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8 thoughts on “Intruders”
Please do not label it as “pigs”. There is a danger of thinking of these difficult kids as subhuman and that does not do the students or the teachers any favours. They need discipline (often because they have not received any at home) and this benefits them and us. Deep down they are just kids and we should remember that.
Absolutely. I completely agree. But a few years ago I had a kid verging on being a psychopath and I associated that term with them. Ii was told later he should never have been in the class, so destructive was his energy in class. So, as much as I concur that they are just kids, to me that word pigs kept occurring to me as I went through the hell of not getting administrative help with him until an email was accidently sent by my department chair to my principal who acted immediately to get him out. I’m not a social worker and I have feelings and I can’t change some of the kids. That’s the Saint Francis prayer for me. Now, with the Classroom Rules and jGR I can in fact reach and enforce the behaviors I want in most of them. But with these rare ones no. It took me over 30 years to get that there was a difference. Plus, there are too many articles for me to go back and change all the times I use that word. But point made and well taken all the same, Charlotte.
Hey there is someone else from Germany here by the way. Her name is Jenny. So you and Martin and Jenny are with us from Germany.
I know it isn’t politically correct but I think those kids who are borderline psychopathic shouldn’t be in public schools. And this isn’t coming from a teacher, this is coming from the father side of me. The way the privacy laws and special education laws are nowadays, there are kids in danger in many schools and if the general parent population knew, they’d be outraged and writing their representatives. The privacy laws make it where teachers can’t even know anything and the special Ed laws make it where the public schools have to deal with it until something major happens. In the district I taught in last year there was a kid whose parents admitted that he was a “Chardon waiting to happen” (there was a shooting at Chardon high school here in ohio about 2 years ago). This kid also attended a school previously that was a school for potential murderers and sociopaths. But the kid had an IEP so until something major would actually happen (thankfully nothing newsworthy happened) everybody had their hands tied. He did assault the intervention specialist’s assistant though, a 60 something year old woman. He was suspended for 2 days. Oh, and the part about him attending that school, that was unknown until one of the teachers did some google searching. Love those privacy laws.
I’m done ranting
Chris – you’re right! And as a father, AND a teacher, AND a citizen, you have the right to rant about that and anything else that endangers the welfare of the many!!!
And I do want to add to this that my sense of what I want for this blog space is to just say what we feel like saying. We can’t do that in too many places. There is no shortage of people willing around us to listen to us rant and interpret it in a way that could be very detrimental to our careers. It’s a dark thing yet is happening in every building where TPRS/CI is being attempted and it is political and we have a seven year history here on this PLC of discussion pon just this topic. So Charlotte although I agree with you in principle, I would like this to be a place to just be able to not worry about speaking politically correctly and where can get a bitchy edge going on if we want. This work is just too rough otherwise for us not to have a place where we can vent and say stuff that we may not say to those 99% of our colleagues who still teach as they did in the last century, bless their hearts. I hope we can agree to bitch here without worrying if we are going to offend anyone. Everybody’s too polite. We’re all afraid of offending someone, or getting in trouble for our views. Galileo upset the perfect world view of his time, suggesting that things out in space in fact were not all perfect and the way people had thought up to that point was in fact not accurate. We are doing exactly the same thing now. We are going to offend. Good heavens, I wouldn’t mind if jen just let loose here with a ton of expletives about how those colleagues made her feel. Might help. Now that we are private, I hope we are not still censoring how we speak here. Dude, that would not be good.
Hi Ben, I am the Canadian Charlotte who teaches German not the German Charlotte that teaches English:) I know it must be confusing! Thanks for your response.
One thing that has become clear to me over the past 5-6 years on the blog is that we must remember that Ben learns, grows and processes through writing. He trusts us enough and feels comfortable enough here to do that. Part of his powerful teaching is to watch the process and all of the thoughts, ideas and even controversies involved evolve. Many of his ideas, (some of which he has retracted – even deleted – have pushed my thinking, made me question what he is saying and my reaction to what he is saying.
I fear that if Ben filtered more here on this private blog, we might lose something.
Just some thoughts
Skip
yes, Skip – I agree. The honesty and the growth that comes from it is what makes me continue coming back for more. Thank you.
“He trusts us enough and feels comfortable enough here to do that.” This line was extremely powerful for me.