essay problems

BTW, leadership is a demanding thing. Good leaders challenge their followers to to excell, to attack the most difficult problems, and succeed. Good leaders push their subordinates beyond mere minimums and demand superior results. They expect failure, but will not tolerate slackers. Good leaders integrate their followers into a team that believes in their mission above all else. Good leaders know their business better than their followers. Good leaders are not always loved, but they are respected and followed sometimes to certain death. Good leaders care more about their mission and charges, than being a "good guy". Good leaders insist upon strict discipline.

Now teachers aren't leaders in the same sense that an Infantry Officer is, but they still must remain in command and maintain discipline. They must demand more of their students than the students believe they are capable of. You are right, kids aren't soldiers, they are still being treated as children with no responsibilities. Could they be more if only they were expected to behave like serious adults? How is a teacher to achieve that short of levying hard punishment for inappropriate behavior? Teachers may be hated and respected at the same time. If a student closes their mind to the lesson, aren't they the ones who will suffer, aren't they the ones responsible for not learning? If I were a fifty year old ditch-digger, is it the fault of some teacher I had back in high school?

Adults have to be responsible for themselves, and the students in the classroom we are discussing need to learn that as quickly as possible.

Im trying to span the age chasm. When I try , I still have to strongly agree withAsherman and , we see that the request by the authorto "take sides" when only one side is being presented is , at the least, illogical.

Pursuit of hormones? Are you making an excuse for the disruptive behavior? The excuse is so lame. Please, such behavior, is inexcusable .Lets just say we strongly disagree and I suppose that there is a little bit of an attempt at humor (at least I hope so) on your behalf.

I like your point that grad students are trained in the art of "sucking up" Its so comically naive.
I really dont care whether my students are sucking up, Im not there to teach sales skills or to be forgiving of their tics. These are students going for an MS or PHd in a science and , if they want to make a contribution , the responsibility is to get there on their own. Nobodys gonna spoon feed em. Thhey realize it. When your at the front door of a career, your methods quickly take on an adult pattern.
No excuses for hormones, sel f proclaimed victim status, or my abilities as a teacher.,Youre stuck my friend, you must learn to deal with the situation at hand and produce. Otherwise, the only thing you will need to know in your career is to request whether or not a customer wishes fries with their order.

I wonder whether Giant... had informed us what subject this was?

A teacher should never "punish" students by making them write. This is a negative reinforcement that could possibly turn them off to writing in general. Writing is a process of discovery as well as a creative endeavor.

No one, however, can learn or share anything in a disruptive classroom. It would have been better had the teacher asked the class to do some free writing. That may have been the solution that would direct "attention to task". One may have discipline without controlling, and it begins with the individual working in concert with the group.

I always began the new year in a regular English class by asking the students to write on the topic: What would you like to learn? Then I constructed my lesson plans to include their concerns.

I just wonder if those who act up in class, or disrupt the flow of education, would do the same in the workplace (I happen to be guilty of both in my past, and I learned some hard lessons).

Now, there are bad teachers, and there are crappy bosses. That's life, and you have to deal with it. The good thing is, it doesn't last forever.

i'm not making excuses for disruptive behavior. i'm not asking pizza to rise up and reject authority. pizza isn't even rejecting authority, he has acknowledged the behavior was inappropriate. and, yes, i was being tongue-in-cheek about the hormones, even though it is true. and although this doesn't apply to pizza, i believe it's essential to not blindly accept authority.

we are not automatons, and classroom life provides an essential, although limited lesson on how to proceed in life. a lesson learned for pizza, sure, he will have to take it, but denying pizza the right to be ticked off and complain about it is cutting off a chance to work his way through it.

the world is not so black and white ...the kid is pissed off, give him some room to get over it. working through problems, as small as they seem, builds on larger skills. and i am impresssed that pizza would consult a grown-up forum for some views. regardless of his "writing skills", the wheels are turning, i give him a lot of credit for doing so.

Good evening...I went back and read this entire thread and found it quite fascinating. I doubt that the original poster is still here. It's Saturday night, after all, and the hormones are probably raging.

I come down, for what it's worth, with Farmerman and Asherman. Some of the critics of the teacher used words like "idiot" and "immature" and "bitter."

I would choose the word "frustrated." God, it must be tough to face a roomful of largely disinterested kids every day, or, worse to face a roomful of kids where some are interested in learning but nothing gets done because of the actions of a few.

And Letty, my friend Letty, is right. Writing should never be a punishment.

johnboy

I am totally with Letty and rjb regarding the writing issue, and the frustration issue. <Sigh> I was lucky enough to be dubbed 'gifted' as a child, so even when I caused trouble, it was generally forgiven, with warnings about how I was disturbing the learning process of the other students. I can't imagine the pressure that teachers are under today, and I was in high school relatively recently, compared to many here on A2K. The current realities of the school system are way beyond what I went through, just 15 years ago, give or take.

I cringe at the negative coloring that the assigned essay seems to be taking on. I did use the term "punishment", shame on me to use such a non-pc term. The assignment certainly was regarded as "punishment" by the class, and probably even by the teacher to some extent. Does that make it necessarily bad? pavlovian conditioning is just as effective as Skinner's reward protocols. One rewards good behavior, and punishes undesirable behavior. Since we no longer condone corporal punishment, what can a teacher do to discipline an unruly class? Assigning extra work seems perfectly alright to me. The students may hate having to give up a night at the local hangout to write the essay, but it doesn't follow that the students will forever after hate, loath and avoid writing just because they had to do an extra assignment. In fact, though the students may feel really bad about having to write this essay, it will force them to practice a skill that they normally already avoid. More writing is far more likely to sharpen the students abilities, and that in turn will make future writing assignments easier.

We don't know what the subject of the class was. If it was English, then the more writing assigned the better. Let the students write a minimum of two pages everyday, and have the papers corrected by other students in class as suggested by one writer above. Require four book reports per semester, from a short list compiled by the teacher. Have a weekly spelling quiz. As part of mid and final examinations require the students to diagram a series of complex sentences. The term paper should be around six thousand words, and maybe one or two students out of the class MIGHT receive an "A" for their effort.

I like the idea of assigning a large amount of challenging reading in every subject taught, and a great deal of writing on topic. No matter what the subject, the same rigorous standards for proper grammar and spelling should apply.

If students were better prepared before entering the University system, the whole educational system would benefit, along with the individuals and society as a whole. I'm afraid that few high school students would be lining up to enter my classes, but those who did would emerge better for the experience. I really, really feel for those who bite the bullet and agree to teach below the college level. Farmerman's got the cream, the graduate students who hopefully have properly prepared themselves to begin really learning. In grad school I had classmates whose skill levels were amazingly poor. One woman could barely write the language, yet she's out there today with a Master's level degree making the rest of us look bad. How many others have just slid through the system without learning even the most fundamental skills expected of educated people?

Good morning, all.

RJB, Nice words to see in the morning with coffee.Thank you.

Cav, Luck has nothing to do with your ability and creativeness. What you did with it, nevertheless, is a credit to your gift.

Asherman, non pc? Well, perhaps I should have said, ".....all are punishED..". Frankly, I don't care for the Behavior Mod approach.
There are many ways to discipline students who perpetually disrupt. One way is in- school suspension with a mentor. I found that most young people who were problematic, were so because they didn't understand what was expected of them, or they didn't grasp the material. Being the talented painter that you are, I am sure you appreciate divergent thinking.

Ah, but if you punish the disruptors, in this case the entire class, you run the risk of having them associate the punishment with school; thereby tempting them to drop-out of the system altogether. LOL.

Of course, I appreciate the ability to see things differently. I've gotten rich out of my knack for seeing the world "from outside the box". However, before you can really exploit divergent approaches you have to learn what the conventional is, what the rules are that govern things. We aren't born knowing how to solve differential equations, but they are essential in theorizing the nature of the universe. Education exposes us to a wider world, one where the center of gravity is often far from our local and subjective experiences. Education is ultimately the leveler. In this country a person can become anything they want, within some constraints. The blind seldom become world famous surgeons, and I know of no great painters who were color blind and had poor hand/eye coordination. However, an impoverished orphan of minority background can rise to become a University president, just as the heir to a famous and wealthy family can die broken in the gutter. It certainly helps to be mentally quick and lucky, but hard work, self-discipline, patience and academic excellence works almost every time.

Whether we believe in behavior modification, or not, that is the essential purpose of all education. Untaught and untutored, children would grow up wild, as in the famous cases of wild/wolf children. In a similar vein, a mountain climber may not believe in gravity, but a missed step has the same result no matter what they believe. Children adopt and adapt to their surroundings and strive hard to meet the expectations of their parents and other adults within their day-to-day experience. If the child is not disciplined or inspired to improve by those significant adults, then they will most likely adopt whatever values are handy. The key to personal betterment, whether it be the acquisition of money, power, or fame, is education. Education can hone a childs abilities and inspire them to become productive members of society. However to quote the old saw, "you can lead a horse to water, but not if he's a donkey". No, no that isn't it. LOL

I am inbetween Letty and Asherman on this issue. What I would like to see are smaller classes, where even the most disruptive student can be dealt with fairly. I think the move to huge classes in poor environments just leads to bad focus for the students, and flowing naturally from that, bad behaviour. Unless a student is motivated to personally approach their educator and express true interest, many just simply miss the gifts of education that Asherman so eloquently describes. It's a simple matter of beuracracy, which makes it doubly sad that we are even talking about this issue. Somewhere between Letty and Asherman's opinions on punishment is a happy medium of 'benevolent wrist-slapping.' While a disruptive student should know that they are being punished, they should be encouraged to go on with their studies at the same time. It takes very intuitive, creative teachers to do this, and they are few and far between these days.

I think everyone here has made some good points. It is now up to G.P. to think over the postings, and decide for himself what he wants from the public school system, and what the system requires of him. Too bad that standardized testing has become so important in determining who is worthy and who is not.

u guys r soooo funny, it was just a stupid essay...by the way, i go to a private school, there's 15 kids in my class, and i do know how to suck up,and that's what i did. I gave her what she what she wanted to read, that we were wrong, and we shouldn't and wouldn't do it again. Though i did feel like telling her that my behavior was unacceptable because it wasn't worth it to be good and write essays for no reason as apposed to being bad a writing an essay for a good reason. Oh well, thnx

im a she by the way and it was English

I see that english is not one of your first order accomplishments. Is it, by any chance, a second language?
Perhaps, no this would be a bit radical, you could pay attention to the subject at hand and refrain from whining about the teachers shortcomings when its obvious that shes probably operating under an incorrect assumption that you are capable to perform with at-least a minimal competence.
Boy will she be surprised when she reads the essays.

I realized we were silly. Do I get extra points?

One thing you should be thankful for is that there are only 15 students in your class. I was just as much of a smartass in high school as you are. May I pose a suggestion: Why not talk to your teacher about your feelings regarding this 'stupid' essay? You never know, teach might be pleasantly surprised. That is, of course, if your essay isn't written in 'internet-speak' like your posts.

lol, it's only the way I type