A little while back I was able to experience my first non-student half day. I now understand how teachers can end up the way some do after years of service.
Coinciding with the half day was a take your parent to school type day as well; so not only were the kids acting crazy, but the room was packed with parents.
In one of my classes, the majority of the students are what most would consider underperforming students. Personally I think it's counterproductive to throw all the slower students in one class, but that's beside the point. As the class was progressing, one of the students decided it was a good idea to start drawing on the back of a girls neck was a highlighter. This student who was drawing did not have his parent with him, but the student who was being drawn on did!
I was shocked a student would do that in front of another students own parent! Crazy kids.
I'm not sure if it's a problem that one kid is drawing on another. If they agreed to do it, and the highlighter is not harmful, and the parent is there and doesn't tell the kids no, then what's the problem? Role models for these kids are their parents, many of whom have paid someone else to draw a permanent design on their body in the form of a tattoo. Kids should be taught basic respect for themselves and others, of course. It also seems like the kids could be doing something more productive during school hours.
ReplyDeleteYou got me thinking about whether it's a good idea to put all the slower kids in the same classroom. On the one hand, it might be a disservice to both the quick learners and the slower learners to put them together in one room because the quick ones are being deprived of a chance do do more challenging work, and the slower ones are being pushed too fast to gain the basics. On the other hand, if a teacher can build in more and less challenging levels of achievement into one class, then each student can reach the level their capable of. I haven't though about this before, but it is an interesting topic.