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Yeah, and you know this for a fact? What grade do you have them? 6? 7? 8? You think that they haven't learned about consequences before they get to your so enlightened classroom? You have been there not even a full school year and now you know the entire story of the whole student body? Who's kidding who here?
Just like the other times you have tried to malign my personal life, your details about what you think my job is are completely wrong. You have the grade I begin teaching them wrong, the number of years I've taught wrong, and if you used your think skull even a little bit you would realize that yes, in just one year I get a bigger cross section of kids to compare than you ever will with just your own child to look at. Yes, apparently your child cowers in fear when you enter the room, and yes, that's apparently what passes for good behavior in your home. When are you going to admit that it can be done without the spanking?
Regarding your comment about me "knowing the entire story of the whole student body," of course I don't know everything about every kid. I do know most things about the 275 kids in my band program-- I make an effort to make sure I know. We (the teachers) also are given all kinds of statistics and back-stories on "troubled kids" or other borderline students so that we can work together to find strategies to help them succeed. However much I know, I also know that it's a shit-load more than you know about the kids in your son's school. And finally, I'm certainly in a much better position to judge the quality of parenting of the students in my own damn school than you could possibly be.
How is it that you think every kid in my class has perfect parents (who apparently are perfect because they spank their kids) just because we live in a small town? Here's a shocker for you: in my 6th grade band right now, with 60 kids in it, I have more kids with divorced parents than kids with both parents in the same home. It's not directly what we're speaking of here, but I have a feeling that also doesn't fit in with your apparent rose colored glasses about the perfection of rural America. We have students with problems here just like anyone else. Yet, you still haven't answered my basic question-- how is it that I can keep kids disciplined 8 hours a day without spanking them, if it is so essential to these kids as they claim? If you are stuck on me, and just hate me personally, how is it that EVERY TEACHER in my school, and in most schools can keep kids behaved without spanking them? The teacher down the hall from me has been teaching for 30 years-- he has put in more hours with kids than you have with your own son. He's never had to spank a kid to keep in control of the classroom. In your universe, that must really screw with your head. oh my how can that be?
You go ahead and keep on assuming what a horrible place it must be in my classroom. You go ahead and keep assuming that my classroom can't possibly be good because I'm not willing to abuse the kids within it. You're the one that sounds like an idiot when you do it. My students, the parents who had them, my administrators, and others who have contact with me know differently.
Like many teachers, I spend 12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week with these kids. Some of them spend more time with me than they do with their own parents. When I need to have quiet, I can't just tell one or two kids to be quiet like a parent can. I have to get 60 kids to be quiet at once, with instruments in their hands they are eager to play. Until you see how my classroom operates, you can't talk to me about discipline. You assume that because I don't threaten violence my classroom must be chaos, yet if you saw it in action you would see that my kids are taught discipline from the first day they enter. When I need their attention, I get it nearly instantly. They KNOW what their expectations are, and they know there are consequences when they do not follow them. When I got this job and entered the classroom for the first time, they had no respect for me; the process for creating this culture happened over time. It was not handed to me this way; I helped to create it. My kids behave because they know they are respected in their classroom. They know I will not belittle them publicly. They know that it requires hard work to push the band up to the standards we are trying to achieve. They are willing to spend hours of extra time on their own not because I threaten them with violence to get them to do so, but because they WANT to, based on the example I show them. Are they perfect? Hell no. But don't even pretend that I don't have experience in disciplining kids.
It's 20 minutes to 5 pm right now. I still have 7 kids here practicing their instruments. Two are in the office with me as I type this, but because of the discipline instilled in them by me they know they are not to look at the screen while I'm typing. You think this is impossible; come visit my classroom for a day or two and be amazed at what can be accomplished without ever threatening or carrying out a spanking on a single child.