Reply to NY times op ed on the teacher crisis

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "NY times op ed on the teacher crisis"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The difference is that if one of your clients became violent, you could call a security guard or the police to have them removed. If one of my students becomes violent, nobody comes. I’m told I am a bad teacher. I will finish up this year and you can take my place. I cannot work in a place where I do not feel safe. A student threw a spiral notebook at me a few weeks ago and the scratch on my face is still there. Nothing happened to that student but I was told not to place any demands on him. So he sleeps through a few classes and I hope to God nothing wakes him up again. [/quote]

DP. Violence is a valid reason to leave and a major problem that needs to be fixed. But that's only one of the complaints we hear from teachers, and not even the most common.

By the way, I think that the inability of teachers (and maybe administrators) to discipline students hurts teachers in many ways. First, there is the stress of managing fear for your own safety on a daily basis. That threat of violence also diminishes your ability to manage a classroom and demand respect from students (to teachers and each other). From a parental perspective, the lack of consequences for the bad actors erodes faith in the system and can encourage overinvolvement and micromanaging. I've been in this situation, especially with one of my kids who has special needs and might be described as "difficult." How do you teach kids that it's important to do their work, be respectful, and behave in class when there are clearly no consequences if you don't? I can tell my kid until I'm blue in the face that he needs to turn work in on time and respect his teachers, but when he sees that other kids can get away with assaulting classmates and threatening teachers, it's not very motivating. My kid gets a zero for not doing his work, which I make a big deal out of, but when he gets pushed to the ground intentionally and kicked during recess, his abuser is right back in school the next day doing it to another kid. How do we expect kids to make sense of that world?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics