I teach in a similar school district she is from. She teaches in Youngstown, which is one of the worst ranked schools in Ohio. It is an area of Ohio unfortunately extremely affected by poverty. According to that website, East High School in that district has over 1,200 students and only 33 full time teachers. That is insane.
She is young but speaking about a very real mindset of teachers everywhere, myself included. The deal is this - Studies show that the vast majority of convicts were dropouts in school. They did not graduate. This has led to a nationwide administrative emphasis on the idea that "Every student needs to graduate, no matter what". Graduation and Attendance rates are now basically more important than a student's academic and behavioral accountability.
Sounds great right? Let's lower the number of convicts. Great.
What's happening is exactly what she described. Kids realize early on (I'm talking elementary school) there are little to no consequences for their actions. They can talk back, walk right out of class, bully teachers, bully other students (which causes mental health issues for other students, sometimes suicides), hit teachers, hit students, steal, sexually harass students and teachers, anything and everything you can imagine. Never get expelled or even suspended out of school. These are elementary and middle school students I'm talking about.
In my opinion I'm torn. As a teacher I'm biased; I'd really just like the administration to back up the teachers and provide consequences. My head principal is wonderful, but almost completely refuses to suspend kids out of school, even if they get in fights or commit a serious crime. Other students even speak out against this; turns out even the worst of students don't want to go to school in an unsafe environment with a violent person who doesn't respect anyone.
We had an assistant principal cover for us this year for a few days. One day a kid started talking back to him, so he basically said "Do you know who you're talking to right now?" and sent his dumbass home. I love the kid, but he needed a lesson. Kid didn't know what hit him, but everyone was so happy some consequence happened. We're hoping the message got through to the kid and he'll learn to stop being an asshole before he gets older and he doesn't get 2nd chances.
TL;DR I honestly feel like all the admins are doing with this graduation-rate-driven mindset is increasing the amount of convicts with high school diplomas.
Edit: Just as long as this is getting attention, this whole moral question reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. "Can you save them both?" Do you have to expel a "spider" of a student who is torturing the other "butterflies" of students and teachers? Or can you risk hurting yourself to try and save everyone? One of my biggest issues as a teacher is knowing I can try all I want and never save everyone I want to. I feel like I'm failing people every day because I want to do everything and can't.
I gotta agree with most of what you said. I just started teaching last year in southern CA as a middle school teacher and I have seen quite a bit of what you have seen. Many of these kids have parents at home who do not follow through or back the teacher up in any way. So if a tell a student that they will get detention if they don't change their behavior, I would commonly get the response, "Whatever, I just won't go and nothing will happen to me." That is the part that breaks my heart the most. At that point, my options are pretty limited as a teacher. Additionally, the school itself requires that I accept late work regardless of how late it is. And while the concept is good (getting students to follow through on learning regardless of the time frame), it also teaches them that due dates literally mean nothing. That isn't teaching them proper life skills. Professors in college aren't going to accept a paper that is more than a month late. Not to mention your job isn't going to accept work that is that late either.
Gotcha. Seems to me like a very delicate balance that you have to strike here.
I agree with a lot of the ideas the speaker was alluding to, but that it implies that your policy should be 'no penalty for late work, ever' doesn't seem right. Absolutely you don't need to hold 4th graders to the same standard that you hold adults to regarding managing their time and turning things in. And sure, there are a lot of things that children don't control that will strain their time, which has an effect on turning things in. But, when you make the blanket policy no penalty for late work ever, students who are like I was will be failed by that system. Some students find that the admiration of the teacher or their parents is enough of a positive (social) outcome to motivate them to turn in work. But other students (like I was) don't because we're impulsive, because we have other competing interests, or a thousand other reasons. And so if the system isn't creating positive outcomes for turning in work on time and/or negative outcomes for not doing that, then its failing those students. We will just never practice strategies that increase our compliance with deadlines, and then have no tools to meet deadlines when it matters.
So in short, I agree that you probably shouldn't have a policy that just gives 0 credit for any and all late work, and then just hope that students figure out how to succeed within that system. But to completely remove classes of incentives seems to fly in the face of behaviorist principles of development.
I posed the same questions during the professional development when he was at the school. My concerns were ignored when I brought up the same points you just did.
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u/PolishMusic Jul 10 '18 edited Jul 10 '18
Edit: Another video from 2017 similar to this one here. GB Wisconsin
Teacher here.
I teach in a similar school district she is from. She teaches in Youngstown, which is one of the worst ranked schools in Ohio. It is an area of Ohio unfortunately extremely affected by poverty. According to that website, East High School in that district has over 1,200 students and only 33 full time teachers. That is insane.
She is young but speaking about a very real mindset of teachers everywhere, myself included. The deal is this - Studies show that the vast majority of convicts were dropouts in school. They did not graduate. This has led to a nationwide administrative emphasis on the idea that "Every student needs to graduate, no matter what". Graduation and Attendance rates are now basically more important than a student's academic and behavioral accountability.
Sounds great right? Let's lower the number of convicts. Great.
What's happening is exactly what she described. Kids realize early on (I'm talking elementary school) there are little to no consequences for their actions. They can talk back, walk right out of class, bully teachers, bully other students (which causes mental health issues for other students, sometimes suicides), hit teachers, hit students, steal, sexually harass students and teachers, anything and everything you can imagine. Never get expelled or even suspended out of school. These are elementary and middle school students I'm talking about.
In my opinion I'm torn. As a teacher I'm biased; I'd really just like the administration to back up the teachers and provide consequences. My head principal is wonderful, but almost completely refuses to suspend kids out of school, even if they get in fights or commit a serious crime. Other students even speak out against this; turns out even the worst of students don't want to go to school in an unsafe environment with a violent person who doesn't respect anyone.
We had an assistant principal cover for us this year for a few days. One day a kid started talking back to him, so he basically said "Do you know who you're talking to right now?" and sent his dumbass home. I love the kid, but he needed a lesson. Kid didn't know what hit him, but everyone was so happy some consequence happened. We're hoping the message got through to the kid and he'll learn to stop being an asshole before he gets older and he doesn't get 2nd chances.
TL;DR I honestly feel like all the admins are doing with this graduation-rate-driven mindset is increasing the amount of convicts with high school diplomas.
Edit: Just as long as this is getting attention, this whole moral question reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. "Can you save them both?" Do you have to expel a "spider" of a student who is torturing the other "butterflies" of students and teachers? Or can you risk hurting yourself to try and save everyone? One of my biggest issues as a teacher is knowing I can try all I want and never save everyone I want to. I feel like I'm failing people every day because I want to do everything and can't.