For the first time ever I just walked out of a school. I would rather clean toilets than put up with being harassed by the “students” I was employed to see each day this week. I wish parents could see it as it is: teacher baiting and bullying that is normal for lots of boys – and some girls – now. It’s become so normal for students to band together and have a go at their teacher.
This is what you need to know.
The loud ones enlist the other ones and try and take over. You can’t fight a mob mentality. It’s the ones who often have poor school ability, or just like power play with women.
As a teacher, I find myself in the middle of the “f” word being thrown around, as well as the “c” word, and the “I told you, get away from me” when you approach them about their behaviour.
In my opinion, there are a lot of kids who should not be in classrooms. They are the ones who have no intention of doing anything other than kicking their way through school and creating trouble along the way. I find some of the most damaged kids in the classroom get the least attention because of these loud mouthed yobs who decide to take over everything. Being loud and rude does not mean you are in more pain than the kid in the corner who is silently miserable, being bullied or dealing with depression.
The real kids who need support are overlooked. It is not okay and is not fair, but the system spends its time with the ones who yell the loudest. Those who really have problems miss out on attention, resources and their more serious problems being addressed. For every badly behaved student, there is a person suffering in silence from serious depression, anxiety, home issues, or other medical issues What about the silent students who need help and support from staff? What about the rights of those kids to learn, and the rights of teachers to be in a room with students who respect the rights of others to a safe learning environment?
I am tired, so tired, of being hammered in the press as a teacher. I’m tired of us talking about ‘disengaged’ kids. I’m tired of being told that having kids who play up in my classroom is my fault for having “no classroom behaviour management skills”.
Baffled by all the watered down teacher talk on your kids report card? This may help.
The thing is though, I do have standards and I do have skills. Burning out would be normal, not weak under the circumstances. Teacher churn is huge, and for good reason.
I have had kids yell at each other about “giving it’ to each other’s mothers in class. I know of instances where boys have got up in the face of female staff or female students intentionally close, and said that they’ll “give it to them”. I have had boys as young as 14 talk to me about their penis size without blushing as though I am interested. There is the rape culture mentality, as though all women – regardless of age – are available for sex and interested, and if they are not, they will be punished by it.
These examples are everywhere.
I’ve seen another student held up a plant, smirked to himself and asked a middle-aged teacher if she’d like a “root”. In another circumstance, a student put a girl’s calculator down his pants, and then handed it back to a female student. That class was one of the worst I have ever taught, where I would leave and cry my eyes out because I couldn’t stop sexual harassment in my own classroom.
Girls are being trained to be victims, and a lot of boys are training as perpetrators, and middle aged female teachers like me know it. Misogyny is alive and well in the classroom. What really bothers me is that girls can only be two things: silent or tarty and boys, meanwhile, are silent or disrespectful.
There are serious problems with behaviour in our classrooms, and we need to question the behaviour of boys when they are still young enough to learn.
Do you think we have a behavioural problem amongst our teenagers?
Top Comments
Corporal punishment needs to come back. That is my very strongly held belief. It all comes back to physical discipline and as proven, generations today are out of control. We NEVER had problems like this when I was at school, and I am only talk 25-odd years ago, not 60. It has gotten worse. It's just more and more proof. Students have no fear of teachers or consequences. Because....THERE ARE NONE!
Funny how violence against women is unacceptable but when It's against a child it's A Ok.
Yes because they are so totally the same. Facepalm.
This is a problem as the rules that are there to protect children are being used to set up a situation where they are getting away with things that aren't acceptable. This is where you need to get smarter than these kids, these things are no different to when I was at school, the kids were unruly, arrogant and downright rude.The best teachers that we had were ready to start the minute we got into class.We didn't have an opportunity to scratch our noses.
I had an ancient history teacher that made us take dictation the minute we sat down at our desks, we had to be ready to write. We had a maths teacher that advocated for us, as none of us were any good at Math, or vaguely interested in equations, (this is often where the problem lies) and were more interested in writing plays, and being creative, we had some amazingly gifted people in some of my classes, but because of the education system, they were trying to wedge square pegs into round holes, which either didn't work & in many cases was disastrous, we lost a number of students in alcohol fuelled car accidents & suicides, because many of these people were from underprivileged backgrounds & felt that they had little in their future to look forward to.
I do believe many modern teachers need to get a bit of tough love going on. The teachers in our classes didn't have the technical advantages we have now, because I can guarantee you if they had they would have used them every opportunity they had, to keep the unruly mob of students in check the minute they started to muck up/get aggressive.The simplest of things would be at the beginning of each term, you sit your class down and set out a contract with each & every student, you make it clear what you as their teacher are there to do, you ask ever student what they are aiming for, it may take some time to get a reasonable response, but be persistent, each time a student mucks up you either refer back to their contract. (you are dealing with teenagers they understand what is expected of them in general)
Those that are difficult or looking to gain attention, make it clear that you will be recording all your interactions with them so that both the headmaster/mistress, their parents can know how their children are behaving while they aren't around. I suggest this will slow them down as they don't want to be seen as a loser, or a complete jerk. Once you have recorded their behaviour, send them out of the classroom, make it clear to them that they won't be allowed back into the class until they have thought about their behaviour, and they must apologise to the class not just you. They cannot return to their previous seat, make sure there is a spare spot for them to return to, far enough to keep groups from forming.
The best thing is to make sure you have spare desks between each of your trouble makers, Teaching is a brutal profession when your working with problem children or in a school where there are few rules, or boundaries that aren't respected, which sounds like what this teacher is working with. Protect everybody not just the problematic students. This is a large reason why I never became a teacher, due to my experience as a high school student, because teachers not only need to remember other students suffer, as was pointed out, not just those that are struggling with depression, anxiety etc, if they see a teacher struggling it may very well shape their opinion of teaching in a negative light.
Much of what I talked about, the recording & the contracts have been trialled in the UK where they also use the 3 strikes and their suspended rule, and in general even the worst of offenders tow the line, the really troubled kids also have counselling sessions & positive reinforcement, to try & assist kids to remold their attitudes & behaviours. It sounds to me the reason why there's churning through teachers in the public system, is because, what young teachers are being taught at university, goes nowhere near matching with what is actually happening in the real world classroom. This I may be so bold as to suggest that the techniques to deal with the troubled & angry, and disaffected youths are either outdated or far too ineffectual, it is time the education department started to stop passing on the reams of paperwork to teachers and start providing better support mechanisms.