Students behaving badlly is nothing new, but each year the problem seems to get worse, especially with teenage students. Being a student counsellor I have to deal with these things very often. Earlier it was students skipping classes, then it became text messaging and now a days with internet connected smart phones, students do unimmaginable things. Sites like MySpace, Facebook have made the world like a dating platform. Interest in studies seems to have gone down and students like to play video games (Wii, xbox etc..).
With people immigrating from all over the world, classrooms becoming more and more diverse but it sometimes leads to other issues like kids from same background sticking together and not sticking too well with others groups. Parents on the other hand just fulfill all demands of their kids (genuine or not), but when it comes to descipline they are very defensive towards their child and cannot see their child getting punished.
Question: I would like to know your thoughts and things you can think or do to counter such student behaviour problems.
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I understand your frustration, there's been a constant decline in student discipline, kids feel they're free to do what they like and the parents are unable or unwilling to play their part. Unfortunately when the child fails its the teacher that gets the blame!
I couldn’t agree more with what you said. I am Greek and I work in a foreign language school. Things are supposed (only supposed) to be better in the private sector because students pay to learn a foreign language, but the comments I hear from teachers in the public schools are even more disappointing.
It is true that parents have no "authority" on their children and I believe this is the cause of the problem. They do what their children ask them to. A mother once confessed that she didn't know how to make her daughter stop watching so much TV. Couldn't she just turn it off and send her teenage daughter to her room to study- otherwise there would be no more pocket money or going out with friends? - am I too strict?
Instead of that parents buy their children the most expensive games and mobile phones as a reward for I don't know what...because the students surely don't deserve rewards for the poor work they do. I wonder why I assign homework. 80% of the students either don't do it or they copy it from others 10 minutes before the lesson starts. And when I inform the parents, the answer I get is that the child was tired, not feeling so well, had to study much and so on.
I also believe that children cannot be blamed for this situation. Firstly because they are children and its only natural for them to enjoy as much freedom as they can get. Secondly because they are not mature enough to deal with inadequate parents.
So in the classroom I collect the mobile phones before the lesson starts and I give them back when it finishes.(I wonder why students give me their mobiles and parents can't take the wiis from their children- which makes me believe that parents have a problem and not their children). I try to check homework not by just asking for the answers but by asking for justification as well - ask for the rule or the exception in a grammar exercise, for the phrase that justifies the answer in a reading exercise, for synonyms, antonyms or derivatives in a vocabulary exercise or even prepare a short quiz on the homework with different questions from the ones they had for homework. This way the ones who have worked on homework do some more things and the ones who have copied have to do something on their own. All these of course take up some time from the extra things we could do if everyone worked as they should, but it's better than nothing, isn't it?
I have also tried some humour to make students understand that real life is much more different than school life. I have put on the classroom wall some sayings I have found and I liked them: "if you think that your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss”,"life is unfair. Get used to it”; be nice to nerds”. Chances are that you will end up working for one of them".
As for the parents, I think that they should have some training on how to treat/handle/discipline their children....
Thanks for your thoughts, this is surely a common problem we face. I enjoyed this comment - "if you think that your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss"
For me, I think there is no magic stick that can help here. But, having a classroom contract in the beginning of the year, being as friendly, open-minded, flexible, serious, and strict as possible at the same time, and being well-prepared (lesson planning ) would of course help.
Setting the rules and explaining them to the students always work at the beginning of the semester. Students, when it comes to classroom environment, are much more clever than we think. At first, they monitor the teacher's attitudes toward an unpleasant situation (whether the teacher punishes or ignores, etc.). How you respond those kinds of problems is your first impression in terms of classroom management. Having reputed as a "moderate" teacher, I always tell my students that I can't stand seeing students texting with no interest in the lesson. I tell them they can leave the class without permission quietly and come back without knocking in case of emergency. I had thought that they can manipulate this situation, however, few students did it.
This mobile phone issue is something to be solved by the school administration, I think. Teacher can take limited precautions, it is the institution's administration.
I don't know how to deal with the misbehaving students. How to deal with the naughty students? what to do?
The part of the world I'm from, misbehaving children are shown the cane. As a grown adult I feel we have evolved pass this. Its now down to parenting and teachers working together on the persistent trouble makers. Without this will only get worse. Bad diet, long work hours combined with the more and more violent games will only make matters worse.
Society on a while has got to change, not just the child that is giving trouble.
Can I recommend a site run by Rob Plevin, it is a mine of useful information even if you choose not to buy any of his ebooks (and they are worth it!)
http://www.behaviourneeds.co.uk/resources/
Rob is used to dealing with extremely disruptive students (the referals) and he has aweealth of experience
I had read those book you mentioned. Some of the suggest way do work. However, it is still quite dependent on the student character and also family background
To Leaderboss -
There of a very fine line between misbehaving students and naughty students. I would think that the same classroom management rules will apply in both cases. Of course misbehaving students will have to be dealt with relatively more seriousness / strictness.