I hate children
Oh, the whining.
My one class of spazzes who never do their homework all just bombed a quiz today. A couple of them--ones who do work and/or listen in class--did fine. The rest BOMBED. One of them said that Abraham Lincoln, before he was a politician, was a MAILMAN. Someone else said a gardener. I feel like shooting myself. Hopefully it will be a rude awakening for them, and not an inspiration to give up completely.
This class, though. They make me feel completely incompetent. They are OUT of control. Mainly there are 3 instigators, and the rest are happy to follow along. Well I have to run. Any advice is appreciated.
posted by newoldschoolteacher @ 11:47 AM
44 comments
44 Comments:
Liz here from I Speak of Dreams. I wish I could come over & break up your frustration.
Testing:
" "Our study indicates that testing can be used as a powerful means for improving learning, not just assessing it," says Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III, Ph.D., an internationally recognized scholar of human memory function and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Washington University.
"Students who self-test frequently while studying on their own may be able to learn more, in much less time, than they might by simply studying the material over and over again," he adds. "Incorporating more frequent classroom testing into a course may improve students' learning and promote retention of material long after a course has ended." "
Press release here:
Press Release on Roediger and Jeffrey D. Karpicke's research
You might also look into the "Love & Logic for Teachers" approach. Gives you a handle on what to do with unmotivated or instigating students.
Introduction to Love & Logic
Introduction to the Love & Logic Classroom
Turn Your Words Into Gold
Sharing Control through Choices
(Oh, it's Liz here again, from I Speak of Dreams)
What? You mean Abraham Lincoln wasn't a mailman? What did he do before he was president? Theater critic? lol.
Poor baby. Don't shoot yourself. Someone has to learn 'em.
Carrie K, that expression is properly spelled larn 'em, I'd have you know.
On the behavior: While ABC analysis is typically used in individual situations, it might be helpful to let you focus on key sequences. Think of specific incidents: what happened right before (the antecedent), what did the student(s) do (the behavior), and what happened right afterwards (the consequence)? I know—usually you don't think of "right afterwards" as the consequence if you don't think there was a logical consequence. But try it for a few incidents in that one class and see if there's a pattern.
(I'll admit the Love and Logic series leaves me bewildered as pop psych usually does—some interesting tricks but incredible lack of good judgment in several cases.)
In terms of the quiz, I'd take the results low-key. In as quiet a way as you can compare the average score for this class to any other classes with the same course (if you have at least one or two others). Maybe just post the averages on the board without comment and go on. If asked, say, "Gee, I wish you folks had done better on the quiz. I'd really like to assign you better grades, and as soon as you earn them, I'll be happy to. Maybe next time!"
Good luck!
It's amazing isn't it? My son goes to a private, college prep high school and, even there, there is no shortage of stupid kids. Hell, some of the teachers qualify (in my book anyway) as stupid.
How to take care of the instigators:
The next time one of them starts something, punish the whole class with a quiz or something equally painful, making sure to point out why this is being done, and who the class can thank. Social pressure works in both directions, as does a peer punching them in the gut because they are tired of having to do a book report every day.
The class might be covering up for poor preparation (maybe that's a euphemism). Many students would rather seem like troublemakers than have their weaknesses exposed, so they will go along with an instigator who is providing protective disruptions. I would be careful of publicly confronting the baddies only because you might wind up losing the confrontation, thus feeding the monster. By the way, I knew a student who wrote on a test that General Sherman "burned the Atlantic Ocean."
Here is some
advice. I hope it helps.
Works for me.
"The next time one of them starts something, punish the whole class with a quiz or something equally painful, making sure to point out why this is being done, and who the class can thank. Social pressure works in both directions, as does a peer punching them in the gut because they are tired of having to do a book report every day."
Surely this can only work if the "good" students are in the majority, rather than the minority.
I'd hate to state categorically that this is a bad idea, but this kind of thing is a good part of what destroyed my enjoyment of school.
How do you think the good students feel when something like this happens? They play by the rules, work hard, and do everything they're supposed to and then get punished for something that is often completely beyond their control.
For the students who are not disruptive, and who do not play "follow the instigator" this is a good way to seriously damage a student's trust, and lead to a mentality of "Why should I try to do good if I'm just going to get punished anyway every time someone else acts up?"
i'm a 25 year old product of public schooling, am pursuing a phd in astrophysics at a top 5 school for the field, and have ZERO idea what abraham lincoln did before he was a politician.
don't be so hard on them. i'd feel bad about myself then.
"How do you think the good students feel when something like this happens? They play by the rules, work hard, and do everything they're supposed to and then get punished for something that is often completely beyond their control."
True, but they are punished in a long-term educational way by the disruption itself. And while they may not appreciate the consequences of having a teacher repeatedly stop class to deal with troublemakers, they are more likely to associate bad outcomes with the instigators when you give everyone work because of the troublemaker's actions. If the good students are in the majority, and they get upset enough, it's definitely in their control. They will end up policing the situation. Just my opinion.
nopey:
Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer in Springfield, IL before he was the president.
What I think he really wanted to do, though, was become an astronaut. Too much parental pressure, I guess.
Actually, Lincoln seemed like a pretty serious parent.
That's why he wrote this
beautiful letter to his son's teacher.
Uhh, the "letter" expresses a nice sentiment, but according to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Lincoln didn't write it.
http://www.illinoishistory.gov/facsimiles.htm
There you go, bursting my bubble.
Now which president are we gonna marginally respect?
Here are some nice things about education that were written or spoken about by Lincoln.
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/educate.htm
They make YOU feel incompetent! THEY ARE INCOMPETENT.
what's the world coming to...
If they never do their homework, maybe next time you give a quiz, make it 'open homework' (unannounced ahead of time) - that would reward the few who actually did prepare, and may give the rest pause for consideration. Hang in there, there is always one section that is rougher than the others.
I wish I had some advice for you. Unfortunately, there is little you can do. I think your experience shows how irresponsible parents are these days. No, it's not you! It's their parents! They should know how to behave BEFORE they enter your class.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Um...
Abraham Lincoln WAS a mailman. No really, I swear. He was postmaster of New Salem IL(actually appointed by Andrew Jackson), and the kid might well know that since most Abe Lincoln biographies written for young kids emphasize that he would carry letters for deliver in his hat.
Here is just one link -
http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/index.html
Interesting that EdWeek, plus all your commenters, all missed that. Worth going back to the kid with a mea culpa. He'll be tickled.
I have one student that couldn't identify a single state on a map of the United States besides the one he lives in. Sigh.....
I was one of the three instigators - 25 years ago.
Today, I work with kids who were like me: bored, from a broken home and without much of a vision. I help middle school boys work through their academic struggles and a lot of what I do is related to helping them emotionally, because I think that's where a lot of students' struggles come from. I'm not much of a believer in inherently stupid people; I think that in the great majority of cases, "stupid" adults were the victim of poor, assembly-line teaching. As a 40 year old man, I try to do what I can to correct that.
I'm sure it can be draining dealing with instigators. I actually incited a music teacher to quit in a spastic breakdown by teaching all my friends how to pass out in her class. Looking back, I realize what a mean, terror I was.
I also know that I was a boy with loser parents and not much love at home. Fortunately, I had teachers like you who actually cared about what they were doing and who saw my potential. I had a music teacher, a math teacher, two English teachers, a chem teacher and a bio teacher tell me in very clear and encouraging terms that they saw something in me that they believed in. They said I had a future but I couldn't get there by screwing around all the time.
Not only did they tell me these things, but they made changes to the way they taught. For example, Bill Bedford assigned his TA to teach me to work through the remedial math I had been placed in. Within 5 weeks, Karla and I had completed the entire year of remedial math and in the process becamse best friends. We walked down the aisle together at graduation.
That you feel so cynical toward the education about education is encouraging to me. It tells me you care about what you're doing and that you have independent thoughts about how to teach. As a former instigator, I want to call you to keep going, to see past the behavior and open yourself up to caring for your troublemaker students. It's easy to love the A student and harder to love the one who keeps shooting spitwads. But in a sense, the A students are going to do okay. I think (at least for me) the payoff is when you see a troubled student turn around and catch a vision for their lives.
My childhood had a lot of pain and I have had to work through a lot of emotional stuff to get where I am. I've been able to overcome a lot of crap and today I have a pretty good life. I am absolutely convinced that the teachers who loved me changed the arc of my life. There is no doubt in my mind that those teachers, as well as my first girlfriend, Beth, saved me from either suicide or prison. They all loved me. You can't write that into a lesson plan or a pedagogical theory. It's either there or it isn't.
I see that all your commenters have interesting approaches to dealing with the situation. But I believe deeply that at the core of who you are, you have *love* students and teaching. Sure, there are days when you hate teaching and kids. But when you give into that hatred long-term, that's when you become one of those teachers who don't give a shit and just go through the motions. Those kinds of teachers are a dime a dozen and are protected by their union so that they can ooze their indifference to their peers.
Please don't let yourself become that kind of teacher.
Dave
http://www.bimmergeek.com
There is a teacher in my school who calls students' parents right there in front of class and describes their behavior on the phone to their parents. I have yet to try it but I've seen it be very effective. Even if she just leaves a message the student still just doesn't know what to do.
T$
Just shoot the little bastards and save us all the problem of paying for their incarceration in later years.
i am an educator as well and feel your frustration. i googled i hate children just to type the words and see if there was anyone else in the world with such frustrations and viola...you appeared. hope you're hanging in there. keep fighting the good fight
If you're an educator and you hate children, perhaps it's time to try your hand at something else?? (Unelss, of course, you work with adults...) Just throwing it out there...
Also, it's VOILA...sorry, my editor's brain can't help itself.
Actually I think more people who hate children should become teachers.
The one thing that kids aren't learning anymore is that they are NOT the center of the cosmos and that everyone's life does NOT revolve around them.
The sooner the better, that they learn that not everyone exists to do their work, stroke them, build their self esteem, congratulate them for nothing, enable their stupidity and selifshness, etc. The sooner they learn that the world has people in it who really don't care about their precious widdle egos, the better. The sooner the better, that they learn that their lives are THEIRS to shape, and if they fail it's their own fault.
But it's easier to hire a caste of professional scapegoats. I worked for a state education agency for years, and I couldn't believe what was expected of teachers. The rank horse-shit, and the constantly escalating insanity. I don't know how anyone could do that for a living, and I met a lot of teachers who were burned out badly. They were expected to be full-time Soviet-style nannies...at ridiculous wages, considering. I met teachers who were being disciplined, fired, or sued...for failing to properly administer drugs to kids!! I couldn't believe it!
Teachers are supposed to TEACH, not play pseudo-mommy-and-daddy, or cut-rate nurse, or whatever. And let's get this straight: learning isn't always pleasant.
I was raised to believe that self-motivation was the #1 way to learn, and that was always my experience. But schools are so full of hand-holding, escalating needs for high-priced toys, enabling, nannyism--how can any kid learn in schools that are there for warehousing and coddling them, rather than challenging them and confronting them with their own learning-sabotaging shortcomings?
It only takes about 150 hours to teach someone to read at an eighth grade level. The rest is up to them. Similarly with reckoning, writing, etc.
But teachers aren't expected to teach reading or arithmetic. They're expected to teach SCHOOL, which is a curriculum of entitlement, dominance, and so forth. Teachers are expected to be giant walking teats, on which parents clamp the maws of their trophy offspring. Then teachers are expected to dispense from every pore whatever whimsical secretion the parents and children decide to demand.
I think you should be able as a teacher to go absolutely fucking ballistic on any class that doesn't take learning as seriously as you take teaching. But you can't do that; some gang of parents would run you out of Dodge. You're there to make their Entitlement Darlings FEEL GOOD.
Well, tell you what. I was taught that making others feel good for money was the world's oldest profession, and it wasn't called "teaching."
I really do feel for you. My approach with kids is always to treat them like cats: I don't like you, I don't care about you, and if you want my attention, you have to give me good reason for it.
I have had more good relationships with more kids than most appeasers and breeders I know. Kids want to earn my respect, because they know I'm not there to reward them for nothing at all. They want to grow and learn, they want to prove to themselves that they can face challenges and surmount them. It's a conundrum for me; I don't like kids. I don't want them anywhere near me. But they are always drawn to someone who challenges them rather than someone who coddles them. I've known a few individual kids I've liked as people, and they've grown into really awesome adults. But I liked them as the adults they could be--I liked them for their potential, and I challenged them to rise to it.
Which is the last point I'll make. It used to be that parents had the job of raising adults. Not raising CHILDREN. Unfortunately it seems that most parents don't know how to parent adults, instead cranking out more and more indifferent, stupid, selfish, lazy, ugly carbon units.
here s my comment. first please excuse me for my bad english-
ok. I m a privat teacher and i m 26, i started last year...
I teach music) I find myself sometimes prejudgejing some children - they just get on my nerves!
more I try to avoid it more I notice I like some of them more than the others
for example: I can t bear the look (a bit of exaggering ) of a child smiling stupidly at me like: Oh I play really good! - my grandmother says - who doesn t have a clue about music.
fine. I mean i find it so humiliating!
I ask myself do the children get on my nerves, because I see them becoming as stupid and without sense for music AT all as their parents.
Probably. But changing that- I don t think it s worth the money i m paid for! I mean educating their parents too. I mean, sometimes I just say to myself: why on earth sould I bother and try to learn them the sesetivity for music if they already think they know everyting and they just want me to listen them playnig some miserable...oh, sorry if I hurt someone with this hard words) Thank you for reading, xx.
Right this very minute, pain in the ass CHILDREN are pissing me off. Why can't they just go the fuck away and shut their damn holes???? Wish they would all just jump in the damn river. I hate their guts and their worthless lazy welfare druggie parents. What despicable forms of putrid life. Goddamnit.
i hate lazy kids,i think all kids over the age of 9 should have a job,i hate the child labor laws.i hate children who put their parents in a nursing home,when i'm old and usless no one gona put me in a home i'm gona get my 357 and go the the home in the sky.
I have been a teacher for 20 years, and though I have had some incredible kids, they are few and far between and getting fewer and farther between. It doesn't help that my school allows anyone to take honors-level classes whether they earn the right or not. The behavior of the children is degrading to the point of apes...there is a class next to the room I do my prep in, and I swear there is a zoo in there. If those were my kids, someone would die. I don't have kids. I can't imagine coming home to more of the same after a day at work...and I LOVE my job, despite the incredible frustrations.
My brother seems to think I have an obligation to take care of his kids. I don't know why people have sex and then put the result off on other people. You do the crime, you do your own time.
If you hate children, quit. The job is not for you. I was a middle and high school TA, could not last more than 8 months. I was miserable and didn't know why. Turns out, I despised children and hated my job. I quit, found a new job, and my life is complete again. People like us who hate children, should not work with them. They sense our hate, and stop trying.
Actually, I do a very good job with kids. When I am not at work, I prefer not to be around them, and I certainly don't want any of my own. I seem to have a way with them, despite the fact that I am not overly fond of them as a group. There are certain ones who are just exceptional, and these are the ones who drive me to better myself as a teacher...and this helps the other kids as well. I have "survived" for twenty years, I am not going to quit now just because I find a lot of kids to be noxious and have attitudes that they have no business having. I lay a lot of the blame on the parents of those kids. I made the decision not to have children. A lot of other folks have kids but are not interested in parenting them.
I'd smack every one of those little turds and hang them by their balls! Fuckin little monsters, I don't envy your job at all! I hate kids, they're spawns of Satan
kids seem to not apreciate ANY thing that anyone says or does for them.....but i've noticed that if you do it any way and sod 'em they do come to look back on things and reaize what little sods they were and that you tried.xxxxx
I love people who complain about others when they themselves are also wrong. You capitalize "mailman" like the kid is an idiot, when you are actually the ignorant one. Maybe the kids don't make you feel incompetent, maybe you ARE incompetent!
Kids are lacking comon sense, and that's what makes the job so hard. I had a kid who had two sharpened pencils, but did not have sense enough to use the pencil that was sharpened when the other broke...instead, she raised her and and said, "I need my pencil sharpened". I said, do you have a sharpened pencil...yes....SO USED THE MOTHER F******* SHARPENED PENCIL!!!!!
Man I hate children! They always walk their dogs onto my lawn and they pee all over my rose bushes! They egg my house on halloween, and vandalize my property. I just want to hurt those little hooligans. They haven't a care in the world, while many people work hard to earn a living, they waste. I think children should be outlawed!!
I feel your pain. I too have had problems with those children. Just last week, kids came to my front door and distracted me, while some others took BATS to my potted plants in my side yard. They had my award winning roses inside them. (Whick the also desicrated.) Luckilly, I found out and brought my SHOTGUN out and fired one BLANK shot. That scared them off. I even ran outside after them and threw broken pieces at them. I hit them a time or two!!
(Continued from above.) (Sorry there is a maximum of space you can take up.) I second the vote for children to be outlawed!!!!!
I work at a daycare, in the toddler room and I cannot stand the whining and crying,the constantly running snotty noses,the pants shitting/pissing(the joys of potty training),and the incessant fighting. I'm about to go postal. The messed up thing is I'm good at my job. While inside I'm usually seething with rage and frustration, on the outside I have to pretend that I'm actually enjoying putting up with these little pains in the ass. Trust me,if I could find a different job that would pay me as well and give me comparable benefits I'd be all over it.But,with our economy sucking the way it is and my lack of any kind of college education I think I'm stuck with the obnoxious little shits and their clueless parents for quite some time. Woe is me!
Maybe it's not the children.
I had a math teacher that was incompetent. She continually posted the wrong answers on the board.
For awhile, I waited and corrected her after class.
Then I started correcting her in class.
THEN I discovered I could make her cry... it was all down hill from there. I'm not quite sure what happened to her, she was replaced when the principal came in and I pointed out she had a instructor manual, WITH all the correct answers and she STILL couldn't write them on the board.
Then there was the history teacher, very strict, and very WRONG. A disagreement over some obscure facts, and I brought in an out of print account of the war in question. She actually borrowed it, and apologized to me in front of the class. We became good friends. I'd often spend a lunch hour with her... debating various parts of history, going over politics, or playing chess.
So, are your students stupid? Or did you accidently step on the toes of a bright student who now has it in for you?
Even if that student isn't popular, everyone likes to see an annoying instructor take a hit.
http://student.britannica.com/comptons/article-203867/Abraham-Lincoln
Do apologize to your monster, even if you have to track him/her down after graduation.
You cannot maintain control of a class if you REFUSE to accept that you could be wrong. Each time it happens, you lose some respect.
Eventually, no on will believe you, and you are no longer "teacher" but a giant joke.
This is scary. I truly thought that I was the only educator who hated children with a red-hot passion. And the rather long diatribe by Anonymous#? had long passages as though he/she plucked them from my own mind- frightening. But what I'd like to add to this discussion is where are the fucking parents!?! I quit teaching because I chose NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN!! So how did I end up with 180 of my own?! And not to mention that apples seldom fall far from the tree. The worst parent I had was himself mentally disturbed (and on medication)and he would be hopped up on his goof balls and bust off an email to my principal about what kind of tyrannical demon I was. And the asshole principal took this psycho parent seriously knowing full well he had a long history of this kind of 'stalker parent' behavior before!! It was all because of his special ed son who was apparently the Heir Apparent to the Family Psychosis and I was expected to give him an A instead of the D he earned!!
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