On Mar 22, 2008, at 3:32 AM, Byron Jeff wrote:

> Please don't put it on the teachers. I know (and live with)  
> teachers, and
> to a person they want an orderly, organized, classroom. The problem  
> is that
> the current system rewards disruptive behavior. In order to  
> understand, you
> have to work with the basic premise of the disruptive student: they  
> don't
> want to be there.
>
> 1) Student is disruptive. The teacher times them out to another class.
> Student has accomplished two goals: gotten out of the classroom and  
> gotten
> to another place to disrupt.


Bring back nuns with rulers and dunce hats.  ANYTHING that embarrasses  
the kid, and doesn't just let him walk away scott-free.


> 2) Student gets sent to the administration. There used to be a time  
> when
> this was the kiss of death. Now many administrators simply send the  
> kids
> back to the classroom because it's too much of a hassle for them to  
> do the
> paperwork to process the kids.


Screw paperwork, the threat that works is "We're calling your parents  
to come get you."

Of course, if the parents are screw-ups, this doesn't work.  But  
normal parents called away from work to go pick up a child are going  
to be the best "motivators" for that child you ever saw.


> 3) The administrator does his/her job and gets the student sent to in
> school suspension. Again the student has accomplished their goal of  
> getting
> out of the classroom and in fact gotten into the social environment of
> other malcontents.


Work detail.  Trash cans, ugly uniforms, and similar things... just  
like adult life... being in trouble needs to be made embarrassing, not  
rewarding.


> 4) Out of school suspension is a virtual vacation for the disruptive
> student.


Need something here.  More hard work?  Expulsion leads to grounds- 
keeping for the older kids, or something "difficult enough" to be  
motivational enough to want to go back to school for younger kids?    
So called "boot camps"?  Suspension shouldn't mean they walk, it  
should mean things get harder.  Like real life.


> 5) Expulsion requires a hearing at the county level.


Fine.  Checks and balances.  Pain in the ass for parents, and kids,  
and administrators, and teachers.  Put video cameras in the classrooms  
and set up the hearing in such a way that teachers and administrators  
don't have to show up if the adjudicator has video that shows the  
problem.

Really what's going on here is a trust problem.  Parents don't trust  
the teachers or the administration.  Why?  Don't know -- but school  
districts need to stop ignoring it, and figure out how to fix that  
perception.


> At no time does the disruptive student feel punished. So why would  
> they
> change their behavior?


Exactly right.  Needs to be changed.


> Generally the two objectives of disruptive students are to get out  
> of doing
> academic work and to socialize. But nothing in the system disrupts  
> those
> patterns.


So change the damn system... why aren't teachers and parents working  
on solutions that really piss off and bother the kids (without harming  
them) who are in trouble instead of eyeballing each other and not  
trusting each other?  Ahhhh... there's your society's bigger picture  
problem...

>> Have *you* ever been bullied? When I was in fifth grade, I remember  
>> the
>> feeling of quiet joy when I learned that the guy who was tormenting  
>> me died
>> from inhaling gasoline vapors in his father's garage. I also  
>> remember that
>> another victim, who cried out "Drop dead" to the bully not too long  
>> before
>> his death, received a brutal beating from other bullies. I am  
>> ashamed of how
>> I felt then, but I can understand why some kids resort to killing  
>> their
>> classmates.
>
> It's awful and should not be tolerated. But in a lot of ways you'd  
> have to
> turn schools into police states to pull it off. My wife theorizes that
> you'd have to remove 5% of the school population in order to  
> stabilize the
> rest of the students.


I believe that would be a lower percentage than the number of adults  
incarcerated... not that incarceration is a great idea, but just a  
"gut check" to keep things in perspective.  If families, society, and  
adults are worse -- why is it a surprise to anyone teaching in a  
public school system that 5% would have to be dropped into a penalty  
system of some sort?


> You can add to that the small percentage of teachers that are actually
> having sex with the students. In all of those cases, teachers need  
> to be
> removed. I know that it's worse in teacher union states. Here in  
> Georgia
> it's an at will state. So removing a teacher is as simple as not  
> offering a
> contract, or having a hearing to have them removed from the classroom.


Must be nice.  Not here.  But I think if you look at statistics  
overall, there's a LOT more indifferent parents, administrators and  
teachers who have "given up" on things (like the administrator who  
won't do paperwork above) than teacher-sex-hounds.  WHO is the real  
problem in the big picture, after that is factored in?


--
Nate Duehr
nate@natetech.com



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