Discipline before teaching
The Edison High School community is trying to patch things up after a student demonstration got out of hand. From what I've read, there are 101 versions of the incident, and we may never know the truth.
But I know this: It's going to be more and more difficult for that school to hire teachers. If discipline can't be maintained, teaching can't be done. I know of two teachers who have left Edison in the last three or four years. Maintaining discipline was one of the reasons they transferred.They wanted to be teachers, not babysitters.
How often does this happen in other schools?
But I know this: It's going to be more and more difficult for that school to hire teachers. If discipline can't be maintained, teaching can't be done. I know of two teachers who have left Edison in the last three or four years. Maintaining discipline was one of the reasons they transferred.They wanted to be teachers, not babysitters.
How often does this happen in other schools?
posted by Ana Veciana-Suarez at 8:51 AM
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2 Comments:
There are at least 2 issues at work here. If a child has NO discipline at home, then it will be very difficult to enforce discipline in the school setting. The child needs to come into the learning environment with a healthy respect for authority. I fear that this is uncommon at some of our schools, Edison in particular.
In the ideal situation, if a child gets in trouble at school, he is in even more trouble at home. Not for many of our kids today. Some parents are ignorant and get defensive. They blame the educators for not tolerating their children's bad behavior. Other parents are over-protective and feel the need to come and rescue Johnny from the consequenses of their own bad behavior.
The result of this is not good. The children certainly do not benefit from this protection. They will lack necessary qualities for a successful adulthood.
The parents have limited the use of discipline in our schools. They don't want Johnny to be sad or upset - no matter what Johnny has done.
The story at Edison is pretty clear - the media is tip-toeing (for political reasons) but everyone knows exactly what happened. A kid (who had assaulted a teacher last year) was skipping class and ran off when the AP called him. He was finally cornered by the AP and the school resource officer, where he put up a fight and had to be restrained. Not a nice kid. He was arrested.
The other kids decided it wasn't fair that he was arrested AGAIN. So they scheduled a demonstration (or as one kid was quoted as saying "a peaceful riot"). When the school board police showed up to monitor the demonstration, they started throwing bottles, books, fire extinguishers, etc.) Again, not nice kids. They were arrested.
That usually happens when you throw stuff at cops.
I don't know how any educator works under those conditions. That school in particular should be closed and the kids sent to different schools - dispersed. It has been an F school from the beginning and it will never be anything other than that -- there is no learning going on behind those walls.
In my honest opinion, this is an example of how good intentions can go wrong. Very wrong.
All of the "Zone" schools are money pits. Teachers can teach from sun-up to sun-down every day but until the students are held accountable for their own conduct and education there can be no progress. It is unfair to continue to label schools "D" or "F" based on the scores of these low performers. It is maddening to educators, morale busting for good students, and economically devestating for property owners of homes in the feeder-pattern of the low graded schools. What idiot prevailed in Tallahassee when this concept was introduced? How about that Science FCAT? The schools were held accountable but the students weren't. This makes sense in the Governor's office? All the kids heard was that it didn't count for them and that was that. the scores brought down school grades all over the state. We are crushing our schools and nobody cares. The kids hate going to an F or D school and it shows in their attitudes toward everything that surrounds their education. D and F schools lose their high scoring kids to high scoring schools...duh.
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