Matt Lincoln for CBS12 in Palm Beach County, Florida. He cites a Wall Street Journal report on teacher burnout.
"Disrespect" by students has made the job difficult, a high school teacher with decades of experience told him. "I dreaded going into my classroom. I had never felt that way. And I had to go and get counseling, just to be able to walk back in that door.”
More teachers are leaving because of student behavior, says Joe Dickerson, a high school teacher. "I think kids are different than they have been. And I think right now, there’s a big sense of empowerment among students to just act how they want.”
Teachers need to stand up for themselves and refuse to take the abuse, writes Angela Barton on Bored Teachers.
It's not just the U.S. British teachers face an "alarming" rise in verbal and physical abuse from students, according to a new report by Education Support, a U.K. charity. Eighty-two percent of teachers and school staff said challenging behavior had increased and affected their mental health and wellbeing. Seventy percent reported "an increase in challenging interactions with parents."
Under Linda McMahon, the U.S. Education Department could change federal policies that have made it hard to run excellent schools, writes Dale Chu. Among his examples are two that affect classroom order.
"Most students who are violent or consistently disruptive" are diagnosed with a disability called “emotional disturbance,” he writes. They receive special-ed protections that "make it hard to keep their peers safe or to protect the learning environment."
The Obama administration analyzed discipline disparities through a "disparate impact" lens, and "told schools they must reduce the rate of suspensions and expulsions of Black and Brown students, regardless of any disparities in underlying student misbehavior," Chu writes. "That can make schools more violent and less orderly."
It isn't totally the students, it's also parents who won't discipline their kids (and lead by terrible example when they are thwarted, say by being cut off in traffic) and a totally chicken administrative apparatus that tries to never offend anyone.
I suspect it's the same as the broken windows theory of policing. Start by taking care of the small things (taking good care of school grounds and equipment), then move up to bigger things (classroom discipline, no cursing in front of any adult, etc).
Heck, I think it would even be a good idea for teachers to go back to the old-time dress code where teachers dressed about the same as they would have for church – showing respect…
I'd say it isn't really the students, it's the system that refuses to back up teachers by providing consistent and appropriate discipline procedures, that leaves teachers on their own--or worse, criticizes them when they attempt to maintain order in their classroom--and makes no attempt to help students understand their place in a learning community, and the requirements of living in a society with other people. As Katharine Birbalsingh endlessly points out: school culture matters.
Ann in L.A.