What Teachers Really Think About the "Problem Child" ~ health and fitness,celebrity news,fashion blog,beauty women,whole foods,quotes about love

mardi 15 août 2017

What Teachers Really Think About the "Problem Child"

Every teacher, no matter the quality of school or the number of years in the profession, has had a student that makes their job harder than it should be. There's a lot of pedological phrases that get tossed around to describe the student's issues, but out in the real world the most common way to describe the situation is "problem child."

First, let me say uncategorically that I've never met a teacher who would ever even think about using this phrase. "Problem child" is the creation of Hollywood and bad parenting books in the '50s. Simply trying to categorize children - and let's remember that we're talking about children here - as a problem is kind of gross.

Of course there are children who are more difficult than others, children who require an obscene amount of patience from the teacher just to ensure that they don't end up on the evening news for retaliating in an unacceptable manner. I'm not saying that they don't exist, merely that labeling all challenging children in one difficult-to-deal-with category doesn't work. Each and every student who has ever given me consistent trouble, and there have been a lot, have done so in their own unique way and with their own reasons.

The most common type of student who has given me trouble is the one who is resistant. There might be one in a class or a whole group of them who impede on my ability to teach and their willingness to learn. The resistant student doesn't do any work and rolls their eyes when being asked to do any level of work. Most teachers that I've known secretly like the resistant student, and truthfully they've been some of my favorites as well. They're like a puzzle that needs to be cracked to reveal, if not a hard-working student, at least one who is willing to try.

The resistant student is not the same as the sassy or defiant one. These are the students who may have been the reason an extra one or two bottles of wine each week were consumed because of the sheer amount of patience required to teach them. Their teacher has to take into account that every little phrase, direction, or activity might set off this student. What started as a simple lesson can descend into a battle of will and wits that most teachers don't want to deal with.

And some of these difficult students straddle the line between defiant and dangerous. Fights, throwing things, threatening other students, and being told to "go f*ck myself" unfortunately can be an average day, which they don't really prepare you for in education programs. Time spent planning a lesson is suddenly a waste because you spend time instead working on a behavior program for a handful of students.

The biggest problem with "problem children" is that very often it can take weeks or a whole year to find a workable solution. This means that to reach the life of one student the lives of 30 others were upturned. These kinds of overt distractions that steal class time from the rest of the students who are willing to learn are what really anger teachers, but it's not the students necessarily - it's the situation. Quite frankly, it's the lack of support from administration when dealing with belligerent students that really stings.

I've worked in three different schools, each one having its own unique way of handling students who needed extra support and behavior modification. Action plans would be set in place, parents get contacted, and administration would be supportive and direct the whole time. When this is done well, usually with restorative justice practices, children who are a problem find ways to work within the education system.

When this kind of support is absent from a school, either due to different opinions on how best to approach problems or serious underfunding, life for a teacher can be hell. Students have made me cry numerous times, a couple times during class because they were particularly defiant. I wish I could say that situation didn't contribute to my decision to take some time off from my teaching career, but the constant belittling from administration and students wears on a person, especially one who is still in the first 10 years of the profession.

So, no, "problem children" are not the issue, but a system that doesn't support teachers and students is the real concern. I'd rather have a whole class of "problem" students in a school that understands how to handle it than one "bad" student in a school that doesn't. Of course, difficult children aren't blameless, but most teachers are reasonable enough to know that with a lot of work, the student's school life can be ameliorated.

mardi 15 août 2017