Disruptive kids in class
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Anonymous
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Hello, my oldest is enjoying her first year in elementary school at one of the competitive K-12 schools. One of the main reasons we applied to private was to get away from the public school situation where every year there were a few highly disruptive kids in class who really halted learning for everyone.
My daughter really likes her new school, and I am generally pleased that the curriculum seems stronger and moves faster, class size is much smaller and the teachers seem great, other parents and kids have been welcoming, and obviously the facilities are a major upgrade from our public school. However, there are 2 kids in class whom my daughter claims are regularly and significantly disrupting class. She says they will speak while the teacher is speaking, get out of their seats, and encourage others in the class to be disruptive. It sounds like this is occurring throughout homeroom and specials classes. For example, in foreign language class today, my daughter says the 2 boys were both shouting "6 7" when other kids were trying to speak. In technology class, the boys were encouraging others to stand up and dance numerous times. My daughter says this really interrupts class and diminished learning for everyone. She was griping today about how they couldn't get to a game everyone else had been looking forward to playing in foreign language class because the teacher spent so much time correcting and disciplining the 2 boys. It sounds like the situation with the 2 boys has been going on since the beginning of the year and isn't improving. According to my daughter, the school's approach to the boys' behavior has been to continually and constantly correct them. I do know they have met with at least one of the boy's parents, as the parents mentioned it offhand to me that they were dealing with some behavior problems with their son and they'd been called into school twice to discuss it. I'm frustrated because I feel like a huge part of the reason I'm paying this staggering tuition is to get my kid out of classes with kids who are disruptive. As far as I can tell, both boys are not kid of major donors nor offering some intriguing diversity to the class - they appear to be from wealthy-ish garden variety full pay tuition white families, like my own. I'm not sure how to proceed. My daughter has asked me a few times to reach out to the school admin and/or her teachers and express my concern about the situation. I would absolutely be in favor of doing this, except that we have 2 younger siblings we are hoping to get admitted in coming years (despite the disruptions from these boys, the school is still a huge step up from public and we would like our other kids to be admitted). The school has a very low admissions rate. I don't want to be seen as a nuisance and complaining parent. Our daughter is a model student and doing well there as far as we've been told. We donated fairly generously when asked (not enough to be stand out donors, but enough to be respectable). What would you do? |
Anonymous
| Is your daughter in Kindergarten? Or what grade is she? |
Anonymous
| She's in a grade somewhere between 1st and 3rd (don't want to be too specific!). I would be much more sympathetic about the situation if she were in K. |
Anonymous
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Tee hee.
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Anonymous
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OP Private does not equate to better behaved.
Many privates do not even have counselors or qualified people to deal with behavior issues. |
Anonymous
| OP here. I went to private growing up and kids who were poorly behaved or disruptive were counseled out. Have things changed? Her public school had many more and worse behaved kids, so while this is still an improvement, I expected most kids at private to be fairly well behaved, especially at one that has a low admit rate and high tuition. |
Anonymous
| Is this K-1? If higher than that, maybe this is a lax private environment or a bad cohort. Catholic schools (at least the ones I've seen) do not tolerate this. |
Anonymous
| Persistent problems will be counseled out (unless donor kid which you seem to have ruled out). I recommend emailing your head of LS. But also, kids are still kids. It’s not military school |
Anonymous
| You have no idea what conversations the school is having with their parents. |
Anonymous
| You people have too much time in your hands. These are 1st-3rd grade boys, not adults. No need to be so invested in their lives and complain about any small inconvenience. Life’s tough; get a helmet. |
Anonymous
+1. The entitlement of some people on DCUM is beyond. |
Anonymous
| I bet the parents of those boys are like many who choose to move to private school. They think their child just needs smaller class sizes, a project based approach, more green space, etc and all their issues will go away. That only works if it’s just one kid in a class like that. The problem is these privates are full of kids like that! As your kid gets older there will be more. Those disruptive kids are likely better behaved than they would be in public but at the expense of others |
Anonymous
| Where do you think the disruptive kids go after the parents tire of the public school principal calling every day? We watched the most disruptive boys leave for a different private every year from public. The parents felt that the private school would straighten their Johnny out. They blamed poor teaching and poor classroom management on why their kid acted up. So, out they went , interviewing one private after another and left. |
Anonymous
| Also, not to completely absolve the boys or their parents, but when a teacher does not have strong classroom management skills, certain kids will sense and exploit that. When classroom rules and expectations are clearly defined and consistently enforced and there are positive incentives for good behavior, it’s harder for kids to get away with disruptive behaviors. |
Anonymous
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Not that this is necessarily the reason, but this is right around the age that ADHD tends to really impact boys in the classroom. My DS was pretty impulsive and annoying for the first half of 2nd grade until we figured out what was happening and got him evaluated and got effective treatment. But we were very on top of it and were working very closely with the teachers the whole time but I'm sure there were kids who told their parents he was annoying. He is a very well behaved, diligent student now.
In any case, I'm saying this because none of this sounds especially concerning yet and I agree that you will come off as high maintenance if you make a point to complain right now. If it was directly hurting your DD (physical violence, bullying etc), obviously that's different. You can certainly discuss it in parent-teacher conferences in a productive way by talking about how your child learns best and whether there is a way to help her focus away from kids who are not as focused. It's also important to remember that there is a chance that your DD is exaggerating or you are not getting the full story. Use it as an opportunity to teach your kid how to cope with some adversity. She will never have a completely distraction-free learning environment and she is building important social skills. You would know if it's totally out-of-hand and this does not sound like it. And there is a good chance these kids will mature (or get help if there is something like ADHD) or they will likely get counseled out. |