Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Maybe s/he's going to..? - And other tainted beliefs.

Today started off slow but was interesting overall. A writing prompt in the morning asked the students to write a story from the point of view of a hockey puck; a number of them didn't understand. I went around explaining point of view to them and I think they got it. Yeah! Self-actualization! Another interesting moment: We were reading about Deborah Samson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Sampson) and the teacher asked the students for predictions on what might happen in the chapter called "Leave me, I am going to die." One student said "Maybe she is going to cut herself?" The teacher played it off like 'kids say the darndest things' but I thought it could be a red flag. The entire class is always so sullen it'd be hard to tell if one was actually depressed...
     Moving on, during lunch the teachers eat together in a lounge. The past two days I sat with my cooperating teacher but the lounge was packed today and I wasn't eating so I relinquished my seat and sat off to the side. I overheard some of the teachers chatting about how one male student of theirs was just "creepily staring" at another female student's behind (this was probably from a higher grade.) I also heard the comment that "he'll be registered for sure one day" (I image they mean as a sex offender.) Also, to remove any doubt, when other teachers asked "who" they exchanged the students names around. Both the male and the female he was staring at. Obviously I feel this is pretty inappropriate for teachers to be chatting about, at least in this negative way, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I really thought about was, if you really are concerned with a student's behavior towards the opposite gender, for example perhaps a male students shows significant hostility towards female peers, how do you handle it? I guess it's just not my responsibility to help a student in this kind of development, but if I could not help but be concerned, what to do? I'm pretty sure teachers lose jobs for just like, mentioning the existence of sex to students (pregnant teachers, obviously the work of the Stork) although maybe as a male working with children I'm just a tad bit paranoid at how people will perceive me. Anyways I concluded that if you were to take it upon yourself to address such a topic, it would have to be with the whole class (and obviously in an appropriate way.) Even if it really was geared just to benefit one student, that student couldn't be singled out. As a final note about this, when I was in elementary/middle school, I never imagined that the teachers got together in private with each other and chatted about the students... I wonder what they said about me. I wonder what assumptions they made...
     I've written enough for now so I'll just sum this last thing up quickly. I had a nice little debate with a teacher about the DREAM Act today (If you don't know about it you should look it up.) I'm all for it, I think it's great! She was pretty opposed to it. She said she used to think my way, but her beliefs have been "tainted" by some of the things she sees as a teacher (There is a high probability it would help a number of the students in my school for that matter.) She's against people getting free rides through life. I figure people have it rough even/especially if they get some money from the government. I also didn't think she fully understood what the DREAM Act was so I was mostly just relaying facts I've heard. Anyways, I love debating. I just couldn't resist. Hope she doesn't give me any negative report because of it, but I can't worry about things like that if I want to act genuinely.

5 comments:

  1. Yeah, I didn't really think of teachers gossiping to each other about the students. In that regard they are just like the children themselves!

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  2. A few students at my school got full-day detention for a week a little while back; because they were "gossiping" about a teacher (actually no, they just said how bad she was at teaching) AT TWITTER. Teachers stalking us? I think so.
    If they talk about us, they shouldn't bitch if we talk about them.

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  3. I can see a lot from the point of view from a teacher. I'm a student so this blog should be interesting. Definitely following.


    Check out my blog if you can

    juiceishere.blogspot.com

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  4. So to some teachers, the students are nothing more than a "guess what's gonna happen to him later in life" game? That's a little depressing.

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  5. Me and my friend almost got suspended once because we made a comic about a teacher, but we never mentioned her name or anything. Just were protesting about some things we disliked in our school.

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