The plight to stop children from bullying others is a hard enough task, What makes it even more difficult, is the fact that the very same people entrusted with controlling the issue are bullied themselves:
BULLYING of staff is rife within Australian schools, with parents and students among the top perpetrators, research reveals.
A staggering 95 per cent of educators claimed they had experienced at least one of 42 bullying behaviours identified by the researchers.
The most common was personal confrontation or professional destabilisation, often resulting in a deterioration of mental and physical health.
The new book Bullying of Staff in Schools – to be launched by former defence force chief Peter Cosgrove tomorrow – examines bullying where an adult is either the perpetrator or the target.
Researchers Dan Riley, Deirdre Duncan and John Edwards surveyed 2529 employees at schools across all sectors. Respondents reflected the national profile of 83 per cent female and 27 per cent male educators.
SCHOOL bullying victims have received almost $1 million in compensation from the Department of Education since January last year.
MORE parents are becoming involved in cyber-bullying, taking up disputes involving their children, a federal parliamentary committee has been told.
Two-thirds were teachers – more than 50 per cent had 21 years or more teaching experience – one in five executives and one in 15 principals.
According to the research, 81 per cent experienced bullying from parents, and 79 per cent named colleagues, closely followed by executives.
Students were named as bullies by 75 per cent of respondents, about seven percentage points higher than principals.
The principal was identified as the most persistent bully, followed by members of the executive and colleagues.
Educators said the most common form of bullying behaviour was questioning decisions, judgment and procedures, followed by tasks set with unreasonable or impossible targets or deadlines, and then being exposed to an unmanageable workload.
This highlights the uselessness of bullying policies and programs. For us to get on top of this problem, we must address bullying of all natures to all parties. Until the culture of bullying is remedied from the Principal down, our children have no chance!
1- Pay attention to your students’ interests Now that I’ve been teaching 10 years and I’ve mastered my subject area and the pedagogy of how to teach and reach every child’s learning style, I’m able to focus on the interpersonal things that make a big difference.
Administrators, school boards, and districts may see numbers, but numbers are not children. No child is a number. Children have names and hobbies and interests and family lives. Children are individuals and it is my job as a teacher to help them find their unique talents. I want to be the one that helped them on their journey of self-discovery.
2- Tell your students what they need to hear not what they want to hear. I’m not here to be popular, I am here to teach. I am here to love these kids and to do what is right by their future selves. I believe I have succeeded when my students come back in 10 years and thank me. Sometimes they think I’m tough now and they groan, but I know that I’m doing right by them.
3- Take time to think about individual students. One of my heroes is the director of our learning lab here at Westwood, Grace Adkins. Every weekend she carries home a folder with the learning profiles, test results, and current work of 3 children who she works with in the lab, and she has been doing this for 60 years. She studies her students like a college student studies a textbook. She has doctors, lawyers, and bankers who credit her with helping them learn how to learn.
4- Learn to teach using many modalities. Lecture may be ok some of the time, but it is never ok to do this all the time. Good teachers learn about pedagogy, the methods used to teach. Yesterday, I had a student dress up in a chef’s outfit with a mixing bowl and a recipe book with labels on everything to teach how microprocessors work. When I finished, my students said, “that is easy to understand.” A good teacher can demystify a complex topic and make it simple to understand.
5 – Let your passion come through. If you love your topic, it will come through in your voice, your body language, and everything you do. There are times I’ve loved one subject more than another, but I can always get excited about teaching a child something for the first time that I know is valuable. I think it is important to let your own personality come through in your teaching.
The greatest challenge of teaching is reaching as many children as possible. Touching every student is an impossible task — but every moment in our lives as educators brings new opportunities.
I absolutely love this list. I think they have nailed some of the most essential methods for maintaining a strong connection between teacher and student.
People who draw attention the benefits of teacher/student Facebook communication miss the point. There is no doubt that there are some fantastic innovations through social media that would allow teachers to respond to the educational needs of their students. But all benefits go out the window when one considers the dangers.
High school teacher Jennifer Kennedy has a prepared response for students who send her “friend” requests on Facebook.
No. Or, at least not until they graduate.
It’s a rule she said she shares with fellow teachers at Sacramento New Technology High School.
Increasingly, school district officials across the region and throughout the country are coming up with their own guidelines for what kind of online and electronic communication is acceptable between teachers and students.
“We have a generation of kids who communicate this way,” said Kennedy, who teaches sophomores and seniors. “If you say absolutely no Facebook or texting, you are cutting off an important relationship with students.”
In districts with policies against such behavior, officials have said social media sites blur the line between the professional and private lives of teachers. And then there are the rare but widely reported allegations of abuse initiated or intensified through social media.
These allegations of abuse spoil any chance teachers and students have of communicating via social media sites. Perhaps this if for the best.
* Stop students putting their hands up to ask questions – it’s the same ones doing it all the time. Instead introduce a random method of choosing which pupil answers the question, such as lollipop sticks, and thus engage the whole class.
* Use traffic-light cups in order to assess quickly and easily how much your students understand your lesson. If several desks are displaying a red cup, gather all those students around to help them at the same time.
* Mini-whiteboards, on which the whole class simultaneously writes down the answer to a question, are a quick way of gauging whether the class as a whole is getting your lesson. This method also satisfies the high-achievers who would normally stick their hands up.
* A short burst of physical exercise at the start of the school day will do wonders for students’ alertness and motivation. As any gym addict or jogger will tell you, it’s all about the chemicals released into the brain.
* Ditch the obsession with grades, so that pupils can concentrate instead on the comments that the teacher has written on written classwork.
* Allow students to assess the teachers’ teaching – they are the ones at the sharp end, after all. Letting pupils have a say is empowering and, if handled constructively, is highly enlightening.
I particularly like tip 5. We have become far too obsessed with grades. Comments from the teacher are a much better way of helping children achieve.
What ideas have you put into place that have improved the atmosphere of your classroom?
I commend head teacher Andre Sohatski for not only standing up for himself and his reputation, but also for representing the downtrodden teachers and students victimised by scandalous bullying websites proliferating across the web.
Web sites like RateMyTeacher.com allow students to post salacious accusations and damaging insults. These sites, together with sites that allow students to slander other students such as Little Gossip have been allowed to remain unhindered under the guise of freedom of speech.
Until now …
Andre Sohatski, headteacher of Priory School in Dorking, Surrey, took action after being told by his pupils that children were being targeted on the website Little Gossip with homophobic, racist and sexist abuse.
The site contains abusive and explicit messages written by schoolchildren that can be rated “true” or “false” by their peers. It allows them to name their “targets” but the user remains anonymous.
Mr Sohatski called for the site to be shut down and said it could cause “really big problems,” for children.
“I think it’s irresponsible. It is a form of internet bullying. Any kind of comment posted anonymously about somebody is basically unfair and sometimes cruel,” he said.
Police said they would investigate the US-based website, which has previously faced heavy criticism, and said the consequences of online bullying were “worrying”.
I am a big believer in the freedom of speech. I can accept that people have the right to vent about any professional within certain boundaries. When a student slanders another student or a teacher with homophobic, racist, sexist or defamatory insults it is fair to say those boundaries have been well and truly crossed.
As a child who started slow and only came into my own after school, I have always been determined to help slow starting students find their feet as quickly as possible. It is my belief that the classroom teachers can turn the fortunes of a slow starting student around.
Three-quarters of children in England who make a slow start in the “Three Rs” at primary school fail to catch up by the time they leave, data shows.
And more than a third (39%) of pupils who make a bright start are no longer reaching advanced levels when they leave.
The government’s school league tables data also shows 9% of primary schools do not meet its floor standards.
Overall 74% of pupils met the required levels in English and maths.
Some of those kids that are allowed to fall through the cracks are victims of poor teaching. Often the slow start comes about because the learning style of the student differs to the way the information is conveyed by the teacher.
I think it’s a major cop-out to let the slow starters continue on their merry way without giving them the intervention they so desperately need.
If your school is being effected by intoxicated students, why shouldn’t you be allowed to do something about it?
I am very passionate about the importance of firm but fair leadership, especially when it comes to cleaning up a school’s culture and environment. Coming to school drunk is completely unacceptable and should not be tolerated.
Whilst it is never ideal for a Principal to make his/her students take a breathalizer test, doing nothing about the problem is far less ideal.
A high school principal in northern British Columbia has been asked to stop using a breathalyzer to test students in school for alcohol use.
A youth said that she and a friend were suspended from Fort St. James Secondary School last week after a blood alcohol screening test showed traces of alcohol.
Civil rights activists call the incident extraordinary and disturbing, but the Ministry of Education has no policy on the use of breathalyzers in public schools.
Kecia Alexis, a first nations student in Grade 11, said she and the other student were suspended after principal Ken Young confronted them when they arrived at school late after lunch.
Both agreed reluctantly to take the test after being threatened with suspension. Ms. Alexis, who said she hadn’t been drinking, said the device gave two “error” readings before she blew the lowest reading, a blood alcohol level of 0.01. (For drivers, the “warn” range for a blood alcohol level is 0.05 to 0.08, while a “fail” is over 0.08.)
Ms. Alexis said she argued with the findings, “but he said he doesn’t talk to students who are drunk. I said, ‘I’m not drunk.’”
She was given a three-day suspension. Despite high drop-out rates for first nations youth, Ms. Alexis returned this week determined to finish her schooling. She said she wants to be a teacher.
Civil rights activists can be a pain in the neck and this is a prime example of their constant interferences. When kids turn up to school and are suspected of being under the influence, it is surely the Principal’s right to do something about it. Breathalizing establishes that there is a problem and therefore fairly allows the Principal to metre out appropriate consequences.
It’s not as if a breathalizer test is invasive or painful. It’s not a blood test or vaccination – just a deep breath.
By not allowing Principals to effectively deal with the problem, civil rights activists are giving tacit approval to kids who decide to turn up to school under the influence. How is that a good thing?
I am not one to use therm “addiction” lightly. Many would dismiss video game addiction as merely a bad habit or a product of an anti-scocial personality, but it is very real.
Video game addiction can take over a child’s life and deeply affect their relationships, schoolwork and daily routine. With role-playing games such as World of Warcraft now in vogue, the video game addiction has become far more serious. Because these games have no designated end point, the game goes on indefinitely. This means that kids struggle to put the controller down in order to eat, sleep or even go to the toilet!
In fact, in 2007, a Harris poll found that 8.5% of youths between the ages of 8 – 18 in the United States could be classified as video game addicts.
“The excitement, the thrill and the challenge, for some people gets greater and greater, and then it takes on a life of its own.” Dr. Anna Bacher, a therapist in Sarasota, treats patients with addictions — including those who have a hard time putting down the controller. “It can go to the extreme, where they stop sleeping, they stop eating, the person becomes irritable, lethargic, depressed, highly anxious and very difficult to be around.”
It is absolutely essential that parents are aware of the consequences of an addicted child before the odd game of World of Warcraft and games of its type, become an obsession. Parents should not feel that copious hours in front of the computer amounts to innocent fun.
Yes, gaming addiction is better than drugs. But not as much as some parents may think.
I have never cried in front of my students. However, in my first years of teaching, there were times when I felt completely out of my element and had to keep my resolve and try by best to pull through.
I’ve just read a brilliant piece by Caitlin Hannon, a first year teacher, whose introduction to teaching reduced her to tears. And who can blame her?
I broke a cardinal rule of teaching several times last year: I cried in front of my students.
Sometimes it happened out of frustration. Just as often, I was overcome during very honest conversations about the struggles my students face within and beyond the school building. At least twice the tears were brought on by uncontrollable laughter at a student’s joke.
As a first-year teacher, I figured tears (of some kind) were inevitable.
I knew I wanted to make a difference, and I thought that difference needed to start in the classroom — not in an office as a policymaker, with little or no connection to, and understanding of, what happens inside schools.
This desire, and my nontraditional education background, led me to Teach For America, a program that trains recent college graduates from various backgrounds to teach in public schools. I spent my first year teaching English at Tech High School, which served a predominantly low-income, minority population. This year, I am teaching seventh-grade language arts at Emma Donnan Middle School.
By the end of that first year, I realized that the life I’d changed the most was my own.
Who is prepared to read a child’s disclosure of abuse in a journal entry?
Who is an expert at helping a student handle the loss of several close family members in a bout of gang violence over the weekend?
I experienced both of these scenarios and more during my first year, and it’s hard to imagine a traditional route to the classroom making it any easier to deal with such heartbreak.
Above is just an excerpt of the article. I encourage you to read the entire piece. It strengthens my long-held position, that teachers are not fully prepared for the rigours of a classroom due to the failings of the teacher training programs. I also feel that new teachers are left to their own devices when they really need a non-judgemental mentor to help show them the ropes and counsel them through the tough times.
Ms. Hannon may not have had her last cry at school, but her passion and teaching philosophy suggests that she is going to have a great future. Her students are going to be the great beneficiaries of her blood, sweat and, yes, tears …
Students across Australia, and dare I say it worldwide, are sick of constantly being graded. Gone are the days when a child can learn to love a given subject through observation, experience, discussion and self-evaluation. Now every learning focus leads to the ultimate test of nerve – a test.
Standardised tests have absolutely ruined the enjoyment of learning. They reinforce a pecking order which is not beneficial for children. The constant grading of children make kids who try hard but struggle to perform, feel dumb and useless. It has taken over classrooms, with teachers too worried about the implications of their class doing badly to teach the curriculum the way it was designed to be taught. Instead, they are forced to teach to the tests. This involves months of practice exams. How inspiring!
Our children deserve better. They deserve to go to school without having to constantly sit for preparation tests followed by real tests followed by another set of preparation tests etc. They deserve to have their education untainted by political point scorers.
I love the backflip contained in the first paragraph of a recent editorial in the L.A. Times:
The high-stakes measurement of student progress through annual standardized tests has, in many classrooms, restricted creativity, innovation and individuality. It has emphasized the skills involved in taking multiple-choice tests over those of researching, analyzing, experimenting and writing, the tools that students are more likely to need to be great thinkers, excellent university students and valued employees. But, by pressuring schools to raise achievement, it also has ensured that more students reach high school able to read books more sophisticated than those by Dr. Seuss — which, sad to say, was a major problem a decade ago — and tackle algebra by ninth grade.
Once you have taken the “creativity, innovation and individuality” out of education there is no “but”. There is no good way of rationalising those vital missing ingredients.
Sure it’s good to have data on the quality of teaching and learning in our classrooms. Of course, assessments are a staple of education. But these dry, monotonous, pressure-ridden tests can get too much for kids looking for more enjoyable ways of learning.
If these tests have as I suspect, a negative effect on our students’ enjoyment of learning and self-esteem, is it really worth persevering with?
Topical Teaching 
