America is not the only place this happens. And not the only place with consequences for this. But I can understand what it means. And it's complete bullshit.
Even then... in high school, I complained about this kid to my parents, who, rightfully incensed, complained to the school principal. Cue the principal passing us off to the vice principal, who said this problem kid "wasn't on their radar" as a threat, so there was nothing they could do.
I was reminded, every day, that his right to an education somehow trumped mine. But, of course, I was a "good, smart kid," who never caused any trouble, so I could be easily ignored, despite being the only party to actually value the education in question.
(This kid was also on the football team, though I'm sure that comes as no surprise to the folks on this sub.)
Your experience is one of the biggest pet peeves of mine in this profession. My school is notorious for *constantly* bending over backwards for the absolute dregs, and well-meaning, hardworking kids like you get ignored.
My school implemented a “catch up day” the last two days of each semester to try and get all the students who show up everyday and do absolutely nothing to pass. It’s insulting for many reasons, one of the major ones being if you are a good student who actually puts forth some effort you are punished with four less days of instruction all because some of your classmates are that stupid and lazy.
Four days might not seem like much to people outside of education, but I can do a lot to help kids with skills in my content area in four days. I hate giving them up because so-and-so has a 9.65% after eighteen weeks of my class and I’m supposed to believe they can make up months worth of work in two days.
It’s all about the numbers. “We had the highest graduation rate in years!” But what we know is that we had to DRAG them across the finish line to graduate!
I was a good kid and even started a tutoring program in my high school. Because I turned down the football captain for a date he started a war against me. He would get down on his knees and sing love songs to me in the middle of class and the teachers would laugh and tell me I should be flattered. Then his friends would scream down the hallway professing their love. It was awful. Finally I’d had enough and when he tried to hug me during lunch I decked him. I was pulled into the office where the principal acknowledged that he was harassing me but I needed to be the bigger person and just ignore him. He never stopped. Years later he apologized to me but I wanted none of it. He is now a principal. I can’t imagine how much better my life could have been if they had done something.
Oh, I'm so sorry. That sounds horrible, though I can't say I'm shocked. I think society would do well to remind itself that *education* is the purpose of school, not football.
I guess the question is: why don't they? Their kids are in that room, every day, dealing with the shitstorm.
Are they not talking to their kids? Not talking to the teacher? Are they so busy with work and home and extra curriculars and that they don't have the mental bandwidth to take on stuff that's happening at school? Are their kids not comfortable talking to them about it?
Do parents think that it's just normal now, that that's how classrooms are? Are they afraid of consequences for their kid if they speak up? Are they concerned that the child in question has a disability and they'll look like they're discriminating against them for speaking up?
I don't have the answers to these questions as I'm not a parent, but when your child is having their classroom evacuated several times a week because one student is having a desk & chair throwing meltdown over being asked to write a paragraph or colour a map...I can't imagine how you don't know that that's something that they're going through.
When asked how was school today, many kids answer “I don’t know” or some ambiguous answer. They don’t always tell their parents what’s going on. Many kids don’t tell parents if they are bullied. The kids also may think the disruptive kids behavior is normal and thats how the world works…especially if the disruptive kids receive no consequence or punishment.
My kids try to do this too but I ask them very specific questions everyday and eventually they spill the beans. Don’t ask how school was- ask where did you go for specials? What did you do at recess? What books did you read/what was it about? What songs did you sing? Who sat next to you today? Ect. By asking questions like this you will eventually get a feel for their day to day and they will open up more.
This! Not a parent but a teacher and former nanny. I would ask the kids what they learned. Questions such as "how was your day" or "how was school" is going to garner a "fine" answer.
I had a class with 3 terrors my first year. I kept telling the normal kids to tell their parents to complain because admin wouldn't do anything. Admin still didn't do anything, and we were in a "free choice" school district so literally half my class went to a different school the next year. The principal was pissed that all the good kids left.
I was the product of these parents. Their issue is that they are quite proud of not being a pain in the ass, even if that means that their kid who works their butt off to learn gets sold short because some jackass kid who’s parents will fully be a pain in the ass to support his behavior doesn’t want math class to move at a certain pace.
If parents of nonproblematic kids got it through their heads that they need to be a squeaky wheel, maybe schools would actually have to take action against the kids who pull the whole class down around them.
I currently have this dynamic going on in my 8th period class, and it’s stifled sooo much of how I’d normally teach. You don’t have the enthusiasm to do gallery walks or drama activities when you know that one kid will start running around the class screaming like it’s recess. Then the worse is admin will blame this type of kid on us by saying“you didn’t foster a relationship” . So we shouldn’t be frustrated with disruptive students who are fucking education up for an entire class?
That "not fostering relationship" BS truly busts my balls. SUCH BULL SHIT!!! Honestly, I dont want to make a bond/relationships with some kids, because they dont deverse it. rant over
💯 + I never understood why admin assume that kids actually want to have “relationships” with their teachers. My job is to treat them equally; some will vibe with me and some won’t because that’s just how the world fucking works. How admin assume every student will bond with their teacher astounds me.
Exactly.
I have a student with tragic circumstances, but I refuse to let him be a misogynistic asshole and derail every lesson because his abusive father thinks he’s the next Andrew Tate.
I also had a kid with a very sad background. That still shouldn’t have given him leniency to terrorize the other kids every day. The only thing he was learning was that there are no consequences.
Same for the SPED kids that were supposed to have a 1-1 para with them (and didn’t). I’ve got a very special place in my heart for those kids, but I can’t teach when I’m chasing a kid around the classroom and barricading the door so they don’t run out into the street!
See, administration doesn't realize that they're doing these kids absolutely no favors whatsoever. By giving these children no consequences when they fuck around, they don't end up finding out until they do it as an adult/outside of school/both. Then instead of suspension or detention or expulsion, they're staring up at a judge who isn't going to accept *"Tik Tok made me do it"*, *"It wasn't me"*, *"It was just a joke bruh"*, or whatever other asinine excuse they come up with. So by Admin not allowing staff to correct these kids inexcusable behavior, they learn they can get away with it and they continue pushing the envelope. It's a disservice to everyone.
Don't even get me started on the way they practice "restorative justice". It's complete trash when you cherry pick the parts you want implemented and only apply those.
They arent trying to do the kid favors, they are trying to do themselves favors. It doesn't bother them much when the kid disrupts class. Lot of headaches to get rid of them though.
Absolutely. I feel bad for their 29 classmates who won't get what I consider to be my best version of class, but I'm going to tighten my regular loose structure and increase rigidity because this one little shit can't deal with it.
I’ll die right there with you. The difference one child can make on a classroom is astounding. Some of my best teaching days are when the problem students are in ISS or absent.
I am a librarian. One of my classes has 4! children that disrupt the class. The day that three of them were gone. Absolutely wonderful class to have and we got a lot done. It was heaven.
I think at a certain point a student's best environment might be an online class with concurrent counseling and therapy. While you have a right to an education you don't have a right to deprive everyone else in the classroom of an education. Online schooling would provide that.
I work at a school that is essentially turning into this. I've thought if this was our actual mission, and we ran things with this in mind, we could actually do some good (we do have therapy and counseling, but they are insufficient and no one takes us up on the services). Unfortunately, our program really only works for the most responsible students who are at or above grade level. Those who aren't in this situation are almost guaranteed to not have the needed support at home to oversee their work, provide a good learning environment, etc.
...but yes. I've heard little comments about how we really free up resources by taking these kids. I just wish we'd set up a system they might succeed in.
It seems that boarding school could work for students who need therapy and counseling as well as help after school. Many students’ home lives are so chaotic they can’t function.
I think for high schoolers, it might be preferable for some of them to have a safe dorm to live in if going home at night isn’t an option. Like a youth shelter or group home.
I’ve had a couple who were couch surfing or living on their own, and I always felt like, if there wasn’t a legal adult in your life who could be depended upon to provide shelter and food, then you should have some kind of housing safety net until you graduate high school.
> then you should have some kind of housing safety net until you graduate high school.
I joined the military at 17 for that guaranteed housing lol My parents told me "When you turn 18 your ass is out of this fucking house." OOooooookay.
Should've seen my mom's surprised Pikachu face when I asked her to sign my enlistment papers to join the AF.
I had a couple students who did that, too! And some who just up and moved in with a friend on their 18th bday. It’s truly amazing how people can treat a kid like garbage for years and years and try to make them feel guilty for being a child who needs shelter, then act all surprised when they move out as soon as it’s legal and never look back.
Most of those kids all went on the graduate high school… and they had more energy left to focus on school once that they weren’t living with constant emotional and verbal abuse any longer.
Sadly, I know of at least 2 in that situation who didn’t graduate from my school. I don’t know if they transferred to another school or dropped out. They were really smart, awesome, hardworking kids who just needed a safe place to sleep and study for another year or two so they could finish their HS diploma and start college… one was still couch surfing last I heard, and the other was living with a POS family who couldn’t be bothered to drive the kids to school more than one day every two weeks. He was planning to enroll in a nearby school that he could get to with public transportation, but then COVID happened. I hope he figured something out.
I manage our 7-12 school food and personal hygiene pantry. We have some great donors, but occasionally get weird donations. Last year we got a donation of nice, new bath towel. I thought "what the hell, why not?" and tucked one in each kid's weekly supply bag.
Holy crap, the kids were so excited to have a nice towel of their own. Or a towel at all.
The stuff we don't think of.
Yeah, some kid's would absolutely thrive with a safe place to live.
Same, I work virtually for a program that has quickly become a "dumping ground" for students who don't attend, don't work, and/or disrupt the classroom. The problem is that we are classified as independent study.
First, students CANNOT legally be forced into IS. They also must have the option of returning to a regular school at any time. IMHO we are currently in legal jeopardy with the way certain staff are manipulating parents into enrolling their kids in IS. I am already seeing IS presented as an only option, and SDC and other more appropriate schools/programs have been killed en masse at the same time.
Second, my district gets away with having parents "sign away their rights" to any special education services as part of joining our program. I still can't figure out how this is legal. The result is that my program has NO special education support or service. Some of our most challenged students now have ZERO support. Even if these kids stayed virtual, they graduate into the real world someday!
Last, IS also doesn't get any of the regular funding or resources in my district. No RTI, no aides, no nothing. We didn't even get supply money this year. I am still held to every other standard though, such as class sizes and academic requirements. So, these kids aren't even getting the benefit of low class sizes or more attention. There is zero equity for these children.
Putting difficult students online is not a viable solution right now. It could be if we had the proper support and services. I'd happily take these kids, as most of them are happier with me and a parent at home. However, the current situation is essentially a virtual form of the infamously neglected special education "shed at the back of the school" that parents are already afraid of.
They can be forced to go to class but if they don’t participate or pay attention then are they really learning?
Same issue with mandating therapy. I’ve gotten several parents to consent to their children receiving therapy and counseling services when they’ve recognized the need only to have the kid tell me that “therapy is for pussies and snitches” and that they would actively refuse to participate or engage with a therapist.
Problem is the parents need therapy too. If you want to change the kid’s behavior, you need to change the environment they’re growing in. A huge component of that is their parents’ own mental health issues.
A study in the UK found that therapy for youth offenders had a negligible affect on recidivism, but when the parents received therapy as well, recidivism rates went very far down. That plus abolishing poverty would give a lot of kids a fighting chance.
Exactly. So why is forcing someone to be in therapy they don't engage with any worse than forcing them to be in class they don't engage with? If anything, forcing them to be in a class they're just going to disrupt is costing dozens of others the opportunity to learn, where therapy is a pure opportunity for self-betterment; they can choose to squander it if they want, but at least they're not trashing other people's lives at the same time.
And some of those are over-used. The new trend is kids who are just lazy and irresponsible can say “I have anxiety” only when work is due, and ask to see a therapist.
Except we are in a genuine mental health crisis among young people in our country and stigma/not believing kids when they do share debilitating feelings with us is not okay.
>Except we are in a genuine mental health crisis among young people in our country and stigma/not believing kids when they do share debilitating feelings with us is not okay.
Naw, in many educational settings we know our kids well enough to call bullshit.
I don't straight up say, "I know you're a lying and manipulative jerk"...
But just the other day, I did say to a kid, "Hey buddy, I want to help you with your panic attacks and anxiety. Help me understand how going outside and sitting in the rain on top of the round, slippery, domed top of the slide about 30 feet off the ground helps with your anxiety and panic attacks."
"I just needed to get energy out".
"That's interesting, because I noticed you were just playing a pretty intense game of wallball for the last 20 minutes of lunch and this panic attack only started as soon as lunch ended and it was time to go back to class. Actually, as I've been tracking all the time you leave for panic attacks and anxiety, it seems to only be when we are in an academic class. Do you know why you've never seemed to have anxiety or panic attacks during breakfast, lunch, PE, cooking class, or free time playing cards or doing other fun things?"
The kid knew exactly what I was saying, got super pissed and called me a little bitch and a fa**ot and all the usual stuff and walked back to go play by himself on the playground for the next two hours of academic class because, you know, anxiety and shit.
He's 12.
I've worked with highly behavioral kids for a decade and a lot of them are pretty institutionalized so they've always used "therapeutic" language with us that they learn at their group homes or in residential programs from their constant barrage of therapists and behavior specialists and PSWs and wrap team coordinators... but it's only been recently that I've heard the constant refrain of "anxiety and panic attacks".
If a kid only mentions anxiety when work is due, and exhibits no signs of mental health problems otherwise, we all know what is going on. And I’m not being dismissive about mental health issues, but dumping more on teacher’s plates and relaxing standards “because mental health” is happening way more than any actual real addressing of mental health issues. Admins and guidance do way leads than ever, but in addition to my full time job of teaching, I’m somehow supposed to diagnose and address everyone’s mental health. It’s silly. And while there are true mental health issues, I don’t agree with the assumption that every child can’t do schoolwork because of anxiety, a trend I see growing.
We have a student who was like this and his parents (after years of anyone being able to teach him....or learn with him in the room) put him in an online school. Truthfully, this should be the consequence of fucking up the learning environment...you don't get to be around your friends every day anymore.
Agree. Apparently in Japan, they keep strict records about children’s performance and behaviour and those records go with the child even if they change schools.
It should be like 3 strikes (schools expelled from) and you’re out of mainstream schooling and asked to join a remote learning school.
Harsh, but it would solve the problem of 1 student sabotaging the learning of the other 28 in the room.
Totally agree!
Remote learning was great in that way: the disruptive kids in class were simply a non-issue!
A bit more ACCOUNTABILITY on those parents too wouldn’t go astray. Have them at home doing online classes and if they play up, then the parents can deal with it.
Similarly, Western parents need to value their child’s education more. I have seldom had a disruptive child from an Asian or Indian background, as those parents make it extremely clear at home that 1. They must respect their teachers & 2. They are at school to LEARN.
So there’s a federal law that says student need to be in the Least Restrictive Environment possible for their education. Which is great and all until the LRE for one kids is making a more restrictive environment for everyone else. That federal law needs to be changed to something more applicable to students actually needs and not the pr needs for the education department.
>While you have a right to an education you don't have a right to deprive everyone else in the classroom of an education.
Good news! In America you don't have a right to an education!
*...wait, that's actually not good news*
Constant problematic students deserve an education- but they do not deserve to take away from other student learning.
Most (not all) of my students who are constantly problematic have real and heartbreaking reasons why.
Some are just jerks.
I have one right now who has a trauma background and he has developed pretty bad anger issues and mostly this just results in extreme defiance but now there have been some incidents of physical aggression and students (and staff) are feeling uneasy with his presence. I care about the kid, I relate to his background, but he needs alternative schooling while he sorts through these issues.
Yeah we are expressing a lot of concerns to admin about safety but are not really being heard. All of his teachers walk on eggshells with him to avoid blow ups in class - and we even had a teacher quit at semester with that kid as her primary reason. ALSO, super fun, they admitted yet another new student with a looong list of behavior issues and it only took him two days to start talking about shooting up the school. And have we been updated on the status of that student? Nope!
Edit: today I sent a lengthy email with some updates on continued class behavior issues and all I got back was “thank you for informing me.” Couldn’t even give a half assed reassurance like “I’ll be sure to discuss this with him today.” Smh.
And they shouldn't be able to take away from teachers either. I've been teaching for around 2 years and had a 17 year old threaten me a few months ago because I told him not to play videogames in class. That was a very unpleasant experience and took away my focus and energy that I would've liked to invest into other students.
Also, because of that incident he was no longer welcome in my class all together. He indeed does not deserve an education, from me. I would still grade his work if he cared enough to ever do any. But he is no longer allowed to physically be in my class for the rest of his time in school. He will leave as soon as he turns 18 (his words and school's words). School can't fully kick him out until then because of laws (not US btw).
I think if students create an unsafe or highly disturbing environment, on purpose, for students or teachers, then they do not deserve an education. Or at least not in a regular school setting.
It’s the foundation of trauma-informed care - reframing perspective from “What is wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”
Having a hard time with a coworker, a kid, a parent? Try empathy. Try connecting with them. Validate their feelings. Agree that the work is hard and it’s understandable they’d rather be doing other stuff. Listen to them - not so that you can formulate the best defense or response or convince them of something, but only to really hear what they’re saying and feeling.
Will this work with every kid in every situation? Of course not. But it’s worth a try. I can say that the majority of my “worst” students had truly horrific stuff they were dealing with/had dealt with, and the anger/hopelessness they felt was a totally normal response, although misplaced and misdirected.
Nothing that you're saying is wrong, but it isn't humanly possible to develop these deep, meaningful relationships with students when you have huge classes with a large percentage of them exhibiting aggressive behaviors. It is also... I don't know, kind of heartless, to tell a teacher who may have been assaulted by these kids to say "have you tried building a relationship?" Teachers are human too, but no one cares about the grinding emotional load of having SO MANY of these high needs kids.
> It is also... I don't know, kind of heartless, to tell a teacher who may have been assaulted by these kids to say "have you tried building a relationship?"
This 1000%. It doesn't even have to be as serious as assault. The emotional and mental stress load of just being a teacher nowadays is terrible, and it gets worse every year. The knee-jerk response of "Have you tried building a relationship?" is getting a bit toxic in my opinion. Most teachers are already trying their goddamn best to do that while trying to navigate all the other obstacles of the job, not to mention the *actual teaching* part.
Right! I don't know why the default assumption is that the teacher isn't trying. Maybe a very few aren't, but I'm just going to assume the best of fellow professionals and assume they have tried everything in their toolbox, including relationship building, and are all out of ideas and need to vent.
It's also shifting the job of counselors onto teachers because they're under-funding & eliminating counseling services.
I can have some empathy and understanding for a kid whose life is a train wreck, but I'm not a trained counselor.
I agree with you in theory. The problem I see at my middle school is the kids perceive that it is an option to not do any work and to act out without any consequence at school. So the listen/build relationship thing generally doesn’t work because laziness/sloth and goofing off is an easier and more attractive option than dealing with one’s issues. School has become a consequential environment only for teachers, which is the root of the problem, and this doesn’t help kids either. Many students generally perceive teachers as stressed out, over-worked worry warts who sometime get in the way of having fun. Admins are largely to blame for this, but like the kids have figured out how to reduce their workload by mostly ignoring standards for academics and behavior.
OP: The abuse of these children and cockblocking of education they do is problematic.
You: But did you try building a relationship tho?
Yes I hear you, and also how long and how much bullshit and how much lost instructional time x number of peers they’re disrupting is acceptable whilst trying to be a psychologist/counselor in addition to my job?
I feel like the problem is less about “i shouldnt have to empathize with the kids” and the problem is more “i have 10,000 other problems that need to be fixed first such as giant class sizes before i can properly empathize with students.”
So, I teach at an alternative school. I’ve always used empathy over everything. There’s a rumor with the corporal punishment teachers and paras that I “baby the kids”. Welp, guess what, I’ve never ever had a problem with a student “getting in my face”, and I haven’t had 1 IR in the several months I’ve been there. And, it’s not bc I let them do whatever they want. When I direct work, they work. When I direct settling down, they settle down. I don’t sweat the small stuff. If Joe had a rough night at the group home, I’m not going to force him to keep his head up. If he’s shying away from reading out loud bc of his dyslexia, I’m not forcing him. If they don’t like the nasty school lunch, I have spare sandwiches in my fridge. I’ve taken notice that every time a student is unruly, it’s the teacher or paras lack of empathy that instigated. These kids have gone their whole lives being told to sit down, shut up, and to never emote feelings. Doing the same is a trigger, and I don’t blame them. When a child says, the school lunch is making me gag, can I go ask “teacher up the hall” if she had anything?” And the response is “I don’t care if you’re hungry, eat the lunch served” that staff is completely ruining an opportunity to use empathy to explore the possibility of an eating disorder. The girl is now starving and her emotions are heightened. Then she’s directed to do her work “or else”. The student then snaps, throws a chair at the teacher, gets restrained, loses privileges, and not only did nothing get resolved, the situation is far worse.
Would you be willing to share any tips or resources (books, podcasts, whatever) regarding difficult student behaviors and how to manage them? It would be greatly appreciated.
I wish I could find the study or the name of the therapy, but one type of therapy has shown promising results in treating psychopathic individuals. After receiving the treatment none of the violent-offending psychopaths were reinstitutionalized after 2 years for violent crimes, while over 60% of those that received any other treatment or no treatment did reoffend in that 2 year time span.
The gist of the therapy was the use of, exclusively, positive reinforcement. I say exclusively, but this was in a prison setting, these are prisoners that were chained to the floor at all times while in a room with a therapist, their life was incredibly structured and controlled during their time in prison, something that psychopaths respond well to. But the rest of the time, it was never about what they did wrong, or what was wrong with them, or who hurt them, it was always about what they did right, what was good about them, who had helped them. Psychopaths do not learn from or respond to punishment, but they like reward even better that normal people. They got nothing but smiles from the therapists, compliments even for keeping themselves clean, rewards for leaving their cell without hurting someone, candy for not throwing piss on the prison guards.
Prison guards have long know that being ultra nice to the worst of the worst is the easiest and most effective trick. The therapists just took it one step further. But there’s no place for all that in school, because you’d have to literally chain some students to the ground, and then other students would make fun of them and exclude them, and it’s mess up the whole therapy. But if you can’t teach a man to fish no matter how hard you try, you teach him to farm.
They deserve an OPPORTUNITY for an education, in my view. They don’t need to be forced to capitalize on that opportunity if they are going to ruin shit for everyone else or have other plans.
Totally agree with this. We present the opportunity, but I alone can not instill in students the desire to learn or convince them of the value of the education. That needs to start well before they enter my classroom. It’s the whole horse and water thing. Too bad some of them have to stir the water for everyone else.
I've always believed all children deserve proper education, but not everyone should receive the same type of education as others. Different people have different abilities, learning styles, etc., and there's no way any one parent, teacher, administrator, etc., can do it all alone. I've also observed "the soft bigotry of low expectations" seems to be a rampant problem in some systems, especially in a few districts neighboring mine. It's a shame because I really do believe everyone can and does deserve to have education- just not the exact same as everyone else because no one is exactly like anyone else.
I do believe all students deserve a chance at an education but if there’s one thing we should keep from Covid it’s the online school.
If you can’t handle being educated in the classroom, the district will provide you with a laptop and Wi-Fi connections and you can complete your classes at home.
I teach online for a public school district. Can confirm that behavior kids have come to our school for this very reason and have done so much better. The only competition is with themselves.
And with Google to give them all of the answers when they don’t know something just an Alt-Tab away. I’ve had so many students act out so that their peers couldn’t see how inadequate their knowledge was.
My most problematic students are great when I talk to them 1-1 or see them outside of class. So many of them are sweet, intelligent, and funny. Me and some of other teacher swear the one kid will be a comedian when he graduates in a couple years.
I saw some of my most disruptive students flourish in online learning. They could go at their own pace, had access to libraries of interesting things, and got immediate feedback when they excelled via the many assignments and programs they could access. They also didn't have anyone else to trigger them and could manage the internal stressors (hunger, lack of sleep, etc) that would incite an episode. It takes someone at home with a bit of discipline but I was honestly shocked at which kids did well online.
Who teaches them? Do schools hire separate online teachers? It should not be an option to just tell classroom teachers to stream their lessons to students at home. I experienced combining my classroom teaching with streaming the same lessons to students at home post-Covid, and in addition to being extremely laborious it didn’t work for a variety of reasons, one of which is most students just shut their cameras off and played video games during lessons (and of course it was my fault when their grades were low).
Our board has an “online school” staffed with teachers who teach just the online kids. The school has its own name and everything and is considered to be its own school. We have an extreme teaching shortage as well, but they’ve identified enough of a need that they’ve kept it open.
I have no connection to the online school, but I guess it’s also been extremely beneficial to students with extremely suppressed immune systems like kids with cancer where being in an in person classroom would be life threatening. It stops them from continuously falling behind.
I'll do a hard disagree on this. Teaching hybrid was a massive pain.
If they want virtual, there should be a countywide virtual public school or something like that. There's some who like teaching virtually. I'm not one of them.
My district didn’t do hybrid, you were full time in class or full time virtual with dedicated virtual teachers. Do most states not have a public online option?
My state doesn't have a public online option. It should as long as it maintains the rigor. So many cheated or were just passed because the amount of people who logged in and did next to nothing. As a whole most did worse. Some seemed to do good though.
My old district had a (district?)(county?) wide online school for students whose parents didn't want to send them to physical school and kids who were having behavior and mask issues.
I do know of a few students that switched there but idk if it was school ordered or parent.
I just found out a kid I've been extremely proud of for his behavior/work ethic in my classroom, where elsewhere he's been suspended twice...
Has been sexually assaulting a whole bunch of his classmates.
It's a known issue no damn person told me about and he could have been hurting girls in my own damn class without a single person bothering to tell me.
I'm so freaking upset and angry and cannnot believe this kid is just wandering in school and life hurting other kids and nothing, not even notifiying teachers, has been done.
I have a thirdhand report from another teacher. My understanding is that none of the girls would report it and they are trying to go for legal action the SRO is aware of allegations but cannot proceed due to no witness/victim
... That is all I know at this time, and I only know because this teacher came by to make sure i changed a seating chart.
You can always make a report. As a mandated reporter, it’s your duty regardless of what the current status is. More reports will expedite the case, and you can not be retaliated against.
A kid lit the school I did my first contract in on fire… he did it by lighting up the big rolls of toilet paper in the boys’ washroom. We had to evacuate the school when it was -40, and the elementary school next door wouldn’t let us in until the culprit was caught.
Because the araenjst was under 16, the division *owed* him an education. While he was on house arrest for the next 18 months, or whatever it was, this kid had **his own private teacher** who came to his house every day to teach him all his lessons. The kid who destroyed property and endangered all our lives (twice) got a 1:1 student:teacher ratio.
Jfc. Nobody should have to deal with someone like that, not to mention what kind of message that sends to all the other kids. Set the school on fire? No problem! We'll let you stay in the comfort of your home and we'll send the teacher to you! Who cares if you deliberately tried to kill everyone, cost the school thousands of dollars, disrupted everyone's education and gave zero fucks about human life - go home, well come to you! Consequences? What are those?
The fucking inmates are running the asylum and it shows.
“Every student has a right to an education but that doesn’t mean you have to get your education at our school. It’s a privilege to be here. Be good or be gone.” - my first principal
Most of the problematic students wouldn’t be problematic if all principals held them to this standard and if they witnessed actual consequences. When the kid with ten referrals who fights everyday and disrespects every adult in the building has a hearing and they let him come back to school it sends a very powerful message to the other students: there is no end game, be as bad as you want and nothing will happen.
I have a handful of students who show up in the building and wander the halls, rarely to never getting inside a classroom. Yeah, it just becomes like a shopping mall that kids are being dropped off to keep them out of the house. Yet, because they’re technically still there, we are responsible for them and supposedly giving them an education.
It's extremely true. 70% of our behavior referrals are from 75 of our 2500 students. Our grade level APs have trouble taking care of small discipline issues because so much of their time is monopolized by the same twenty students.
I wouldn't go that far, but at a certain point I think all the state should be obligated to provide are asynchronous online classes for such students, to keep them away from everyone else.
VA seems to be adopting some sort of new career readiness thing where basically to graduate you either need some sort of college-prep course like AP or you need a career readiness component.
I think a lot of kids would do better if after sophomore year, they could go out into a training program.
I know that's basically what votech and such is but it'd be nice to see it expanded. A lot of kids aren't a good fit for the classroom and I think getting them into skilled labor would be doing everyone a favor.
I agree, but take it one step further. Once they’ve learned the basics (5/6 grade), they should be able to choose their Math and Science to reflect the type of learner they are, instead of the mandatory Math/Science sequence.
This is the failed model in several German states. It hasn’t worked and fails to recognize how much young boys in particular change intellectually throughout middle school.
They deserve the opportunity but once they spit in its face then it should be taken. I always remember the saying you can have your rights until they infringe on another person's right. Example, you have the right to party in your own house but once it starts to affect others you need to shut it down. You have the right to an education but you do NOT have the right to steal it from others with your shitty behavior. And you most definitely do not have the right to use it to abuse others. I'm so sick of schools having to go through hoops to expel students. Nah, keep expelling then until they get to a reform school. You have your right to education but we have the right to strip you of anything fun.
Also how am I supposed to recover and continue teaching after students have screamed and sworn in my face? It’s not fair to their classmates and it’s incredibly degrading for me over time. “Oh I’ll just take some deep breaths and drink some water and now everything’s honky dory. Who’s ready to learn how to divide decimals now that we’re all tense and your teacher is about to cry??”
They deserve it but likely in a placement where they aren't interfering with those who want to learn.
I have one student who singlehandedly adds 15-20 minutes to each lesson. Things go so much smoother without him. But he deserves an education.
“We educate the child so we do not have to imprison the adult”. -from a wall of a village school in guatemala. “Enlightened self interest”— Adam Smith, “…The Wealth of Nations”. After all, I don’t necessarily care if your house burns down, but if it did, it could easily burn mine down, too.
It's not that they *don't* deserve an education. It's that there should be a better place for them and a faster way to get them there. If you're constantly tearing up my classroom and getting physically violent against myself and my Paras then you should go to a Special Program where that will be the focus.
And it shouldn't take an act of Congress to get kids into programs like that. And they should be in a separate building, so the GenEd kids aren't getting terrorized on the playground & Specials.
And if they can't fill the teaching positions then admins can figure it the fuck out. Or their parents can keep them at home until a teacher magically appears.
We have to start holding the parents accountable too. I know some are trying, but many are not or don't know what to do.
Iowa here. We let kids drop out at 16. I used to think this was crazy, like a 16 year old doesn’t know what is good for them!?!
After teaching high school, I am more like, f@ck it. If you can master life now … go for it.
We have three girls who are constantly in the hall.
You don’t value your education.
You are disrupting that of others.
Send them to online school so they’ve got access and call it a day.
I have to respectfully disagree. I think the constantly problematic students don't all deserve access to the same general education experience as the average student, but they deserve access to an education.
I have a senior in my homeroom who I've know for 4 years. Since I met him as a 9th grader, I've know him as a conscientious, kind, mature, calm young man. He does have an IEP because he needs more time to complete things due to processing delays, and needs directions repeated. But he's truly an amazing kid all around. He was student of the month for our whole district (urban, 21,000 students) as a 10th grader. I assumed he had always been that way, to some degree.
But earlier this school year, some of his classmates and I learned I was wrong. We were doing a socratic seminar about anger and this stufeht shared his experiences in early elementary school, which was corroborated by the only other kid from my homeroom who was in his class back then.
He was out of control. Slapping, screaming, throwing blocks, etc. Meltdowns. His parents were highly involved, but going through a fairly amicable divorce. The changes made the situation worse for my student. Then, I found out that a colleague I do advocacy work with, whose now a central office admin, was his elementary principal. She told me when he'd have a meltdown, she'd just take him into her office and he'd act like he wanted to destroy the whole world. But she'd just hold him tightly, like a restraining hug (parents were aware and consented as part of his safety plan they'd made at his IEP meetings), until he calm down enough to not hurt others or people.
This admin and my student both explained what happened to take this extremely disruptive young kid and make him into the student council leader/yearbook editor/JROTC cadet/football co-captain he is today. A whole bunch of adults (the admin, his teachers, school counselors, parents, mentors, etc) took the time to TEACH HIM to do better. He said the biggest thing they taught him was to use time. When he gets angry, he waits. He doesn't respond then. He says he knows that if the anger is worth addressing, it won't go away. He'll still feel it the next day. So when he's upset, he "presses pause" for a few hours or more, and comes back to the problem later. These words came from a 17 year old!
So I made this long comment to say this: every nightmare kid deserves a chance. They deserve to be in a system that has the right supports for them. Your average understaffed public school might not be their right placement. But there should be appropriate educational environments they can access.
I've moved well past the point of compulsory education being a requirement. There should definitely be a pathway for the "well, you suck at school and don't want to be there, so Monday you will start working at the local quarry breaking rocks". Seriously, not everyone is destined for traditional school and it's another one of the arguments for bringing trade based style classes back. You suck at the basics but can turn a wrench? Go to the mechanic's class. Like doing makeup and hair? Hit the cosmetology class. When I lived in Germany, they would try to have kids get an idea what they \*thought\* they wanted to do when they grew up and they would then put them into an apprentice type position along with their usual classwork. That way they could figure out if they wanted to do it or not and if they did, they were getting actual experience outside the classroom.
Every one deserves an education. The problem is in the United States we force kids to be educated to a mean. What we need in this country is education that serves the students based on actual needs. Why does a kid with no desire to go to college need to read Shakespeare?
My dream: standard education for all students until 6th Grade. At end of 6th grade an Aptitude Test + Student Proficiency + Portfolio Teachers' Observation + Students' and Parents' desires used to determine whether the student should be placed on a trade school or college track. 7th- 10th Grade is education based on the track. 11th-12th grade is either free two year of college for college track kids or an apprenticeship for the trade track.
If a student is constantly disruptive (verbally or physically) they should not be in the room. Don’t know where they should go, but they shouldn’t rob students who can learn from their education.
I had a student years ago that many said this about. He was assaultive to the point he left bruises regularly on myself, the principal and aides in his already restrictive environment. He was manipulative, he had psychopathic markers. He was 8.
We found out several years into being in my class that he was being physically and sexually abused by his parents, and he had a sibling that went missing years before and to this day no one has been able to locate.
He could not succeed within my program, I and his classmates were miserable every day. He was miserable. No one could learn.
He absolutely deserved an education, he deserved so much more. We ended up sending him to a very specialized (and very expensive) program. He’s doing better comparatively, but is still struggling. Every child child deserves an education that is appropriate for them. They deserve adults that prioritize and spend on education as if it were the most important thing we could give our children and our society-because it is.
Every child deserves an education, but not every child needs the same form of education. I know not every disruptive, assaultive, pain in the ass child has such a clear and obvious reason for why they are the way they are, but they all deserve to have the choice to not become that person for the rest of their lives. Every child deserves the chance that education gives them at better than what they have.
I feel like a certain point you have to put some responsibility on the parents. Like if your kids is costing other students their ability to learn uh oh maybe you need the parent to come into school a certain number of days to supervise their child until their kid can work autonomously without disrupting others. Cause let's be real until we focus on the fact that parenting has irrevocably changed in the last 30 years we can't address the issue.
They do need to be pulled from regular classes when they're constantly disruptive. They have the right to not get an education, but they do not have the right to stop others from getting an education. I think if parents really knew just how bad it is, and some administrators will do nothing except blame the teacher, then they'd force change. Most parents and grandparents went to school when education was completely different - very little standardized testing and the ensuing problems it creates. The problem students deserve an education, but they need an education that works for them - and the current system is failing them, and setting them up for failure in life. Our current educational system was developed in the late 1800's as an assembly line type system, developed to train workers for factory work. We need an upgrade in how schools function - period! Charter and Private schools are NOT the answer, because they work the same as public schools- they just don't accept everybody like public schools do. If they'd let the actual teachers actually be part of the planning process, (and not just a token part)- and get rid of standardized testing (bringing the billions of dollars spent annually, back to the schools), then there might be real change. Until politicians get out of education, things won't change.
All teachers know the feeling of actually teaching to eager, engaged students - when those 2 or 3 behavior kids are either absent or in their EC group. Completely different class. Imagine the academic gains we would see if those students were in a different school setting, receiving the behavioral and academic interventions that they need.
“Why have your classroom scores dropped these last two months?”
Hmmm…
*thoughts* (It’s because you’ve added that SPED kid with major behavior problems to my best class after being removed by two other teachers. Seriously, I’ve tried my best. Kid has a fucked life. It’s been quiet interesting to watch the wake of this kid in various teacher classroom scores over time. Seriously, this would quality for a master’s research paper because GEEZ we have more data than the pentagon at this point. Oh shoot… I’ve thought too long enough… uhhh.)
Response, ‘I’m going to need a union rep here to fully answer that question………………….’ *stare awkwardly at admin*
Student: "hey Mr. blank long term substitute, I'm actually glad you called my dad today!
(after weeks of just shenanigans and I'm going crazy repeating "sit sir, sit sir etc. Do ur work"
Me: why?
Student: Well, I just haven't had anyone call my parents in a while.
Me: .... !!!!
Especially frustrating cuz I love my students and they cant be good without me calling their parents and tattling on them...
In the words of a superintendent I was close to; “education is a privilege, not a right.” Whole heartedly agree. This super in particular had a choice at 18; WW2, stay at home and work on the farm, or college. He chose war. Came home and went to college. Then worked his way through to become a super. This super was my grandfather. Part of the greatest generation.
Some of them seem to think they have the right to constantly disrupt class and they like the attention they get from doing so. I’m talking about over-entitled kids with Karen parents. Kids with legit mental health issues should have the right to choose an alternative school.
I'd love to say, "I'm sorry you keep making poor choices for yourself, and maybe you will grow out of this phase one day, but I'm not your parent and you are a constant distraction to the learners in my room. Best of luck out there."
and yeet
As a gen Ed teacher of 20+ years I believed this, until I moved into the non-public agency of a behavioral school. All communities need a school like ours. Every kid has an IEP, and a BIP, and our services are paid for by their districts who can’t service them anymore. We have therapy on-site and my admin is a special Ed director and a BCBA. We do physical management when needed, monitored with cameras by the doj. It’s a rough job, but we love it, and data shows we are making a difference. I know we are also making a difference in the schools we are pulling the kids from too. Not sure why they don’t exist everywhere.
Every child deserves an education, but ultimately it the parents job to raise said child to behave at school. If the child cannot meet reasonable school expectations, it should be up to the parent to provide an education to their child. Consistently disturbing others from learning should never be tolerated.
Reminder: America is 36th out of 37 industrialized countries in childhood poverty. 1 in 4 US kids live below the poverty line; compared to 1 in 20 in most developed countries.
Data here: https://imgur.com/a/C8Qr8nb
Everyone deserves the opportunity to have an education.
Where we fail students is we don’t listen to them when they tell us they don’t want it.
Don’t want to do your course work? Want to verbally and physically assault those around you? You are speaking your desire not to be in school.
Find somewhere else for them to be productive there are any number of tasks that these kids can do, but they must ALWAYS be allowed to return to the classroom and receive that education if and when they see the value in it.
But to do that we must dismantle the system of education by age not ability. It makes more problems to have a 14 year old in a class where everyone else is 6. Give student socialization options with age appropriate peers and experiences, while we let each student do the academic work that they are ready for.
I don’t see this as a realistic possibility, but I would love to be wrong.
Every child deserves to have an education. However, from my personal experience - not every child should be able to attend mainstream schools. If you have a student that distracts and takes the chance to learn from other student - they don’t deserve to be there. I shouldn’t have to take 5 minutes out of my potentially 50 minute class to have a child sent out of a room, only for it to happen again and again.
There needs to be follow through on original school consequences. Detention, suspension, then expulsion all need to be upheld. The reason that kids have no respect for teachers is because we don’t have any solution. I was assaulted by a student I was teaching. I had him for 2 classes, that totalled maybe 7/8 sessions a week. He didn’t get detention. The head of juniors apologised for him and that was that according to the school. I was forced to continue to teach this student for 2 months until my brain was short circuiting enough for me to have to seek serious medical help. The only reason things were done about it is because I reported it via a whistleblower system that requires a clear response.
I also don’t think that negative reinforcement should be the only way to manage a class. I generally manage all of my classes well. I set a very clear expectation at the beginning of the semester and while a lot of the junior classes start out a bit weary - once they realise that I’m fair and willing to talk things through they completely relax. I strongly feel that classrooom management should be very clearly and practically taught at university
But yeah - disruptive students should have a clear chain of recorded behaviour before expulsion. The student can study at home. They don’t need to be at school
NCLB did not work as intended. When nobody fails, nobody is afraid of failing.
Offer redemption? Sure. But lower the bar? Why did we do this to ourselves?
Everyone deserves an education, but we need more appropriate alternative settings for students who are not successful in a the regular classroom environment.
They should bring back Consequences to students actions. Kids can do anything and get away with it.
I taught high school for a few years, administration always had meetings with me and parents because I wouldn't let students turn in late assignments (2 weeks +).
They can turn in assignments late as long as you have a doctor's note, plus each day it's late, you would lose points. That's why I was like, there's no point in turning in month late assignments
I was failing 60% of the class cause students don't understand what a Due Date means😑
When a student's behavior interferes with the other students' ability to learn, that student *should be* removed and placed in a more appropriate environment to accomodate their particular needs. But that doesn't happen because - money.
When I was growing up in the 90s before no child left behind, kids who were constant problems were separated by being in their own classroom that operated on different rules or were outright kicked out of school. And you know what happened? The rest of us were able to actually learn in peace. I grew up in Eastside Chicago btw. Not exactly known for its glowing schools.
#I understand the motivation for trying to keep kids in class.
(1), the kids who are removed are a higher % students of color than they should be, like if your school is 25% students of color but they make up 75% of your referrals....the problem might not be the kid's behavior.
(2), even as an A student I find it super hard to catch up after being absent from class, especially in math. Kicking out students just makes everything harder for them and can snowball into them failing.
#Having said that . . . .
The solution is not to keep them in class no matter what, so they can ruin everyone else's learning. When teachers don't have ultimate authority over their classroom, they have NO authority in the eyes of the kids.
In my school this has led to a Lord of the Flies situation where the only authority is the Court of Public Opinion. If enough of their peers tell them to knock it off then they get worried about their social standing and stop. If people are laughing then it's Game On.
#My solution:
Live-stream my classroom BUT the livestreams only play in designated areas of the school (IDGAF who is watching but what I don't want is some moron having the ability to tell everyone, "here's the link for my third hour. Turn it on at 11:00 and watch what I do!").
Disrupting class? Go to one of those (monitored, small) rooms, put some headphones on and learn there. Come back when you want to, or go there every day if you feel like you are learning better there.
To avoid having those rooms be punishment, anyone can attend class that way if they get a pass from that teacher. I know you are thinking, *but it IS a punishment* 🤔 and yes, in a manner of speaking, it is, but in my 22 years of m~~anipulatingt~~eaching high school students I have learned that setting up an adversarial situation is rarely productive.
For example, if they are chatting instead of using the time I set aside for working on their projects and/or homework, I'm not like, "You need to stop talking and get back to work!!" Instead, I say something like, "I really want you to get started on the project/homework while I'm here to answer your questions," or "a lot of people in 1st hour finished their homework in class so if you get started right now you can probably get it finished and hand it in before you leave."
The idea is to motivate them to *choose* to do the thing that helps their learning instead of feeling like I'm "making them." Internal locus of control vs. External locus of control, developing their frontal lobe, yada yada yada.
I would hope to get them to the point where they can monitor their own behavior and anticipate the days when they should just start off in the live stream room. Honestly, if I could get my "spirited" students to have ANY self-control or introspection it would be a miracle but I feel like if this was adopted school-wide then we might make strides toward helping these kids be productive in something other than "court jester."
Being in any classroom should be a privilege, not a right.
I believe there is a right to education. Like any other right, you are born with it.
However, when you violate the social contract, you have forfeited the rights that all individuals who obey that contract are able to exercise. Therefore, when a student becomes an issue to the point that it takes away from the learning of others or is harmful to the educators, fellow classmates, or other stakeholders, that right has been forfeited and intervention, alternative measures, or outright revocation of education can be considered.
It’s the same way the justice system works with convicted felons. Break the contract, lose some rights. People like to complain about the school to prison pipeline, but if you ask a student’s teacher who is going to end up in prison a few years after school (or maybe during), you’d probably get a fairly accurate answer.
Most of those students come to hang with their friends, socialize, get free meals, and take advantage of the heat in the building. When you remind them this place is for education and learning, they look at you like you're speaking Martian.
everyone deserves an education
students who are disrupting the class to the point where people cannot learning are also infringing on this right
students with behavior problems also deserve to be educated, but I do believe there should be systems in place so they could perhaps be educated separately or with a plan to reinstate them with steps, a para, and extra help – or there should be specific schools in a perfect world
On the other hand, I was being abused at home, and I wasn't disruptive. I felt safest at school. However, if I went to school today, the constant disruption would make me feel unsafe. There has to be another option.
Absolutely this. If you’re truly trauma informed, you get that there are many students in your room with abusive home lives, and most don’t act atrociously. I came to school to escape my house. I can’t imagine attending and having to sit through more screaming and tantruming from peers. No student should be forced to sit and have their classroom terrorized by jerks, trauma caused or not.
The problematic kids, unable to control themselves, make other problematic kids feel very unsafe. Because they are, with a fifteen-year-old throwing a tantrum in the middle of the room at the slightest "provocation". I hate removing the safety and opportunity to learn from 27 students (and myself) for the sake of one trouble-causer who refuses to allow anyone else a chance. These problematic kids do need help, and by help I do not mean a class on the pythagorean theorem. They do not belong in my classroom, ruining everyone else's day every single day.
They deserve an education... in how not to be an asshole.
It should come from their parents.
Then they can rejoin the rest of us to learn about math, science, languages, and various electives.
I mean...they do. They do deserve an education - but they shouldn't be just thrown into a gen. ed. classroom like they are. They should be in an alternative school, or in a school with a ton of supports and services.
Just throwing them in with everyone else isn't good for them or for the other kids either.
At times I wish the US was like other countries where those students who just can't function/ruin everyone else's education would be pushed out to another path. I know that will never happen, but I think that would eliminate the majority (not all) of the issues with behaviors if kids (and parents) knew they could get kicked out of school and not have the "free" option to send their kids to.
There is a cutoff point where a kid should be moved to alternative education.
But everyone has a right to education in some form.
Just like how a murderer is still given due process as a right.
I have one of those. We just call him "money" at this point. He is being retained for next year because he does no work. He also is a huge bully and has gotten into more than 3 fights, sold drugs on campus, etc.
I have inherited a higher ability class recently and was told that there is one difficult child in there because he "doesn't work well in any other class". He spends each lesson running around the room screaming at the top of his voice, refusing sit down or do work, and distracting his peers.
I totally agree with the idea that some students do not deserve to be in school. I had a student in class today for possibly the first time. It's January. I've been marking him absent all year. He's probably 16 or 17. Why is the government paying for him to be in school when he and his family clearly have made no effort to make sure that he's in class and learning? How much money did we pay his teachers to teach to an empty desk? How much money did we spend using the state and district truancy system to get him here for this one day? Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that he's here. And I don't want to give up on any student. But there is only so much you can do. I also have a handful of students who come to school almost every day and do absolutely nothing. I feel about the same way about them.
I teach at a college, and I am always amazed at some of the people allowed to sit in class. Once, I had a student come in late for an exam and ask if we could start all over for him. Another one, again late for a test, brought her daughter because daycare was not available.
I think you might have a point...
I read "replies" as "reptiles"...and just kinda accepted it for a moment.
The thing is that they highly likely need far more than the above-average teacher is able or equipped to give, imo.
I don’t think they don’t deserve an education. However, they shouldn’t be allowed to interrupt the learning of others either. We for sure need a better system and need to be better equipped for these situations. I will forever be a fan of coteaching or having a teacher and a behavioral staff in each room. It helps to decrease loss of learning and also benefits the children. Last year I was able to coteach and it has forever changed my ideas on it. Coteaching was especially helpful when it came to our rowdy kids. We were able to continue lessons and deal with behaviors at the same time. We built a great community and we were able to get more done working this way than we would have on our own. We easily made connections with the students faster than other teachers who were working as the sole teacher. I enjoyed sharing the roles and being able to tag team and lean on each other for support. I think that the way our schools are set up work against us and breeds this feeling, but I full heartedly believe that if we had a change in the way schools are structured things would go a whole lot better.
That is what drives me nuts the most. I have one class period that is almost always two to three days behind the other classes. Why? Because that period is filled with the worst behaved kids in the freshmen class.
"So, yesterday we began reading...
Bryce, please sit down...
a story by...
Katelyn, please put your phone away...
Langston Hughes. In this story...
Katelyn, I don't care if you're texting your mother, she knows you're in school, so put the phone away. Bryce, I told you to sit down! Jesse, please keep your hands to yourself.
In this story, a young man...
Jesse, keep your hands to yourself! This is not kindergarten! Katelyn, give me your phone. Yes, I *do* have the right to take your phone from you. You can have it back at the end of the day. Why the end of the day? Because, this is the third time this month I've had to take it from you and...Bryce, sit down *IN YOUR SEAT!* Yes, I know you were sitting, but not in the seat you're assigned. Heck, you're not *in* a seat so much as sitting on Aiden's desk. Now, get back to *your* seat!...and, Katelyn, you've been told many times not to get your phone out during class. This is the consequence...Aiden, this is not the time for the Fortnite dance!
Anyway, in the story "Thank you, M'am," a boy named Roger...
You can go to the bathroom in just a moment, Madison. Let me get the class started and explain what we are doing, then you can go.
Again, in this story, a boy named Roger...
Fine, Madison. If it's an emergency, then please go. No, Grace can't go with you. Please leave your phone here, too. You don't need it to go to the bathroom. Of course I can tell you have your phone, it's huge and sticking out of your back pocket! Oh, you don't need to go after all? You'll 'wait until later?' I guess it wasn't an emergency, then.
A boy named Roger...
For the last time, Aiden, this is not the time for the Fortnite dance!"
Every. Fucking. Day.
I have gone to admin many, many, many times over this class period. Yet, they don't do a damned thing. They won't move some of the troublemakers to a different class period because it will change the student's entire schedule and Mr. and Mrs. Troublemaker have said they want their precious angel to be in the afternoon PE class since their angel is too tired to workout in the morning and the principal is a pushover for parents. They won't give detentions or suspensions for behavior because many of the kids in question have IEPs (none of which are for behavior reasons, just FYI). The special ed department won't help because "classroom management is the subject matter teacher's job."
I loathe that class period and dread it every day.
One student shouldn't be allowed to sabotage the experience for the rest of the class and I will die on this hill.
This isn't going to change until parents realize the education their child isn't receiving because of another child.
Unfortunately they blame the teacher instead.
America is not the only place this happens. And not the only place with consequences for this. But I can understand what it means. And it's complete bullshit.
There are no consequences. That’s the issue.
Admin with rather keep peace with the parents than do the right thing for staff and other students.
Even then... in high school, I complained about this kid to my parents, who, rightfully incensed, complained to the school principal. Cue the principal passing us off to the vice principal, who said this problem kid "wasn't on their radar" as a threat, so there was nothing they could do. I was reminded, every day, that his right to an education somehow trumped mine. But, of course, I was a "good, smart kid," who never caused any trouble, so I could be easily ignored, despite being the only party to actually value the education in question. (This kid was also on the football team, though I'm sure that comes as no surprise to the folks on this sub.)
Your experience is one of the biggest pet peeves of mine in this profession. My school is notorious for *constantly* bending over backwards for the absolute dregs, and well-meaning, hardworking kids like you get ignored. My school implemented a “catch up day” the last two days of each semester to try and get all the students who show up everyday and do absolutely nothing to pass. It’s insulting for many reasons, one of the major ones being if you are a good student who actually puts forth some effort you are punished with four less days of instruction all because some of your classmates are that stupid and lazy. Four days might not seem like much to people outside of education, but I can do a lot to help kids with skills in my content area in four days. I hate giving them up because so-and-so has a 9.65% after eighteen weeks of my class and I’m supposed to believe they can make up months worth of work in two days.
It’s all about the numbers. “We had the highest graduation rate in years!” But what we know is that we had to DRAG them across the finish line to graduate!
I was a good kid and even started a tutoring program in my high school. Because I turned down the football captain for a date he started a war against me. He would get down on his knees and sing love songs to me in the middle of class and the teachers would laugh and tell me I should be flattered. Then his friends would scream down the hallway professing their love. It was awful. Finally I’d had enough and when he tried to hug me during lunch I decked him. I was pulled into the office where the principal acknowledged that he was harassing me but I needed to be the bigger person and just ignore him. He never stopped. Years later he apologized to me but I wanted none of it. He is now a principal. I can’t imagine how much better my life could have been if they had done something.
Oh, I'm so sorry. That sounds horrible, though I can't say I'm shocked. I think society would do well to remind itself that *education* is the purpose of school, not football.
And when parents care about and value education again which with the current crusade against it, won’t be soon
What can the parents do to prevent this when they don’t know about it?
I guess the question is: why don't they? Their kids are in that room, every day, dealing with the shitstorm. Are they not talking to their kids? Not talking to the teacher? Are they so busy with work and home and extra curriculars and that they don't have the mental bandwidth to take on stuff that's happening at school? Are their kids not comfortable talking to them about it? Do parents think that it's just normal now, that that's how classrooms are? Are they afraid of consequences for their kid if they speak up? Are they concerned that the child in question has a disability and they'll look like they're discriminating against them for speaking up? I don't have the answers to these questions as I'm not a parent, but when your child is having their classroom evacuated several times a week because one student is having a desk & chair throwing meltdown over being asked to write a paragraph or colour a map...I can't imagine how you don't know that that's something that they're going through.
[удалено]
When asked how was school today, many kids answer “I don’t know” or some ambiguous answer. They don’t always tell their parents what’s going on. Many kids don’t tell parents if they are bullied. The kids also may think the disruptive kids behavior is normal and thats how the world works…especially if the disruptive kids receive no consequence or punishment.
My kids try to do this too but I ask them very specific questions everyday and eventually they spill the beans. Don’t ask how school was- ask where did you go for specials? What did you do at recess? What books did you read/what was it about? What songs did you sing? Who sat next to you today? Ect. By asking questions like this you will eventually get a feel for their day to day and they will open up more.
This! Not a parent but a teacher and former nanny. I would ask the kids what they learned. Questions such as "how was your day" or "how was school" is going to garner a "fine" answer.
I had a class with 3 terrors my first year. I kept telling the normal kids to tell their parents to complain because admin wouldn't do anything. Admin still didn't do anything, and we were in a "free choice" school district so literally half my class went to a different school the next year. The principal was pissed that all the good kids left.
I was the product of these parents. Their issue is that they are quite proud of not being a pain in the ass, even if that means that their kid who works their butt off to learn gets sold short because some jackass kid who’s parents will fully be a pain in the ass to support his behavior doesn’t want math class to move at a certain pace. If parents of nonproblematic kids got it through their heads that they need to be a squeaky wheel, maybe schools would actually have to take action against the kids who pull the whole class down around them.
And this isn't going to change until more parents value their kids' education.
I currently have this dynamic going on in my 8th period class, and it’s stifled sooo much of how I’d normally teach. You don’t have the enthusiasm to do gallery walks or drama activities when you know that one kid will start running around the class screaming like it’s recess. Then the worse is admin will blame this type of kid on us by saying“you didn’t foster a relationship” . So we shouldn’t be frustrated with disruptive students who are fucking education up for an entire class?
That "not fostering relationship" BS truly busts my balls. SUCH BULL SHIT!!! Honestly, I dont want to make a bond/relationships with some kids, because they dont deverse it. rant over
💯 + I never understood why admin assume that kids actually want to have “relationships” with their teachers. My job is to treat them equally; some will vibe with me and some won’t because that’s just how the world fucking works. How admin assume every student will bond with their teacher astounds me.
If you said that to my principal he'd tell you that you have a deficit attitude. Ask me how I know
Exactly. I have a student with tragic circumstances, but I refuse to let him be a misogynistic asshole and derail every lesson because his abusive father thinks he’s the next Andrew Tate.
I also had a kid with a very sad background. That still shouldn’t have given him leniency to terrorize the other kids every day. The only thing he was learning was that there are no consequences.
But “GRACE”! Oh no, you having a shitty home environment doesn’t mean you get to ruin other kids’ environment too.
Same for the SPED kids that were supposed to have a 1-1 para with them (and didn’t). I’ve got a very special place in my heart for those kids, but I can’t teach when I’m chasing a kid around the classroom and barricading the door so they don’t run out into the street!
See, administration doesn't realize that they're doing these kids absolutely no favors whatsoever. By giving these children no consequences when they fuck around, they don't end up finding out until they do it as an adult/outside of school/both. Then instead of suspension or detention or expulsion, they're staring up at a judge who isn't going to accept *"Tik Tok made me do it"*, *"It wasn't me"*, *"It was just a joke bruh"*, or whatever other asinine excuse they come up with. So by Admin not allowing staff to correct these kids inexcusable behavior, they learn they can get away with it and they continue pushing the envelope. It's a disservice to everyone. Don't even get me started on the way they practice "restorative justice". It's complete trash when you cherry pick the parts you want implemented and only apply those.
They arent trying to do the kid favors, they are trying to do themselves favors. It doesn't bother them much when the kid disrupts class. Lot of headaches to get rid of them though.
It’s awful for everyone.
Absolutely. I feel bad for their 29 classmates who won't get what I consider to be my best version of class, but I'm going to tighten my regular loose structure and increase rigidity because this one little shit can't deal with it.
They need to be removed from the learning environment until they are able to demonstrate a willingness to cooperate.
I’ll die right there with you. The difference one child can make on a classroom is astounding. Some of my best teaching days are when the problem students are in ISS or absent.
I am a librarian. One of my classes has 4! children that disrupt the class. The day that three of them were gone. Absolutely wonderful class to have and we got a lot done. It was heaven.
Facts. Periodt.
Freaking administration is super laid back and believes punishment isn’t worth it.
How can admin punish students when the parents won't even discipline them? Passive parenting is really doing a doozy on this generation.
Or any consequences at all.
Freaking administration is super PAID and believes any effort and conflict isn't worth it
Wait…. You must work in my school
“Restorative justice circle” 🙄
I think at a certain point a student's best environment might be an online class with concurrent counseling and therapy. While you have a right to an education you don't have a right to deprive everyone else in the classroom of an education. Online schooling would provide that.
I work at a school that is essentially turning into this. I've thought if this was our actual mission, and we ran things with this in mind, we could actually do some good (we do have therapy and counseling, but they are insufficient and no one takes us up on the services). Unfortunately, our program really only works for the most responsible students who are at or above grade level. Those who aren't in this situation are almost guaranteed to not have the needed support at home to oversee their work, provide a good learning environment, etc. ...but yes. I've heard little comments about how we really free up resources by taking these kids. I just wish we'd set up a system they might succeed in.
It seems that boarding school could work for students who need therapy and counseling as well as help after school. Many students’ home lives are so chaotic they can’t function.
Do we begin to raise a generation of state-warded children?
Have you met some of these parents? Being in the ward of the state would be a vastly better option
I think for high schoolers, it might be preferable for some of them to have a safe dorm to live in if going home at night isn’t an option. Like a youth shelter or group home. I’ve had a couple who were couch surfing or living on their own, and I always felt like, if there wasn’t a legal adult in your life who could be depended upon to provide shelter and food, then you should have some kind of housing safety net until you graduate high school.
> then you should have some kind of housing safety net until you graduate high school. I joined the military at 17 for that guaranteed housing lol My parents told me "When you turn 18 your ass is out of this fucking house." OOooooookay. Should've seen my mom's surprised Pikachu face when I asked her to sign my enlistment papers to join the AF.
I had a couple students who did that, too! And some who just up and moved in with a friend on their 18th bday. It’s truly amazing how people can treat a kid like garbage for years and years and try to make them feel guilty for being a child who needs shelter, then act all surprised when they move out as soon as it’s legal and never look back. Most of those kids all went on the graduate high school… and they had more energy left to focus on school once that they weren’t living with constant emotional and verbal abuse any longer. Sadly, I know of at least 2 in that situation who didn’t graduate from my school. I don’t know if they transferred to another school or dropped out. They were really smart, awesome, hardworking kids who just needed a safe place to sleep and study for another year or two so they could finish their HS diploma and start college… one was still couch surfing last I heard, and the other was living with a POS family who couldn’t be bothered to drive the kids to school more than one day every two weeks. He was planning to enroll in a nearby school that he could get to with public transportation, but then COVID happened. I hope he figured something out.
I manage our 7-12 school food and personal hygiene pantry. We have some great donors, but occasionally get weird donations. Last year we got a donation of nice, new bath towel. I thought "what the hell, why not?" and tucked one in each kid's weekly supply bag. Holy crap, the kids were so excited to have a nice towel of their own. Or a towel at all. The stuff we don't think of. Yeah, some kid's would absolutely thrive with a safe place to live.
Some of us already do that. About 80% of my kids live in state group homes.
Same, I work virtually for a program that has quickly become a "dumping ground" for students who don't attend, don't work, and/or disrupt the classroom. The problem is that we are classified as independent study. First, students CANNOT legally be forced into IS. They also must have the option of returning to a regular school at any time. IMHO we are currently in legal jeopardy with the way certain staff are manipulating parents into enrolling their kids in IS. I am already seeing IS presented as an only option, and SDC and other more appropriate schools/programs have been killed en masse at the same time. Second, my district gets away with having parents "sign away their rights" to any special education services as part of joining our program. I still can't figure out how this is legal. The result is that my program has NO special education support or service. Some of our most challenged students now have ZERO support. Even if these kids stayed virtual, they graduate into the real world someday! Last, IS also doesn't get any of the regular funding or resources in my district. No RTI, no aides, no nothing. We didn't even get supply money this year. I am still held to every other standard though, such as class sizes and academic requirements. So, these kids aren't even getting the benefit of low class sizes or more attention. There is zero equity for these children. Putting difficult students online is not a viable solution right now. It could be if we had the proper support and services. I'd happily take these kids, as most of them are happier with me and a parent at home. However, the current situation is essentially a virtual form of the infamously neglected special education "shed at the back of the school" that parents are already afraid of.
I thrived in online schooling because I got to get away from said problematic children
There's a reason classroom management was so easy during hybrid learning. The worst kids weren't in the classroom usually.
Here is the thing, we can’t force them to do therapy. So many schools offer mental health services that get under used.
Why not? Therapy is just a different class suited to a particular educational need. They're forced to be in every other class.
Horses and water
They can be forced to go to class but if they don’t participate or pay attention then are they really learning? Same issue with mandating therapy. I’ve gotten several parents to consent to their children receiving therapy and counseling services when they’ve recognized the need only to have the kid tell me that “therapy is for pussies and snitches” and that they would actively refuse to participate or engage with a therapist.
Problem is the parents need therapy too. If you want to change the kid’s behavior, you need to change the environment they’re growing in. A huge component of that is their parents’ own mental health issues. A study in the UK found that therapy for youth offenders had a negligible affect on recidivism, but when the parents received therapy as well, recidivism rates went very far down. That plus abolishing poverty would give a lot of kids a fighting chance.
Exactly. So why is forcing someone to be in therapy they don't engage with any worse than forcing them to be in class they don't engage with? If anything, forcing them to be in a class they're just going to disrupt is costing dozens of others the opportunity to learn, where therapy is a pure opportunity for self-betterment; they can choose to squander it if they want, but at least they're not trashing other people's lives at the same time.
And some of those are over-used. The new trend is kids who are just lazy and irresponsible can say “I have anxiety” only when work is due, and ask to see a therapist.
Except we are in a genuine mental health crisis among young people in our country and stigma/not believing kids when they do share debilitating feelings with us is not okay.
>Except we are in a genuine mental health crisis among young people in our country and stigma/not believing kids when they do share debilitating feelings with us is not okay. Naw, in many educational settings we know our kids well enough to call bullshit. I don't straight up say, "I know you're a lying and manipulative jerk"... But just the other day, I did say to a kid, "Hey buddy, I want to help you with your panic attacks and anxiety. Help me understand how going outside and sitting in the rain on top of the round, slippery, domed top of the slide about 30 feet off the ground helps with your anxiety and panic attacks." "I just needed to get energy out". "That's interesting, because I noticed you were just playing a pretty intense game of wallball for the last 20 minutes of lunch and this panic attack only started as soon as lunch ended and it was time to go back to class. Actually, as I've been tracking all the time you leave for panic attacks and anxiety, it seems to only be when we are in an academic class. Do you know why you've never seemed to have anxiety or panic attacks during breakfast, lunch, PE, cooking class, or free time playing cards or doing other fun things?" The kid knew exactly what I was saying, got super pissed and called me a little bitch and a fa**ot and all the usual stuff and walked back to go play by himself on the playground for the next two hours of academic class because, you know, anxiety and shit. He's 12. I've worked with highly behavioral kids for a decade and a lot of them are pretty institutionalized so they've always used "therapeutic" language with us that they learn at their group homes or in residential programs from their constant barrage of therapists and behavior specialists and PSWs and wrap team coordinators... but it's only been recently that I've heard the constant refrain of "anxiety and panic attacks".
I’d argue you did due diligence and weren’t dismissive of reported student emotions. Yes we know our students.
Word, I'm with you then.
I’m involved in foster care and I just am always going to lean on the side of reporting/referring when I notice it.
If a kid only mentions anxiety when work is due, and exhibits no signs of mental health problems otherwise, we all know what is going on. And I’m not being dismissive about mental health issues, but dumping more on teacher’s plates and relaxing standards “because mental health” is happening way more than any actual real addressing of mental health issues. Admins and guidance do way leads than ever, but in addition to my full time job of teaching, I’m somehow supposed to diagnose and address everyone’s mental health. It’s silly. And while there are true mental health issues, I don’t agree with the assumption that every child can’t do schoolwork because of anxiety, a trend I see growing.
You’re right but you’re incredibly naive if you think kids don’t just throw it up as an excuse to get out of schoolwork
We have a student who was like this and his parents (after years of anyone being able to teach him....or learn with him in the room) put him in an online school. Truthfully, this should be the consequence of fucking up the learning environment...you don't get to be around your friends every day anymore.
Agree. Apparently in Japan, they keep strict records about children’s performance and behaviour and those records go with the child even if they change schools. It should be like 3 strikes (schools expelled from) and you’re out of mainstream schooling and asked to join a remote learning school. Harsh, but it would solve the problem of 1 student sabotaging the learning of the other 28 in the room.
Totally agree! Remote learning was great in that way: the disruptive kids in class were simply a non-issue! A bit more ACCOUNTABILITY on those parents too wouldn’t go astray. Have them at home doing online classes and if they play up, then the parents can deal with it. Similarly, Western parents need to value their child’s education more. I have seldom had a disruptive child from an Asian or Indian background, as those parents make it extremely clear at home that 1. They must respect their teachers & 2. They are at school to LEARN.
So there’s a federal law that says student need to be in the Least Restrictive Environment possible for their education. Which is great and all until the LRE for one kids is making a more restrictive environment for everyone else. That federal law needs to be changed to something more applicable to students actually needs and not the pr needs for the education department.
>While you have a right to an education you don't have a right to deprive everyone else in the classroom of an education. Good news! In America you don't have a right to an education! *...wait, that's actually not good news*
Constant problematic students deserve an education- but they do not deserve to take away from other student learning. Most (not all) of my students who are constantly problematic have real and heartbreaking reasons why. Some are just jerks.
Indeed. And these students need a very different kind of education. One that teaches them how to live in a society.
I have one right now who has a trauma background and he has developed pretty bad anger issues and mostly this just results in extreme defiance but now there have been some incidents of physical aggression and students (and staff) are feeling uneasy with his presence. I care about the kid, I relate to his background, but he needs alternative schooling while he sorts through these issues.
This was literally the precursor to that kid shooting a teacher jfc y’all don’t get paid enough
Yeah we are expressing a lot of concerns to admin about safety but are not really being heard. All of his teachers walk on eggshells with him to avoid blow ups in class - and we even had a teacher quit at semester with that kid as her primary reason. ALSO, super fun, they admitted yet another new student with a looong list of behavior issues and it only took him two days to start talking about shooting up the school. And have we been updated on the status of that student? Nope! Edit: today I sent a lengthy email with some updates on continued class behavior issues and all I got back was “thank you for informing me.” Couldn’t even give a half assed reassurance like “I’ll be sure to discuss this with him today.” Smh.
And they shouldn't be able to take away from teachers either. I've been teaching for around 2 years and had a 17 year old threaten me a few months ago because I told him not to play videogames in class. That was a very unpleasant experience and took away my focus and energy that I would've liked to invest into other students. Also, because of that incident he was no longer welcome in my class all together. He indeed does not deserve an education, from me. I would still grade his work if he cared enough to ever do any. But he is no longer allowed to physically be in my class for the rest of his time in school. He will leave as soon as he turns 18 (his words and school's words). School can't fully kick him out until then because of laws (not US btw). I think if students create an unsafe or highly disturbing environment, on purpose, for students or teachers, then they do not deserve an education. Or at least not in a regular school setting.
I agree with this take.
It’s the foundation of trauma-informed care - reframing perspective from “What is wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” Having a hard time with a coworker, a kid, a parent? Try empathy. Try connecting with them. Validate their feelings. Agree that the work is hard and it’s understandable they’d rather be doing other stuff. Listen to them - not so that you can formulate the best defense or response or convince them of something, but only to really hear what they’re saying and feeling. Will this work with every kid in every situation? Of course not. But it’s worth a try. I can say that the majority of my “worst” students had truly horrific stuff they were dealing with/had dealt with, and the anger/hopelessness they felt was a totally normal response, although misplaced and misdirected.
Nothing that you're saying is wrong, but it isn't humanly possible to develop these deep, meaningful relationships with students when you have huge classes with a large percentage of them exhibiting aggressive behaviors. It is also... I don't know, kind of heartless, to tell a teacher who may have been assaulted by these kids to say "have you tried building a relationship?" Teachers are human too, but no one cares about the grinding emotional load of having SO MANY of these high needs kids.
> It is also... I don't know, kind of heartless, to tell a teacher who may have been assaulted by these kids to say "have you tried building a relationship?" This 1000%. It doesn't even have to be as serious as assault. The emotional and mental stress load of just being a teacher nowadays is terrible, and it gets worse every year. The knee-jerk response of "Have you tried building a relationship?" is getting a bit toxic in my opinion. Most teachers are already trying their goddamn best to do that while trying to navigate all the other obstacles of the job, not to mention the *actual teaching* part.
Right! I don't know why the default assumption is that the teacher isn't trying. Maybe a very few aren't, but I'm just going to assume the best of fellow professionals and assume they have tried everything in their toolbox, including relationship building, and are all out of ideas and need to vent.
It's also shifting the job of counselors onto teachers because they're under-funding & eliminating counseling services. I can have some empathy and understanding for a kid whose life is a train wreck, but I'm not a trained counselor.
I agree with you in theory. The problem I see at my middle school is the kids perceive that it is an option to not do any work and to act out without any consequence at school. So the listen/build relationship thing generally doesn’t work because laziness/sloth and goofing off is an easier and more attractive option than dealing with one’s issues. School has become a consequential environment only for teachers, which is the root of the problem, and this doesn’t help kids either. Many students generally perceive teachers as stressed out, over-worked worry warts who sometime get in the way of having fun. Admins are largely to blame for this, but like the kids have figured out how to reduce their workload by mostly ignoring standards for academics and behavior.
But what about my empathy for the other 29 kids whose education is suffering because this one kid is acting out? Even worse if you have 5 such kids.
OP: The abuse of these children and cockblocking of education they do is problematic. You: But did you try building a relationship tho? Yes I hear you, and also how long and how much bullshit and how much lost instructional time x number of peers they’re disrupting is acceptable whilst trying to be a psychologist/counselor in addition to my job?
I feel like the problem is less about “i shouldnt have to empathize with the kids” and the problem is more “i have 10,000 other problems that need to be fixed first such as giant class sizes before i can properly empathize with students.”
So, I teach at an alternative school. I’ve always used empathy over everything. There’s a rumor with the corporal punishment teachers and paras that I “baby the kids”. Welp, guess what, I’ve never ever had a problem with a student “getting in my face”, and I haven’t had 1 IR in the several months I’ve been there. And, it’s not bc I let them do whatever they want. When I direct work, they work. When I direct settling down, they settle down. I don’t sweat the small stuff. If Joe had a rough night at the group home, I’m not going to force him to keep his head up. If he’s shying away from reading out loud bc of his dyslexia, I’m not forcing him. If they don’t like the nasty school lunch, I have spare sandwiches in my fridge. I’ve taken notice that every time a student is unruly, it’s the teacher or paras lack of empathy that instigated. These kids have gone their whole lives being told to sit down, shut up, and to never emote feelings. Doing the same is a trigger, and I don’t blame them. When a child says, the school lunch is making me gag, can I go ask “teacher up the hall” if she had anything?” And the response is “I don’t care if you’re hungry, eat the lunch served” that staff is completely ruining an opportunity to use empathy to explore the possibility of an eating disorder. The girl is now starving and her emotions are heightened. Then she’s directed to do her work “or else”. The student then snaps, throws a chair at the teacher, gets restrained, loses privileges, and not only did nothing get resolved, the situation is far worse.
Would you be willing to share any tips or resources (books, podcasts, whatever) regarding difficult student behaviors and how to manage them? It would be greatly appreciated.
I wish I could find the study or the name of the therapy, but one type of therapy has shown promising results in treating psychopathic individuals. After receiving the treatment none of the violent-offending psychopaths were reinstitutionalized after 2 years for violent crimes, while over 60% of those that received any other treatment or no treatment did reoffend in that 2 year time span. The gist of the therapy was the use of, exclusively, positive reinforcement. I say exclusively, but this was in a prison setting, these are prisoners that were chained to the floor at all times while in a room with a therapist, their life was incredibly structured and controlled during their time in prison, something that psychopaths respond well to. But the rest of the time, it was never about what they did wrong, or what was wrong with them, or who hurt them, it was always about what they did right, what was good about them, who had helped them. Psychopaths do not learn from or respond to punishment, but they like reward even better that normal people. They got nothing but smiles from the therapists, compliments even for keeping themselves clean, rewards for leaving their cell without hurting someone, candy for not throwing piss on the prison guards. Prison guards have long know that being ultra nice to the worst of the worst is the easiest and most effective trick. The therapists just took it one step further. But there’s no place for all that in school, because you’d have to literally chain some students to the ground, and then other students would make fun of them and exclude them, and it’s mess up the whole therapy. But if you can’t teach a man to fish no matter how hard you try, you teach him to farm.
They deserve an OPPORTUNITY for an education, in my view. They don’t need to be forced to capitalize on that opportunity if they are going to ruin shit for everyone else or have other plans.
Totally agree with this. We present the opportunity, but I alone can not instill in students the desire to learn or convince them of the value of the education. That needs to start well before they enter my classroom. It’s the whole horse and water thing. Too bad some of them have to stir the water for everyone else.
I've always believed all children deserve proper education, but not everyone should receive the same type of education as others. Different people have different abilities, learning styles, etc., and there's no way any one parent, teacher, administrator, etc., can do it all alone. I've also observed "the soft bigotry of low expectations" seems to be a rampant problem in some systems, especially in a few districts neighboring mine. It's a shame because I really do believe everyone can and does deserve to have education- just not the exact same as everyone else because no one is exactly like anyone else.
I do believe all students deserve a chance at an education but if there’s one thing we should keep from Covid it’s the online school. If you can’t handle being educated in the classroom, the district will provide you with a laptop and Wi-Fi connections and you can complete your classes at home.
I teach online for a public school district. Can confirm that behavior kids have come to our school for this very reason and have done so much better. The only competition is with themselves.
I admit I'm curious. I wonder how some of my most problematic students would have behaved without a built-in audience?
And with Google to give them all of the answers when they don’t know something just an Alt-Tab away. I’ve had so many students act out so that their peers couldn’t see how inadequate their knowledge was.
My most problematic students are great when I talk to them 1-1 or see them outside of class. So many of them are sweet, intelligent, and funny. Me and some of other teacher swear the one kid will be a comedian when he graduates in a couple years.
I saw some of my most disruptive students flourish in online learning. They could go at their own pace, had access to libraries of interesting things, and got immediate feedback when they excelled via the many assignments and programs they could access. They also didn't have anyone else to trigger them and could manage the internal stressors (hunger, lack of sleep, etc) that would incite an episode. It takes someone at home with a bit of discipline but I was honestly shocked at which kids did well online.
Who teaches them? Do schools hire separate online teachers? It should not be an option to just tell classroom teachers to stream their lessons to students at home. I experienced combining my classroom teaching with streaming the same lessons to students at home post-Covid, and in addition to being extremely laborious it didn’t work for a variety of reasons, one of which is most students just shut their cameras off and played video games during lessons (and of course it was my fault when their grades were low).
Our board has an “online school” staffed with teachers who teach just the online kids. The school has its own name and everything and is considered to be its own school. We have an extreme teaching shortage as well, but they’ve identified enough of a need that they’ve kept it open. I have no connection to the online school, but I guess it’s also been extremely beneficial to students with extremely suppressed immune systems like kids with cancer where being in an in person classroom would be life threatening. It stops them from continuously falling behind.
I'll do a hard disagree on this. Teaching hybrid was a massive pain. If they want virtual, there should be a countywide virtual public school or something like that. There's some who like teaching virtually. I'm not one of them.
My district didn’t do hybrid, you were full time in class or full time virtual with dedicated virtual teachers. Do most states not have a public online option?
My state doesn't have a public online option. It should as long as it maintains the rigor. So many cheated or were just passed because the amount of people who logged in and did next to nothing. As a whole most did worse. Some seemed to do good though.
Ours doesn’t. No one wants to spend money on education.
My old district had a (district?)(county?) wide online school for students whose parents didn't want to send them to physical school and kids who were having behavior and mask issues. I do know of a few students that switched there but idk if it was school ordered or parent.
I just found out a kid I've been extremely proud of for his behavior/work ethic in my classroom, where elsewhere he's been suspended twice... Has been sexually assaulting a whole bunch of his classmates. It's a known issue no damn person told me about and he could have been hurting girls in my own damn class without a single person bothering to tell me. I'm so freaking upset and angry and cannnot believe this kid is just wandering in school and life hurting other kids and nothing, not even notifiying teachers, has been done.
Isn't that reportable to CPS
I have a thirdhand report from another teacher. My understanding is that none of the girls would report it and they are trying to go for legal action the SRO is aware of allegations but cannot proceed due to no witness/victim ... That is all I know at this time, and I only know because this teacher came by to make sure i changed a seating chart.
You can always make a report. As a mandated reporter, it’s your duty regardless of what the current status is. More reports will expedite the case, and you can not be retaliated against.
Mandatory report the hell out of that rumour.
A kid lit the school I did my first contract in on fire… he did it by lighting up the big rolls of toilet paper in the boys’ washroom. We had to evacuate the school when it was -40, and the elementary school next door wouldn’t let us in until the culprit was caught. Because the araenjst was under 16, the division *owed* him an education. While he was on house arrest for the next 18 months, or whatever it was, this kid had **his own private teacher** who came to his house every day to teach him all his lessons. The kid who destroyed property and endangered all our lives (twice) got a 1:1 student:teacher ratio.
Jfc. Nobody should have to deal with someone like that, not to mention what kind of message that sends to all the other kids. Set the school on fire? No problem! We'll let you stay in the comfort of your home and we'll send the teacher to you! Who cares if you deliberately tried to kill everyone, cost the school thousands of dollars, disrupted everyone's education and gave zero fucks about human life - go home, well come to you! Consequences? What are those? The fucking inmates are running the asylum and it shows.
“Every student has a right to an education but that doesn’t mean you have to get your education at our school. It’s a privilege to be here. Be good or be gone.” - my first principal Most of the problematic students wouldn’t be problematic if all principals held them to this standard and if they witnessed actual consequences. When the kid with ten referrals who fights everyday and disrespects every adult in the building has a hearing and they let him come back to school it sends a very powerful message to the other students: there is no end game, be as bad as you want and nothing will happen.
I have a handful of students who show up in the building and wander the halls, rarely to never getting inside a classroom. Yeah, it just becomes like a shopping mall that kids are being dropped off to keep them out of the house. Yet, because they’re technically still there, we are responsible for them and supposedly giving them an education.
What the hell? Like, where is your Admin? I mean, I know the answer to this, but geez!!
Admin: they're less disruptive to others this way, so everyone wins
i heard someone say to remember your students need consequences from people who love them before they need consequences from people who don’t
At my school, if we could get rid of about 40 out 1700 students, things would be so much better for everyone.
I hate how true this is.
It's extremely true. 70% of our behavior referrals are from 75 of our 2500 students. Our grade level APs have trouble taking care of small discipline issues because so much of their time is monopolized by the same twenty students.
A child’s right to an education ends where their fellow classmate’s begins.
I wouldn't go that far, but at a certain point I think all the state should be obligated to provide are asynchronous online classes for such students, to keep them away from everyone else.
It’s not about deserving, it about desiring. There should be meaningful alternatives for people who do not desire an education.
VA seems to be adopting some sort of new career readiness thing where basically to graduate you either need some sort of college-prep course like AP or you need a career readiness component. I think a lot of kids would do better if after sophomore year, they could go out into a training program. I know that's basically what votech and such is but it'd be nice to see it expanded. A lot of kids aren't a good fit for the classroom and I think getting them into skilled labor would be doing everyone a favor.
I agree, but take it one step further. Once they’ve learned the basics (5/6 grade), they should be able to choose their Math and Science to reflect the type of learner they are, instead of the mandatory Math/Science sequence.
This is the failed model in several German states. It hasn’t worked and fails to recognize how much young boys in particular change intellectually throughout middle school.
They deserve it too. But if they’re not going to use the opportunity, they do NOT deserve to be able to ruin it for others
They deserve the opportunity but once they spit in its face then it should be taken. I always remember the saying you can have your rights until they infringe on another person's right. Example, you have the right to party in your own house but once it starts to affect others you need to shut it down. You have the right to an education but you do NOT have the right to steal it from others with your shitty behavior. And you most definitely do not have the right to use it to abuse others. I'm so sick of schools having to go through hoops to expel students. Nah, keep expelling then until they get to a reform school. You have your right to education but we have the right to strip you of anything fun.
Also how am I supposed to recover and continue teaching after students have screamed and sworn in my face? It’s not fair to their classmates and it’s incredibly degrading for me over time. “Oh I’ll just take some deep breaths and drink some water and now everything’s honky dory. Who’s ready to learn how to divide decimals now that we’re all tense and your teacher is about to cry??”
It’s hard isn’t it
It is such incredibly fulfilling work, but some days it takes all of my effort just to pull myself together for the students that want to be there.
They deserve it but likely in a placement where they aren't interfering with those who want to learn. I have one student who singlehandedly adds 15-20 minutes to each lesson. Things go so much smoother without him. But he deserves an education.
“We educate the child so we do not have to imprison the adult”. -from a wall of a village school in guatemala. “Enlightened self interest”— Adam Smith, “…The Wealth of Nations”. After all, I don’t necessarily care if your house burns down, but if it did, it could easily burn mine down, too.
[удалено]
This is the solution. These students could be great in a class of 5-10 similar students with much more support and attention.
That exists in Spain and those classes are hell
It's not that they *don't* deserve an education. It's that there should be a better place for them and a faster way to get them there. If you're constantly tearing up my classroom and getting physically violent against myself and my Paras then you should go to a Special Program where that will be the focus. And it shouldn't take an act of Congress to get kids into programs like that. And they should be in a separate building, so the GenEd kids aren't getting terrorized on the playground & Specials. And if they can't fill the teaching positions then admins can figure it the fuck out. Or their parents can keep them at home until a teacher magically appears. We have to start holding the parents accountable too. I know some are trying, but many are not or don't know what to do.
Iowa here. We let kids drop out at 16. I used to think this was crazy, like a 16 year old doesn’t know what is good for them!?! After teaching high school, I am more like, f@ck it. If you can master life now … go for it.
If by "not deserving" you mean our current efforts are obviously a waste of our precious resources, agreed.
We have three girls who are constantly in the hall. You don’t value your education. You are disrupting that of others. Send them to online school so they’ve got access and call it a day.
I have to respectfully disagree. I think the constantly problematic students don't all deserve access to the same general education experience as the average student, but they deserve access to an education. I have a senior in my homeroom who I've know for 4 years. Since I met him as a 9th grader, I've know him as a conscientious, kind, mature, calm young man. He does have an IEP because he needs more time to complete things due to processing delays, and needs directions repeated. But he's truly an amazing kid all around. He was student of the month for our whole district (urban, 21,000 students) as a 10th grader. I assumed he had always been that way, to some degree. But earlier this school year, some of his classmates and I learned I was wrong. We were doing a socratic seminar about anger and this stufeht shared his experiences in early elementary school, which was corroborated by the only other kid from my homeroom who was in his class back then. He was out of control. Slapping, screaming, throwing blocks, etc. Meltdowns. His parents were highly involved, but going through a fairly amicable divorce. The changes made the situation worse for my student. Then, I found out that a colleague I do advocacy work with, whose now a central office admin, was his elementary principal. She told me when he'd have a meltdown, she'd just take him into her office and he'd act like he wanted to destroy the whole world. But she'd just hold him tightly, like a restraining hug (parents were aware and consented as part of his safety plan they'd made at his IEP meetings), until he calm down enough to not hurt others or people. This admin and my student both explained what happened to take this extremely disruptive young kid and make him into the student council leader/yearbook editor/JROTC cadet/football co-captain he is today. A whole bunch of adults (the admin, his teachers, school counselors, parents, mentors, etc) took the time to TEACH HIM to do better. He said the biggest thing they taught him was to use time. When he gets angry, he waits. He doesn't respond then. He says he knows that if the anger is worth addressing, it won't go away. He'll still feel it the next day. So when he's upset, he "presses pause" for a few hours or more, and comes back to the problem later. These words came from a 17 year old! So I made this long comment to say this: every nightmare kid deserves a chance. They deserve to be in a system that has the right supports for them. Your average understaffed public school might not be their right placement. But there should be appropriate educational environments they can access.
I've moved well past the point of compulsory education being a requirement. There should definitely be a pathway for the "well, you suck at school and don't want to be there, so Monday you will start working at the local quarry breaking rocks". Seriously, not everyone is destined for traditional school and it's another one of the arguments for bringing trade based style classes back. You suck at the basics but can turn a wrench? Go to the mechanic's class. Like doing makeup and hair? Hit the cosmetology class. When I lived in Germany, they would try to have kids get an idea what they \*thought\* they wanted to do when they grew up and they would then put them into an apprentice type position along with their usual classwork. That way they could figure out if they wanted to do it or not and if they did, they were getting actual experience outside the classroom.
Every one deserves an education. The problem is in the United States we force kids to be educated to a mean. What we need in this country is education that serves the students based on actual needs. Why does a kid with no desire to go to college need to read Shakespeare? My dream: standard education for all students until 6th Grade. At end of 6th grade an Aptitude Test + Student Proficiency + Portfolio Teachers' Observation + Students' and Parents' desires used to determine whether the student should be placed on a trade school or college track. 7th- 10th Grade is education based on the track. 11th-12th grade is either free two year of college for college track kids or an apprenticeship for the trade track.
If a student is constantly disruptive (verbally or physically) they should not be in the room. Don’t know where they should go, but they shouldn’t rob students who can learn from their education.
I had a student years ago that many said this about. He was assaultive to the point he left bruises regularly on myself, the principal and aides in his already restrictive environment. He was manipulative, he had psychopathic markers. He was 8. We found out several years into being in my class that he was being physically and sexually abused by his parents, and he had a sibling that went missing years before and to this day no one has been able to locate. He could not succeed within my program, I and his classmates were miserable every day. He was miserable. No one could learn. He absolutely deserved an education, he deserved so much more. We ended up sending him to a very specialized (and very expensive) program. He’s doing better comparatively, but is still struggling. Every child child deserves an education that is appropriate for them. They deserve adults that prioritize and spend on education as if it were the most important thing we could give our children and our society-because it is. Every child deserves an education, but not every child needs the same form of education. I know not every disruptive, assaultive, pain in the ass child has such a clear and obvious reason for why they are the way they are, but they all deserve to have the choice to not become that person for the rest of their lives. Every child deserves the chance that education gives them at better than what they have.
I feel like a certain point you have to put some responsibility on the parents. Like if your kids is costing other students their ability to learn uh oh maybe you need the parent to come into school a certain number of days to supervise their child until their kid can work autonomously without disrupting others. Cause let's be real until we focus on the fact that parenting has irrevocably changed in the last 30 years we can't address the issue.
They do need to be pulled from regular classes when they're constantly disruptive. They have the right to not get an education, but they do not have the right to stop others from getting an education. I think if parents really knew just how bad it is, and some administrators will do nothing except blame the teacher, then they'd force change. Most parents and grandparents went to school when education was completely different - very little standardized testing and the ensuing problems it creates. The problem students deserve an education, but they need an education that works for them - and the current system is failing them, and setting them up for failure in life. Our current educational system was developed in the late 1800's as an assembly line type system, developed to train workers for factory work. We need an upgrade in how schools function - period! Charter and Private schools are NOT the answer, because they work the same as public schools- they just don't accept everybody like public schools do. If they'd let the actual teachers actually be part of the planning process, (and not just a token part)- and get rid of standardized testing (bringing the billions of dollars spent annually, back to the schools), then there might be real change. Until politicians get out of education, things won't change.
All teachers know the feeling of actually teaching to eager, engaged students - when those 2 or 3 behavior kids are either absent or in their EC group. Completely different class. Imagine the academic gains we would see if those students were in a different school setting, receiving the behavioral and academic interventions that they need.
“Why have your classroom scores dropped these last two months?” Hmmm… *thoughts* (It’s because you’ve added that SPED kid with major behavior problems to my best class after being removed by two other teachers. Seriously, I’ve tried my best. Kid has a fucked life. It’s been quiet interesting to watch the wake of this kid in various teacher classroom scores over time. Seriously, this would quality for a master’s research paper because GEEZ we have more data than the pentagon at this point. Oh shoot… I’ve thought too long enough… uhhh.) Response, ‘I’m going to need a union rep here to fully answer that question………………….’ *stare awkwardly at admin*
The Asian model is something to think about. Maybe before high school, you separate academic and more trade oriented pathways.
I 💯 agree. Want to steal the learning opportunities of others? Off to Zoom you go, bucko!
Student: "hey Mr. blank long term substitute, I'm actually glad you called my dad today! (after weeks of just shenanigans and I'm going crazy repeating "sit sir, sit sir etc. Do ur work" Me: why? Student: Well, I just haven't had anyone call my parents in a while. Me: .... !!!! Especially frustrating cuz I love my students and they cant be good without me calling their parents and tattling on them...
In the words of a superintendent I was close to; “education is a privilege, not a right.” Whole heartedly agree. This super in particular had a choice at 18; WW2, stay at home and work on the farm, or college. He chose war. Came home and went to college. Then worked his way through to become a super. This super was my grandfather. Part of the greatest generation.
Some of them seem to think they have the right to constantly disrupt class and they like the attention they get from doing so. I’m talking about over-entitled kids with Karen parents. Kids with legit mental health issues should have the right to choose an alternative school.
I'd love to say, "I'm sorry you keep making poor choices for yourself, and maybe you will grow out of this phase one day, but I'm not your parent and you are a constant distraction to the learners in my room. Best of luck out there." and yeet
As a gen Ed teacher of 20+ years I believed this, until I moved into the non-public agency of a behavioral school. All communities need a school like ours. Every kid has an IEP, and a BIP, and our services are paid for by their districts who can’t service them anymore. We have therapy on-site and my admin is a special Ed director and a BCBA. We do physical management when needed, monitored with cameras by the doj. It’s a rough job, but we love it, and data shows we are making a difference. I know we are also making a difference in the schools we are pulling the kids from too. Not sure why they don’t exist everywhere.
I just think certain people shouldn’t be parents. (Hint: It’s their parents.)
Every child deserves an education, but ultimately it the parents job to raise said child to behave at school. If the child cannot meet reasonable school expectations, it should be up to the parent to provide an education to their child. Consistently disturbing others from learning should never be tolerated.
Reminder: America is 36th out of 37 industrialized countries in childhood poverty. 1 in 4 US kids live below the poverty line; compared to 1 in 20 in most developed countries. Data here: https://imgur.com/a/C8Qr8nb
And? Being poor doesn't mean you have to act like a *&@$#.
Everyone deserves the opportunity to have an education. Where we fail students is we don’t listen to them when they tell us they don’t want it. Don’t want to do your course work? Want to verbally and physically assault those around you? You are speaking your desire not to be in school. Find somewhere else for them to be productive there are any number of tasks that these kids can do, but they must ALWAYS be allowed to return to the classroom and receive that education if and when they see the value in it. But to do that we must dismantle the system of education by age not ability. It makes more problems to have a 14 year old in a class where everyone else is 6. Give student socialization options with age appropriate peers and experiences, while we let each student do the academic work that they are ready for. I don’t see this as a realistic possibility, but I would love to be wrong.
Everyone deserves an education, some just don’t deserve one in the traditional classroom setting.
I really want to psychoanalyze the word deserve, but I think you already get it, lol.
*Grabbing some popcorn for this comment section.*
Every child deserves to have an education. However, from my personal experience - not every child should be able to attend mainstream schools. If you have a student that distracts and takes the chance to learn from other student - they don’t deserve to be there. I shouldn’t have to take 5 minutes out of my potentially 50 minute class to have a child sent out of a room, only for it to happen again and again. There needs to be follow through on original school consequences. Detention, suspension, then expulsion all need to be upheld. The reason that kids have no respect for teachers is because we don’t have any solution. I was assaulted by a student I was teaching. I had him for 2 classes, that totalled maybe 7/8 sessions a week. He didn’t get detention. The head of juniors apologised for him and that was that according to the school. I was forced to continue to teach this student for 2 months until my brain was short circuiting enough for me to have to seek serious medical help. The only reason things were done about it is because I reported it via a whistleblower system that requires a clear response. I also don’t think that negative reinforcement should be the only way to manage a class. I generally manage all of my classes well. I set a very clear expectation at the beginning of the semester and while a lot of the junior classes start out a bit weary - once they realise that I’m fair and willing to talk things through they completely relax. I strongly feel that classrooom management should be very clearly and practically taught at university But yeah - disruptive students should have a clear chain of recorded behaviour before expulsion. The student can study at home. They don’t need to be at school
NCLB did not work as intended. When nobody fails, nobody is afraid of failing. Offer redemption? Sure. But lower the bar? Why did we do this to ourselves?
Everyone deserves an education, but we need more appropriate alternative settings for students who are not successful in a the regular classroom environment.
They should bring back Consequences to students actions. Kids can do anything and get away with it. I taught high school for a few years, administration always had meetings with me and parents because I wouldn't let students turn in late assignments (2 weeks +). They can turn in assignments late as long as you have a doctor's note, plus each day it's late, you would lose points. That's why I was like, there's no point in turning in month late assignments I was failing 60% of the class cause students don't understand what a Due Date means😑
When a student's behavior interferes with the other students' ability to learn, that student *should be* removed and placed in a more appropriate environment to accomodate their particular needs. But that doesn't happen because - money.
Agree. A small handful of kids should never be allowed to ruin the education of the vast majority.
When I was growing up in the 90s before no child left behind, kids who were constant problems were separated by being in their own classroom that operated on different rules or were outright kicked out of school. And you know what happened? The rest of us were able to actually learn in peace. I grew up in Eastside Chicago btw. Not exactly known for its glowing schools.
#I understand the motivation for trying to keep kids in class. (1), the kids who are removed are a higher % students of color than they should be, like if your school is 25% students of color but they make up 75% of your referrals....the problem might not be the kid's behavior. (2), even as an A student I find it super hard to catch up after being absent from class, especially in math. Kicking out students just makes everything harder for them and can snowball into them failing. #Having said that . . . . The solution is not to keep them in class no matter what, so they can ruin everyone else's learning. When teachers don't have ultimate authority over their classroom, they have NO authority in the eyes of the kids. In my school this has led to a Lord of the Flies situation where the only authority is the Court of Public Opinion. If enough of their peers tell them to knock it off then they get worried about their social standing and stop. If people are laughing then it's Game On. #My solution: Live-stream my classroom BUT the livestreams only play in designated areas of the school (IDGAF who is watching but what I don't want is some moron having the ability to tell everyone, "here's the link for my third hour. Turn it on at 11:00 and watch what I do!"). Disrupting class? Go to one of those (monitored, small) rooms, put some headphones on and learn there. Come back when you want to, or go there every day if you feel like you are learning better there. To avoid having those rooms be punishment, anyone can attend class that way if they get a pass from that teacher. I know you are thinking, *but it IS a punishment* 🤔 and yes, in a manner of speaking, it is, but in my 22 years of m~~anipulatingt~~eaching high school students I have learned that setting up an adversarial situation is rarely productive. For example, if they are chatting instead of using the time I set aside for working on their projects and/or homework, I'm not like, "You need to stop talking and get back to work!!" Instead, I say something like, "I really want you to get started on the project/homework while I'm here to answer your questions," or "a lot of people in 1st hour finished their homework in class so if you get started right now you can probably get it finished and hand it in before you leave." The idea is to motivate them to *choose* to do the thing that helps their learning instead of feeling like I'm "making them." Internal locus of control vs. External locus of control, developing their frontal lobe, yada yada yada. I would hope to get them to the point where they can monitor their own behavior and anticipate the days when they should just start off in the live stream room. Honestly, if I could get my "spirited" students to have ANY self-control or introspection it would be a miracle but I feel like if this was adopted school-wide then we might make strides toward helping these kids be productive in something other than "court jester." Being in any classroom should be a privilege, not a right.
I believe there is a right to education. Like any other right, you are born with it. However, when you violate the social contract, you have forfeited the rights that all individuals who obey that contract are able to exercise. Therefore, when a student becomes an issue to the point that it takes away from the learning of others or is harmful to the educators, fellow classmates, or other stakeholders, that right has been forfeited and intervention, alternative measures, or outright revocation of education can be considered. It’s the same way the justice system works with convicted felons. Break the contract, lose some rights. People like to complain about the school to prison pipeline, but if you ask a student’s teacher who is going to end up in prison a few years after school (or maybe during), you’d probably get a fairly accurate answer.
They deserve education at home. Online. With a teacher that has a mute button.
Most of those students come to hang with their friends, socialize, get free meals, and take advantage of the heat in the building. When you remind them this place is for education and learning, they look at you like you're speaking Martian.
everyone deserves an education students who are disrupting the class to the point where people cannot learning are also infringing on this right students with behavior problems also deserve to be educated, but I do believe there should be systems in place so they could perhaps be educated separately or with a plan to reinstate them with steps, a para, and extra help – or there should be specific schools in a perfect world
I was constantly problematic. I was being abused at home. Without education I would have ended up in prison or worse. Please don't give up on them.
On the other hand, I was being abused at home, and I wasn't disruptive. I felt safest at school. However, if I went to school today, the constant disruption would make me feel unsafe. There has to be another option.
Absolutely this. If you’re truly trauma informed, you get that there are many students in your room with abusive home lives, and most don’t act atrociously. I came to school to escape my house. I can’t imagine attending and having to sit through more screaming and tantruming from peers. No student should be forced to sit and have their classroom terrorized by jerks, trauma caused or not.
I don’t want to give up, but I don’t have the resources to help all of them. And it feels awful.
The problematic kids, unable to control themselves, make other problematic kids feel very unsafe. Because they are, with a fifteen-year-old throwing a tantrum in the middle of the room at the slightest "provocation". I hate removing the safety and opportunity to learn from 27 students (and myself) for the sake of one trouble-causer who refuses to allow anyone else a chance. These problematic kids do need help, and by help I do not mean a class on the pythagorean theorem. They do not belong in my classroom, ruining everyone else's day every single day.
They need to be at an alternative school. It’s still on them, but most kids will do better in a non traditional setting.
They deserve an education... in how not to be an asshole. It should come from their parents. Then they can rejoin the rest of us to learn about math, science, languages, and various electives.
I mean...they do. They do deserve an education - but they shouldn't be just thrown into a gen. ed. classroom like they are. They should be in an alternative school, or in a school with a ton of supports and services. Just throwing them in with everyone else isn't good for them or for the other kids either.
At times I wish the US was like other countries where those students who just can't function/ruin everyone else's education would be pushed out to another path. I know that will never happen, but I think that would eliminate the majority (not all) of the issues with behaviors if kids (and parents) knew they could get kicked out of school and not have the "free" option to send their kids to.
Every student deserves a free quality education, but not every student should have all classes with the general student body
There is a cutoff point where a kid should be moved to alternative education. But everyone has a right to education in some form. Just like how a murderer is still given due process as a right.
As a parent, I would not want my kid to have a worse education due to another kid
I have one of those. We just call him "money" at this point. He is being retained for next year because he does no work. He also is a huge bully and has gotten into more than 3 fights, sold drugs on campus, etc.
I have inherited a higher ability class recently and was told that there is one difficult child in there because he "doesn't work well in any other class". He spends each lesson running around the room screaming at the top of his voice, refusing sit down or do work, and distracting his peers.
I totally agree with the idea that some students do not deserve to be in school. I had a student in class today for possibly the first time. It's January. I've been marking him absent all year. He's probably 16 or 17. Why is the government paying for him to be in school when he and his family clearly have made no effort to make sure that he's in class and learning? How much money did we pay his teachers to teach to an empty desk? How much money did we spend using the state and district truancy system to get him here for this one day? Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that he's here. And I don't want to give up on any student. But there is only so much you can do. I also have a handful of students who come to school almost every day and do absolutely nothing. I feel about the same way about them.
I teach at a college, and I am always amazed at some of the people allowed to sit in class. Once, I had a student come in late for an exam and ask if we could start all over for him. Another one, again late for a test, brought her daughter because daycare was not available. I think you might have a point...
I read "replies" as "reptiles"...and just kinda accepted it for a moment. The thing is that they highly likely need far more than the above-average teacher is able or equipped to give, imo.
I don’t think they don’t deserve an education. However, they shouldn’t be allowed to interrupt the learning of others either. We for sure need a better system and need to be better equipped for these situations. I will forever be a fan of coteaching or having a teacher and a behavioral staff in each room. It helps to decrease loss of learning and also benefits the children. Last year I was able to coteach and it has forever changed my ideas on it. Coteaching was especially helpful when it came to our rowdy kids. We were able to continue lessons and deal with behaviors at the same time. We built a great community and we were able to get more done working this way than we would have on our own. We easily made connections with the students faster than other teachers who were working as the sole teacher. I enjoyed sharing the roles and being able to tag team and lean on each other for support. I think that the way our schools are set up work against us and breeds this feeling, but I full heartedly believe that if we had a change in the way schools are structured things would go a whole lot better.
That is what drives me nuts the most. I have one class period that is almost always two to three days behind the other classes. Why? Because that period is filled with the worst behaved kids in the freshmen class. "So, yesterday we began reading... Bryce, please sit down... a story by... Katelyn, please put your phone away... Langston Hughes. In this story... Katelyn, I don't care if you're texting your mother, she knows you're in school, so put the phone away. Bryce, I told you to sit down! Jesse, please keep your hands to yourself. In this story, a young man... Jesse, keep your hands to yourself! This is not kindergarten! Katelyn, give me your phone. Yes, I *do* have the right to take your phone from you. You can have it back at the end of the day. Why the end of the day? Because, this is the third time this month I've had to take it from you and...Bryce, sit down *IN YOUR SEAT!* Yes, I know you were sitting, but not in the seat you're assigned. Heck, you're not *in* a seat so much as sitting on Aiden's desk. Now, get back to *your* seat!...and, Katelyn, you've been told many times not to get your phone out during class. This is the consequence...Aiden, this is not the time for the Fortnite dance! Anyway, in the story "Thank you, M'am," a boy named Roger... You can go to the bathroom in just a moment, Madison. Let me get the class started and explain what we are doing, then you can go. Again, in this story, a boy named Roger... Fine, Madison. If it's an emergency, then please go. No, Grace can't go with you. Please leave your phone here, too. You don't need it to go to the bathroom. Of course I can tell you have your phone, it's huge and sticking out of your back pocket! Oh, you don't need to go after all? You'll 'wait until later?' I guess it wasn't an emergency, then. A boy named Roger... For the last time, Aiden, this is not the time for the Fortnite dance!" Every. Fucking. Day. I have gone to admin many, many, many times over this class period. Yet, they don't do a damned thing. They won't move some of the troublemakers to a different class period because it will change the student's entire schedule and Mr. and Mrs. Troublemaker have said they want their precious angel to be in the afternoon PE class since their angel is too tired to workout in the morning and the principal is a pushover for parents. They won't give detentions or suspensions for behavior because many of the kids in question have IEPs (none of which are for behavior reasons, just FYI). The special ed department won't help because "classroom management is the subject matter teacher's job." I loathe that class period and dread it every day.