I am retiring this June from 30 years of teaching, 25 in public schools and 18 of that in special education working directly with students.
Boy, I wish I had a switch that I could just engage and have undesirable behaviors disappear. But I don't. I work with teenagers over long stretches of time (4 years usually), and the key is establishing relationships and talking, talking, talking. I also feed my students. I ask about their lives. We tell each other jokes.
In Oregon, we are not allowed to hit students. If we do, we lose our license, at best. But I do not need a law to tell me not to do it. For some reason I have acquired some humanity in my career, and some experience and skill, I hope. I guess smacking kids around is easier and quicker than that, but so is summary execution.
I'm 68. I was a good kid. Never was intentionally "bad". I'm sure I made mistakes, but not ones rising to the level of getting hit. But I did get hit by my dad, and belittled by my mom. My feeling when I was being spanked, or later slapped, was anger at my dad for taking his shit out on me. I knew he was hitting me because he was angry, not to make me into a better person. Hence the roots of my confusions. My parents are dead now, and I am glad.
My dad was only a little violent, and not gratuitously so, but my mother was depressive and overburdened by too many kids (4 born between 1961 and 1965), and she was emotionally abusive to us on that basis. I can look on her with some compassion, as she must have been trained up to be that way in those circumstances, but after having worked with significantly abused kids over the decades, I would say your reaction is pretty normal. Keep well.
Well for heaven's sakes, a hearing impaired child might be misbehaving or maybe, just maybe, there might be some bloody communication issue preventing them from complying with a teacher's request, can you imagine? Hearing aids fail. Glasses get dirty (and as someone who is both very visual AND low vision myself, best believe I NEED my glasses/contacts to understand what's going on around me.) People mumble instead of enunciating, and talk instead of providing written instructions, too.
Classroom discipline absolutely does not require corporal punishment. It also doesn't require shaming, name-calling, humiliation, or any other form of abuse. Hard to believe, I know!
Right in everything, but even more, kids w/o the conditions you describe act out as well, and often for hidden reasons. No food in the house. Abuse waiting at home. Criminal activity in the home. Domestic strife so that a kid comes in at 8:30 am and falls asleep at her desk.
Many times I have seen a kid sleeping, encouraged them to do their work, spoke with them about why they were sleeping, and let them sleep. Education ain't gonna happen if you're sleep-deprived anyway, and you may as well be a human being about it. That is the long game when it comes to behavior issues in school.
Exactly. Being antagonistic to students does not create an optimal educational environment whatsoever. Most kids are pretty content to get along and behave, in my experience, and when they don't it's usually about deeper issues that will not be solved by hitting them.
I have a doozy currently. He got suspended for tomorrow, but I will be having a long talk with him Monday. 18 y.o. very unrealistic about school, life, and outcomes.
Republicans are sadistic, sociopathic, authoritarian, Christo-fascist lunatics. This is exactly what we've come to expect from them. If they could impose the death penalty on children, they would.
So.......just to be clear here......you're going to spank a paraplegic on the butt? You know.....the one they are propped up on, in a wheelchair, because they have no feelings below the waist?.........Genius I tells ya......pure fucking logic there.......are you gonna have the kids classmates hold him/her up while you swat their unfeeling ass? Maybe as a REAL lesson, drop their pants or lift their skirt?.......morons......
Yup.......I just couldn't imagine the absurdity of beating a child who is physically disabled. The kids with mental issues is even worse.......You're supposed to be 'educators'........what exactly are you teaching abused youth by further punishing them?
Most of the kids I have taught do not present as disabled, rarely have physical disabilities (unless occasional "knucklehead" counts!), they have SLDs, relatively mild autism, ODD. It has still never entered my mind to strike or otherwise physically chastise them. It would be like slapping my cats around.
Teachers have the patience of saints.....My instructing days involved adult, Air Traffic Control Trainee's.........not a lot of time for patience. Either get with the program or find another profession.......Not everyone is cut out for the job.......no shame in that........but also no time to waste time....
I just finished reading Robyn's post and came down here to say exactly what you said. My parents didn't believe in physical punishment and I distinctly remember my mom saying "discipline means to teach not to punish" when I told her about my friend who got paddled in front of our 2nd grade Catholic school classroom (circa 1964).
Even if one doesn't believe, nay, know that hitting children, or anyone to punish them is wrong, bad, terrible immoral etc. The fact that it doesn't work should be argument enough. The fact that evangelical and dominionist youth and young adult are fleeing, in many cases cutting themselves off from everyone they have ever known, is proof enough.
“Big Brother, the state of Oklahoma, knows what's best for your child” including NOT to teach them the biology behind sexual health because the Lord knows that then they’d want to have sex.
Not a gotdamn one of these people should be allowed anywhere near kids.
In 1956, when my brother was 6 and attending a Catholic school run by an order of nuns who apparently only accepted applicants who said they hated children, was once given an assignment to draw a picture illustrating one of the Ten Commandments. He drew a picture of a little boy with a word balloon in which he was yelling "God damn you!" to his older sister, which is something he probably had been tempted to do many times in real life. The nun teacher was horrified and sent him to the priest, who spanked him on his naked butt, even though he was only following instructions. It's not as if he said it out loud. Then the priest terrified him with threats of eternal damnation into promising not to tell our parents about the spanking, and he kept it a secret for two years. When my mother found out, she removed him from that horrible school and sent him to public school, where they had a firm policy against corporal punishment. I think this experience had a lot to do with his later academic problems.
Ah, yes, good old Hosea Chapter 13, recommending discipline for those heretical Samaritans. "They shall fall by the sword, their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up." The Bible is so humane.
I am retiring this June from 30 years of teaching, 25 in public schools and 18 of that in special education working directly with students.
Boy, I wish I had a switch that I could just engage and have undesirable behaviors disappear. But I don't. I work with teenagers over long stretches of time (4 years usually), and the key is establishing relationships and talking, talking, talking. I also feed my students. I ask about their lives. We tell each other jokes.
In Oregon, we are not allowed to hit students. If we do, we lose our license, at best. But I do not need a law to tell me not to do it. For some reason I have acquired some humanity in my career, and some experience and skill, I hope. I guess smacking kids around is easier and quicker than that, but so is summary execution.
Al their favorite Bible quotations are from the Old Testament. For them, Jesus was a wimp. Blessed are the meek? Gimme a break!
Obviously they read the line as "Blessed are the mooks," because, man, just LOOK at what's going on.
I'm 68. I was a good kid. Never was intentionally "bad". I'm sure I made mistakes, but not ones rising to the level of getting hit. But I did get hit by my dad, and belittled by my mom. My feeling when I was being spanked, or later slapped, was anger at my dad for taking his shit out on me. I knew he was hitting me because he was angry, not to make me into a better person. Hence the roots of my confusions. My parents are dead now, and I am glad.
My dad was only a little violent, and not gratuitously so, but my mother was depressive and overburdened by too many kids (4 born between 1961 and 1965), and she was emotionally abusive to us on that basis. I can look on her with some compassion, as she must have been trained up to be that way in those circumstances, but after having worked with significantly abused kids over the decades, I would say your reaction is pretty normal. Keep well.
Well for heaven's sakes, a hearing impaired child might be misbehaving or maybe, just maybe, there might be some bloody communication issue preventing them from complying with a teacher's request, can you imagine? Hearing aids fail. Glasses get dirty (and as someone who is both very visual AND low vision myself, best believe I NEED my glasses/contacts to understand what's going on around me.) People mumble instead of enunciating, and talk instead of providing written instructions, too.
Classroom discipline absolutely does not require corporal punishment. It also doesn't require shaming, name-calling, humiliation, or any other form of abuse. Hard to believe, I know!
Right in everything, but even more, kids w/o the conditions you describe act out as well, and often for hidden reasons. No food in the house. Abuse waiting at home. Criminal activity in the home. Domestic strife so that a kid comes in at 8:30 am and falls asleep at her desk.
Many times I have seen a kid sleeping, encouraged them to do their work, spoke with them about why they were sleeping, and let them sleep. Education ain't gonna happen if you're sleep-deprived anyway, and you may as well be a human being about it. That is the long game when it comes to behavior issues in school.
Exactly. Being antagonistic to students does not create an optimal educational environment whatsoever. Most kids are pretty content to get along and behave, in my experience, and when they don't it's usually about deeper issues that will not be solved by hitting them.
I have a doozy currently. He got suspended for tomorrow, but I will be having a long talk with him Monday. 18 y.o. very unrealistic about school, life, and outcomes.
"Maybe some whacks, in the face, will help!" - insane people
Republicans are sadistic, sociopathic, authoritarian, Christo-fascist lunatics. This is exactly what we've come to expect from them. If they could impose the death penalty on children, they would.
So.......just to be clear here......you're going to spank a paraplegic on the butt? You know.....the one they are propped up on, in a wheelchair, because they have no feelings below the waist?.........Genius I tells ya......pure fucking logic there.......are you gonna have the kids classmates hold him/her up while you swat their unfeeling ass? Maybe as a REAL lesson, drop their pants or lift their skirt?.......morons......
Or a kid who is sullen and uncooperative...because they are already getting hit at home and that's what they expect from adults anyway.
Yup.......I just couldn't imagine the absurdity of beating a child who is physically disabled. The kids with mental issues is even worse.......You're supposed to be 'educators'........what exactly are you teaching abused youth by further punishing them?
Most of the kids I have taught do not present as disabled, rarely have physical disabilities (unless occasional "knucklehead" counts!), they have SLDs, relatively mild autism, ODD. It has still never entered my mind to strike or otherwise physically chastise them. It would be like slapping my cats around.
Teachers have the patience of saints.....My instructing days involved adult, Air Traffic Control Trainee's.........not a lot of time for patience. Either get with the program or find another profession.......Not everyone is cut out for the job.......no shame in that........but also no time to waste time....
Some of my learning days involved 7 weeks with a drill sergeant at Ft Leonard Wood, so I understand! Also the Defense Language Institute.
Re: patience, that has to grow on you or you leave the profession. To become an administrator usually, in my experience.
We had a saying in my profession, "controllers control, weak dicks supervise"
Never trust anyone who thinks "discipline" means "physical punishment". Those are actually two completely different concepts.
I just finished reading Robyn's post and came down here to say exactly what you said. My parents didn't believe in physical punishment and I distinctly remember my mom saying "discipline means to teach not to punish" when I told her about my friend who got paddled in front of our 2nd grade Catholic school classroom (circa 1964).
Even if one doesn't believe, nay, know that hitting children, or anyone to punish them is wrong, bad, terrible immoral etc. The fact that it doesn't work should be argument enough. The fact that evangelical and dominionist youth and young adult are fleeing, in many cases cutting themselves off from everyone they have ever known, is proof enough.
BANHAMMERED REDACTED BANHAMMERED REACTED REACTED
Want to make yourselves sick? Check out the Pearl's "To Train Up a Child". Lots of the Evangelical crowd use this.
Anyhow else wanna give these assholes a swirly?
Ta, Robyn. OK Republicans are some sick, twisted, creeps. Spanking is a sexual fetish, and hitting kids who can't fight back is really, really cruel.
I grew up in Oklahoma. They loved beating on kids in the 50s and 60s.
“Big Brother, the state of Oklahoma, knows what's best for your child” including NOT to teach them the biology behind sexual health because the Lord knows that then they’d want to have sex.
Not a gotdamn one of these people should be allowed anywhere near kids.
In 1956, when my brother was 6 and attending a Catholic school run by an order of nuns who apparently only accepted applicants who said they hated children, was once given an assignment to draw a picture illustrating one of the Ten Commandments. He drew a picture of a little boy with a word balloon in which he was yelling "God damn you!" to his older sister, which is something he probably had been tempted to do many times in real life. The nun teacher was horrified and sent him to the priest, who spanked him on his naked butt, even though he was only following instructions. It's not as if he said it out loud. Then the priest terrified him with threats of eternal damnation into promising not to tell our parents about the spanking, and he kept it a secret for two years. When my mother found out, she removed him from that horrible school and sent him to public school, where they had a firm policy against corporal punishment. I think this experience had a lot to do with his later academic problems.
Ah, yes, good old Hosea Chapter 13, recommending discipline for those heretical Samaritans. "They shall fall by the sword, their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up." The Bible is so humane.