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Classroom Management Question
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8 thoughts on “Classroom Management Question”
Ugh, I am so sorry this happened to you. The kid got what he wanted which was a chuckle at your expense. It is totally understandable that your blood would be boiling and that would make it hard to react in the moment.
I am imagining myself in this position and how I hope I would be able to handle it. I imagine “pretending” I didn’t understand the nasty joke even after I got it and saying something like “I’m not sure what is so funny about that, I wonder if the principal could explain it to me. I’ll be sure to give her a call on my prep period. I love to laugh too, but I just don’t get this joke and it makes me wonder if it is only funny because it is not appropriate. I’ll have to get a second opinion from my supervisor. I am sure she can help me clear this up.” Now the “joke” is on the kid who is going to get in trouble, and the whole class knows it, and the power is back with the teacher who has a whole set of witnesses to the inappropriate behavior.
Carly this is genius. I wish I’d know about it forty years ago. Maybe add a third opinion from a parent. And I would use the very words he used.
For this reason I use Terry Waltz’s “Grandma Rule.”
My rules for the ICI’s are
1) Cannot be named after or related to anyone in the school
2) Must be original
3) No politics
4) No WWII or Cold War Themes
5) Must follow the grandma rule (If you have a doubt ask the teacher before you create it)
Always make sure you SCREEN the characters before you do your Town Meeting with them. I haven’t had any super inappropriate characters lately but I have had some that push the envelope. Those I totally leave out of the pile. Tell the students you pick the top 10-15 before you present them to the class.
I like that rule! I’m totally using it!
In my school our detentions are now digital and the parents get a copy so I quote EXACTLY what they say and put it in quotes.
In my school the calling parents during class would only backfire on the teacher because the parent would complain about the teacher. (Yes I know it’s crazy)
When I two years ago made a student call his mother about the inappropriate reference in the story AND told his football coach, I was called in by an admin who was concerned that I had “damaged the relationship with the student”. (Was not true, but I really did suffer that week in fear that I was in the dog house with admin).
That being said, it spread like wildfire that you can’t do inappropriate stuff in my class
Good stuff, Greg. Sheesh, that’s rough about the parents. Do the parents complain because you’re calling them while they’re at work? Or is it because they think you can’t do your job? Either one’s ridiculous.
[Some] Admins value not having entitled parents bother them cuz their precious says, “the XYZ teacher doesn’t like me” MORE than dealing directly and swiftly with their entitled kid.
They are so snowed with district paperwork (T-crossing and i-dotting) that dealing w/nasty, inappropriate kids who challenge authority for laughs is not compelling to them.
Maybe we T’s ought to take a lil PD workshop on Relationship-Building and Restorative Practices in our copious free time?
It’s a brave new world.
Or let me re-state that – – It’s a scared-of-your-shadow chicken-ass world.
Can you imagine how the chicken-shit factor that is now dripping all over the shoulders of admins so that they are afraid of their own shadow has slowly become this way? I mean, if you did some time-lapse photography of admins 30 years ago vs. now, the change to having no spine could probably be followed and maybe even documented. I was in Columbine HS today and the feeling in there is “Let’s not talk about anything real bc someone might hear about it.”