4:10:56 GMT
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Post by my3freaks on Apr 16, 2016 22:55:25 GMT
The parents don't want the classroom cleared when he does this...because he's not 'a naughty boy'. We were just getting ready for lunch so I was able to clear the room this time. I missed my entire lunch due to this behavior. I do clear the students when it happens regardless of what the parents want because there is no way I want the rest of the students to witness this! He does have a behavior plan that I have been trying to add reasonable consequences (for this type of behavior that's almost daily) since September. Parents fight us, refuse to sign the addendum, and bring their advocate who says we're just mean. Sigh. I hate that I want to wish away a year of my job. Who gives a shit what the parents want??? It does bother me that the entire rest of the class would have to be disrupted and removed from the room b/c of the bad behavior of one child. Remove the problem. I have 2 kids. One graduated in 2014 and one's a junior this year. These issues have been one my biggest complaints since they started school though. There's always at least one, in every class that is a constant issue. The other 25 (or however many) kids in the class shouldn't have to deal with it day after day. The kids that follow direction and behave appropriately lose out time and again. Why does the problem behavior child's rights trump all the other kids rights? They certainly aren't getting the same amount of attention.
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raindancer
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,095
Jun 26, 2014 20:10:29 GMT
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Post by raindancer on Apr 16, 2016 23:43:08 GMT
I worked with children 15 years ago, and while not a teacher, I worked with a very difficult population of kids. And before that my parents did foster care in the early-mid 70's and since my dad was a cop, they took in the troubled kids...who also went to school. This isn't new. It's not generational. You are just getting old. I agree...I am getting old! I wonder how I will make it to retirement. The difference, too, is now these students are 'mainstreamed' into general education when they used to be in a special education setting. I have students with 40 IQ's and others that are academically 4 years behind their peers (with severe emotional needs) placed in a class of 30 - 32 with just myself and no aide support. I have always had students with various needs. It used to be you might get 1 severe student a year - maybe - and then we (parents and school) would work together to get the child the help they needed. No, we are talking 10+ with severe needs every year. All students deserve better than this. You will get no argument from me. When the kids I worked with were mainstreamed we fought it. It's not fair to them or the other kids. I get the desire to integrate kids, all people should be more exposed to people who are not like them. But when you have a child that cannot function in that setting and is disruptive, it's a huge problem. The pendulum is going to have to swing back. The real issue I think is less about these kids and their parents, but more about how we (don't) value education, how we won't fund it, and how political things are surrounding it all. Then add to it the lack of support from administration, which I suspect has a strong grounding in how badly *their* hands are tied, and we are just all around screwed. And really the teachers and the kids are bearing the brunt of our crap. Yet we just keep dishing it out.
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caro
Drama Llama
Refupea 1130
Posts: 5,222
Jun 26, 2014 14:10:36 GMT
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Post by caro on Apr 16, 2016 23:47:14 GMT
I blame this on our system and on the teachers. ;t Please don't paint all of us who TEACH as the cause...I am so offended by this comment. These behaviors cannot be blamed solely on the teachers not when at three years old the child is so disrespectful and uncontrollable and the parents say "not my child." It happens all the time.
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seaexplore
Prolific Pea
Posts: 8,789
Apr 25, 2015 23:57:30 GMT
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Post by seaexplore on Apr 17, 2016 0:03:22 GMT
Love this discussion! What about "restorative justice" as discipline? That's all the rage here. What does it look like there? We have to practically beg parents to buy into anything anything outside of detention and suspension So far, it looks like disruptive kids stay in class. At least in my school. Send them to the office, they come back. Send them to a "buddy teacher" and it just moves the issue to another classroom. in theory, it's supposed to make kids take ownership of their behavior. Basically, you have other kids explain to them why their actions are not ok and the offender is supposed to realize the impact that their actions had on the classroom and other kids and change their behavior. Yeah.... At middle grades, if they don't realize that wandering the room, talking out and across the room, and being defiant are causing problems then there is a bigger issue.
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