Now don't say I'm not good to you. I'm sharing a video with you today, which was recommended to us students as part of our Teacher Training. It shows a US Maths class from 1947. Demonstrated are the wrong way, followed by the right way to get the best from a class. Basically, how not to deal with misbehaviour! The whole thing's totally staged and fairly cheesy, which makes it so worth the watching. What's really strange though, is how the problems teachers face today, haven't really changed that much in all this time.
I am a little concerned by the lack of belting that occurs in this video. When I was in secondary in the 80's I got belted, and my father has told me some terrible stories about kids getting belted around the head and stuff back in the late 50's. Obviously the belt was banned here in the UK in the late 80's, but I have no idea how it featured in education Stateside. Perhaps someone would like to supply that information?
Ther message of the video is, that pupil misbehaviour stems from teacher inadequacy, or teacher failings. If you tell the pupils how bad they are, and how they're all going to fail, the likelihood is that they will be bad, and they will fail. The teacher told them so, therefore that's how they see it panning out. The teacher has that power, I know. My kids have had teachers in Primary School who in my opinion often demonstrated poor grammar, spelling and lack of basic knowledge, and yet ask my kids about the teacher at the time, and they think their teacher knows everything there is to know, the font of all knowledge. That's the perception they have, the teacher is omnipotent, power for good or evil, success or failure, in the palm of their hands!
