Monday, September 8, 2008
Desperate for help and advice
Today, as I was walking around checking my students' work (I gave them some work to do), I noticed that one of my students (ultimate problem student) was throwing all these pencil sharpenings all over the floor and he was throwing paper planes across the room as well. I walked over to him and asked him really calmly, "What are you doing?". However I got a shock when he said "Can't you see what I am doing, fishface?" I really did not know how to react. Well, I then asked him the second RTP question "What are the rules?" however he said "Who cares about the stupid rules? I don't!". When I told him that he was to go to the RTP, he started kicking the chairs and tables as he walked out. What can I do? He keeps on disturbing the class. All my students are terrified of him because he punches them when they tell him off.
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3 comments:
The difficulty is RTP–like other systemic initiatives–seems to take some time to permeate into the system. Hopefully, as everyone becomes more proficient in using RTP, we will see more and more change, e.g., suspension reports reflect refusals to follow process as opposed to days home as punishment.
You were checking students' assignments. The basis of PCT (on which RTP is based) is that you can't MAKE anyone do anything ! Did the student have any input into the goals of the activity? Also, when the student got stroppy you might have said something like- "Do you want to work on this or not ? Send an emergency card to the RTP chief who will escort the student to the RTC.
The student's reply constituted a disturbance for you - not the answer you expected. You will meet up with all sorts of replies to "What are you doing ?" Most will be straightforward but lots will require that you do some quick thinking !!! Maybe something like - 'Just checking that we agree on what it is you are doing - OK ?' I wonder how thoroughly the class introduced to RTP ?
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