According to this article, 85% of Australian teachers send naughty students to the ‘Naughty Corner’, give them Timeout or tell them to leave the classroom.
This caused something of a storm on Channel 9’s the Today Show Facebook site after the Dr Anna Sullivan appeared on the show.
The reason? Dr Sullivan suggested that sending kids out of class may not be in their best interest and might in fact exacerbate the situation, and in the worst case may actually be in breach of their rights to dignity and an education.
Cue outrage. “What does she know?” “I blame the parents!” “Let’s see her in front of 30 kids” came the predictable comments.
But the fact is she’s right. Cue the comments at the end of this piece 🙂
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a little timeout here and there, and I acknowledge that more often than not the behaviour of a few impacts on the rights of the majority, and we can’t allow that to happen.
But the problem is, exclusion – whether informal such as sending kids out of class, or formal such as suspension or expulsion – becomes the primary strategy for many teachers in these situations.
I can assure you there are some kids who spend more time out of class than in it.
Is it their fault? Probably, but let’s not forget one important point here.
They’re kids. And the teachers are professionals.
This would be akin to doctors or lawyers sending tricky patients or clients out of their offices because they didn’t have the resources to deal with them.
I’m not bashing teachers.
The fact is many teachers and schools do not have the resources to deal with difficult students in an appropriate fashion, whether it’s lack of specific training, specialist staff or school counsellors, many schools are just doing the best they can.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Dr Sullivan has several good points and it will be interesting to see what comes out of the Behaviour in Australian Schools Summit next week.
Author: Dan Haesler is a teacher, consultant and speaker at the Mental Health & Wellbeing of Young People seminars. His website is: http://danhaesler.com/ and he tweets at @danhaesler
What a silly comparison a doctor or lawyer dealing one on one with a tricky patient or client to the teacher in a class of many. I don’t cast blame on parents , guardians, teachers or children .but I do look at some of the changes which have taken place in our society.
It is high time we started to look at the effects that violence in classrooms is having on the children who are trying to learn.They have become the forgotten majority in some schools.
Good for you!!!
When my son was bullied, his young and inexperienced teacher’s way of dealing with it (one option), was to move him into another class. When i told her that that would be isolating him from his friends, she waved her hands in the air and claimed that she didn’t know what else to do (cutting the story short). I guess dealing with the actually problem (the bully), wasn’t an option. The exclusion and much worse happened. In another school, a parent complained of a teacher – quite experienced – when students, who submitted their homework late, had it ripped up in front of them. The students were 8-9 years old and were told it was a life lesson. It was their first/second week of school for the year. Another child in a Catholic primary school was made to kneel in front of the teacher and look at her in the eyes with respect when speaking to her. … and yet, he was the child who was being bullied. Therefore, … the moral of the story is that even though teacher’s have completed several years of university and go into the classroom with information, what’s lacking is appropriate behaviour and unfortunately this problem IS widespread. However, i would also like to acknowledge that that there are others who are behaving wonderfully with children. We shouldn’t put blind-folds on and put this reality of inappropriate behaviour in the ‘too hard bin’. That’s what so many did with sexually abused children in the past. It’s time to show that we have moved forward and can accept problems, so that we help our children. How many adults do you know of who put up with such behaviour in the workplace? Would you say to yourself, ‘oh well, i just have another 2 years of this and then i’ll be moving on’… ??? School discipline is necessary, but we need to take a good look at what is actually happening and rewrite guidelines to protect our young and vulnerable.
When dealing with teenaged children who are unable to leave high school without impact on eligable benefits, the notions touted above come undone. What effectively occurs is that some 16-18 y/o’s continually disrupt the class for the remaining students. Teachers are not necessarily removing the ‘trouble makers’ from the class as a punitive measure but more so to enable those who attend with the intent of learning, to learn. There is no onus on 16-18 y/o students to actually demonstrate effort, instead they become obstinate and defiant yet the teacher is to remain professional. This is the repercussions of hiding unemployment figures by forcing students to remain in the classroom instead of more efficient, flexible and forward thinking pathways to employment.
Surely the issues are about the rights of many over the rights of one – and we are not talking disabilities here, as there is some funded support to target such student needs. Whatever approach, it needs to be effective, respectful and not time consuming for the classroom teacher – teachers are getting more and more things loaded on them and are not being provided with time and resources. Whatever happened to the recognition that teachers need think-time to teach and manage the broad range of classroom needs effectively?
I am a teacher and I believe that some form of timeout from classroom can be a positive thing on the proviso that it is limited and there is some form of follow up by the teacher. This means some policies and recording of events that is monitored. Timeout can be an important circuit breaker so that the disruptive behaviour of one students doesn’t impact negatively on other students or the teacher. We use a personal response sheet which students complete which gives them the opportunity to not only record their version of events but also to make a statement about other things that might have been influencing their behaviour. This can then be used as a basis for discussion between the teacher and student when there is likely to be less heat than in the pressure cooker of a classroom, where the dynamics of loosing face so often influences the decision making of both students and teachers.
You have raised some interesting points. William Glasser introduced the concept of withdrawal in the 60s. He describes it as choice, if a child is given a choice, stop disrupting, behave responsibly or you will be requested to leave the classroom. This teaches children to take responsibility for their choice and it needs to pointed out to them whilst they have a right to learn, they do not have the right to stop others from learning or teachers from teaching. Glasses discusses children learning to make safe responsible choices, choice theory. The doctor rarely has responsibility for more than one patient at a time. Using this approach, and given a little time children sum up the choice, withdrawal is not often required. This generation are smart and they want to be connected.
Oh Please! Human Rights!
246 million children are involved in child labour around the world right now.
About 300,000 children under 18 are armed and fighting in conflicts around the world right now.
And about 160 kids will starve to death during the time it takes me to write this email.
Teachers do what they have to do to get things right for the class they are teaching and sadly this often means kids with real issues are excluded. It is definitely a problem… but to even use the term ‘human rights abuse’ is to elevate this problem to realms which are not only insulting to those of us who do deal with these issues on a daily basis but also pretty lame when not supported by alternative, practical strategies which work, rather than the self important, theoretical research based, guff which currently dominates our education system.
Dr. Jon Carnegie