Tonight I'm posting my homework assignment for you. We have been discussing behaviors and techniques to deal with them in class. Tonight's assignment was to write a classroom situation that all of the other teachers could roll play in class and come up with solutions.
Here is the situation I submitted:
You are the teacher of a German Class I. You gave a test last week. You graded it over the weekend and today in class you returned it to the students with their scores. You are reviewing the test as a class when you notice a shy straight A student reading a book instead of participating in the class discussion. You say to the student “If you are going to read you can just go out in the hall.” The student looks up and very good natured says “Oh thank you so much.” You continue to review the test with the class. When the class ends the banished student comes in, gets her stuff and leaves without saying a word. You give her an intense look as she walks out the door and she looks totally surprised.
What do you think?
What would you do if you were the teacher?
What would you have done as the student?
(Comments make my day so make sure to leave one.)
Here is a fun little fact. I wasn't the teacher or the student. I wasn't even in the class. This story happened to my little sister Jani the strait A student. She was totally oblivious to the teacher's sarcasm. The story is now classic in our family and we laugh and laugh. Herr Nickols (the teacher) never was nice to Jani after that point. In writing this blog the trained pop-psychologist in me realizes that this is the core reason Jani broke from the German as a 2ND language family tradition and switched over to the dark side: Spanish.
5 comments:
I would have answered this much differently if I were in the class than I would now with a couple years of experience. I would have a talk with the student the next day and discuss why she thought she could grab her stuff and leave. Before that, though, I wouldn't be sarcastic with the students. I would tell them they can go out in the hall and read, but not if we are just correcting a test. If we were correcting a test, I would give them a 0 and then just ignore it.
Hm, that's really funny. Since I was a "shy" student myself. I think I would have appreciated the teacher talking to me privately after class and telling me to show more respect by not reading during class, even if she knows all the answers, she needs to help set a standard for other students. Sheesh, maybe it's good I'm not a teacher. I don't know what I would do!
Hah! I love that story. I don't know what I would do, since I can't imagine being the teacher in that situation and I read all the time in class and never got in any trouble. BTW, it's a good thing Jani has gotten better at detecting sarcasm.
I would've let them read in class or go out in the hall without any consequences... but then again I am (was) just an art teacher with "bad" classroom discipline!
So, what did the other people in your class think?
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