What Great Teachers Do Differently? Ch. 5*

In What Great Teachers Do Differently by Todd Whitaker, chapter five discusses the idea of prevention versus revenge in relation to teachers and disciplining their students. It was interesting to me because Whitaker went into psychological detail about the fight between students and the teacher. For example, he told a story about having a classroom full of 25 students. The first 24 students behaved however the last student was not behaving at all. However he knew that the minute he treated the 25th student in a less than professional manner, regardless of behavior, the other students will side with #25. Slowly the other students will shift their behavior into modeling #25’s behavior leading to a misbehaving classroom. Even though I have only been in my classroom for four full days, I have not noticed any behavior issues. I can however relate this scenario to my practicum classroom from last semester. Last semester’s class had a lot of behavior issues. As the semester grew on I could tell more and more students siding with the behavior of their peers more so than the teacher. Friends of friends would start sticking up for the student who was clearly in trouble. Over time it ended up becoming one huge MESSY classroom full of lack of respect and attitudes. It really made me see what I DON’T want to happen in my future classroom.
“Angry Students are problem, not a solution” I really liked this quote but I do not see it applying to the classroom I am in now. We rarely have behavior issues and if we do it is because a student is talking during circle time. If that happens, my mentor teacher gives him or her a warning and nine times out of ten they don’t do it again. However this quote reminded me of the many times I have seen teachers get satisfaction out of punishing students. It’s as if they wanted the student to become mad and angry. How is an angry student a solution? It’s not. Try getting an angry student back on task or following directions…it doesn’t seem to work to well. I think there is a fine line between disciplining with respect and disciplining/making a student angry.