A policy of strictness in classroom usually leads to good things
Alan Borsuk:
Three recent anecdotes that I think point to something important:
First: A friend told me her fifth-grade daughter, a high-performing student in a high-performing school, picked up an art project from a counter. It fell to the floor. She let out a four-letter expletive that begins with "s." This prompted a phone call from the school to the parent to discuss the daughter's conduct.
Second: Someone else told me about a teacher she knew who worked for years in challenging schools. She was dedicated, but she got worn down, so she retired, somewhat earlier than she might otherwise have. The clinching factor in her decision? She couldn't take the students' language any longer.
Third: I visited a small private high school on a recent Monday. The students are required to wear uniforms -- polo shirts with the school logo and khakis, that sort of thing. But the previous week had been "spirit week" and students were allowed to wear other stuff. The principal said she was relieved to have them wearing uniforms again because it reduced the number of behavior problems she had to deal with.
What do these anecdotes suggest? This is just the view of one increasingly old person, but if I'm in a school where learning is particularly serious and energetic, I'm probably in a school that is a pretty buttoned-down place.
The culture of a school is critical to its success. It generally involves things that don't show up easily in data -- how healthy and constructive the environment is, how well everyone knows how to treat each other and so on. Furthermore, classroom management is a huge challenge -- oh, today's kids and all that. The thing new teachers usually find the hardest to master is getting kids to focus on their work. I've been in classrooms where the pursuit of order took huge chunks of time away from the pursuit of education.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 4, 2013 12:52 AM
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