Here is the second email about classroom discipline. This one is a LOT like the Pigs situation I endured last year and am still not sure I have fully recovered from. (I haven’t.) My answers are in italics but we need everybody to kick in here. It is TIME where if we don’t act and give good advice NOW in response to these two discipline questions then the entire year could be lost for some of us. We have been talking about the importance of how we respond to problem kids for a year now, and now is the time to take action. In even two weeks from now, it will be too late. I hate to flood the airwaves with this right now but we have to move now on those few kids.
Dear Mr. Slavic,
[What about] classroom jerks? I do like your idea of seating students in a “V” shape.
Actually that is Susie’s. I now have them all facing forward in traditional rows and I am thrilled with how much that cuts down on the jerks’ power.
I’m wondering how you handle the seating of the classroom jerks when using this formation. If a student just doesn’t want to listen, to learn, it galls me and distracts me, so I prefer to put that student in the back somewhere so I am least disturbed. With my principal problem, I’ve already telephoned mother twice. It’s just the beginning of the year, so I’m giving this kid a little more rope before I make further seating changes. So when I move the students to the “V” formation yet, what would you do with Mr. Jerk? He resents sitting in the “learning posture” and and will not look at me. (I have repeatedly and quietly told him to look at me – he sits in front right now.)
ok I think that this is a mistake. Don’t do that. He won’t do it. Let him go. Get him in a right or left back corner….
He appears to be more interested in turning around to check out the (approval?) of the OTHER jerk who is sitting in the back. (I have tried separating the two of them.) Jerk #2 cannot decide if he is going to buy into the program or not. One day he seems to be trying and the next day he is simply Mr. Cool, who has a girlfriend in the class. She IS BUYING into the program, and it’s my hope that she will bring him around. Jerk #2 comes from a dysfunctional (mother in jail) family, so there is no calling home.
I am not happy to say it, but in my opinion Jerk #2 will not come around. He will only seem to at times. I would move fast to get him out. Those two kids can if they haven’t already totally ruin this class for the year. I had this scene last year and wrote about it extensively in the Pigs series which is a category in this PLC. Please read it. And when you are done you will agree that BOTH must go. They play off of each other no matter where they are seated. Write the letter and get ONE of them out now. This week! It’s hopeless. It cannot be done. Don’t try.
I read about your student and the basketball scenario. I’m not there yet as I picture him milking the attention from my less than stellar TPRS teaching performances. When that’s more background on the situation than really necessary. I just need to know if the jerks are seated with everyone else.
Well the basketball thing was rare. Really, we must know when to act to get them out. And then we must insist on the admin. support to do so. Or get the parent to pull the kid out. Just do it. Now. One of them or both, preferably, goes – both DO NOT MERIT the class bc they are not socially ready.
THANK YOU!
Sincerely,
Sharon