Chapter 15. Classroom Management : 5. Disciplining
(E1-Esther and Jinny, E2-Jungsun and Justin)
Debate topic: Teacher should resolve disciplinary matters outside of class time?
(Or is it okay to discipline students during the class time?)
Team 1 : Agree!
All teachers let the students know what kind of behaviors he/she expects for their students. However, students forgot the rules very often, even if they want to follow the rules. If teacher discipline the student who make false or mistakes, it would humiliate the student. Especially in elementary school, kids are very sensitive, emotional and immature. They depend on teacher’s response very strongly, so disciplining student during the class time in front or all the other students may make the student less confident and passive. Therefore, disciplining students after the class time, face to face, is better to built good relationship between teacher and student, student and his/her friends.
Team 2 : Disagree!
Discipline and punishment is also one part of the teaching. Punishing the wrongdoing students during the class could be a good example and model to discipline the rest of the students. Some people says that disciplining students in front of his/her friends is humiliation, However, it is not important that when to punish or where to punish, but how to punish. It is more effective to discipline students right after the wrongdoing, or students would forget their bad behavior.
249p. Disciplining Gina,Jasmine,Zia,Grace
Specifically about group competition.
Grace and Zia are strongly against the group competition. First of all, group competition makes students only focus on the getting some points not improving or performing the language task properly. Therefore, it’s not educational method.
Also, a student who performs poorly may not get along with other students. Sometimes some students hate to have some particular students mostly lower lever students because they think lower lever or poor behavior students are obstacles to get group points. This kind of act is inappropriate in education. Moreover, when a teacher emphasize the group competition too strongly, it may cause conflict among class since one group is likely to exclude the other group because they believe other groups are all enemy. This is absolutely not educational at all. Then some student who love to work alone feel stressful during group competition. Teachers have to respect each student’s preference in the way of studying.
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We agree that a teacher use a group competition when they manage classroom.
There are some advantages in using group competition. It’s very useful method to participate students into lesson time actively and spontaneously. Also, It’s easy way to manage them effectively when teachers have to run a big class by themselves. And, this method can make them help each other in the process of try to get a good point. in this case, this can be not a competition, rather, we can get a cooperative effect. If teacher use a group competition well, it can make our students more progressive, and give them the chance to be more sociable persons.
So teachers may use a group competition.
I do both way in my class. It depends on the age and the wrongdoing things. If the students are above 5th grade, I prefer to talk with them individually. But the bad things that they have done are common things to the most children, I say to the whole class.
Yes, teacher should concern each student’s confidence and self-esteem when teacher discipline the student’s wrongdoing.
So I think teachers should make students understand the class rules and disciplines clearly at the beginning of the semester.
I have an opinion which is more closer to team A.
Punishing or discipling our kids in front of their classmates is not effective beacuse that can be disturbace in proceeding the lesson. When they misbehave in the class and it blocks the flow, it is better to give them small phisical sign, for example patting their back or stroking their heads without any word, so they can catch up with teacher’s intention and the’re going to correct their behavior. And after the class, we talk more deeply and calmingly with our kids. If we discipline or punish impromply during the class, we’re easily to be temper so we may humiliate them or overdo beyond limits.
One of the method that I learned both in teacher training and from a veteran teacher early on is the – Proximity Rule. It works with most all ages:
The rule goes like this…The closer the teacher stands to the students, the more likely they are to be quiet or talk about the topic that the teach has assigned or to work on the material the teacher has assigned.
Sometimes, it is hard to apply this rule when you have too many desks or tables and not enough room in the class, but if you use it then, it becomes even more obvious to the people talking too much or not doing their work that you are paying attention to their bad behavior.
In teaching teenagers in the US, sometimes, however, most of the classroom management and disciplining techniques we learn in teacher training or from veteran teachers doesn’t work, and you have to “call a student out.” Meaning: you have to get onto them in front of the class in order to get them to respect your position in the class. In some schools, with some students, it is what they are used to at home, and they will continue to “act up” in the class until the teacher does something like that.
In the US, we also commonly have a Vice Principle in charge of Discipline, and we will send students who refuse to work or to stop chit-chatting non-stop or who do something very bad to the VP. We have a book of “referral” slips that we fill out:
This is what we call “writing a student up,” and it is generally an effective method with your very uncooperative students, because after being written up, the students lose privileges, and they hate that.
The most effective way I’ve found for working with teens in the US, where motivation to study is very low, is to work hard to convince them that what I am teaching them will be useful to them after they enter “the adult world.”
My last line of defense, so to speak, is to tell them that they are “exercising their brains” and that if they don’t, they won’t have the mental flexibility to solve many common life problems adults face. American teens (and I think teens around the world) are understand the importance of exercise of their bodies – even if they don’t do it much.
I also tell them to look at adults around them – in their families and neighborhoods – who have problems managing money and doing what seem like “simple” tasks in the adult world and who always seem to have a hard time. I tell my students that it doesn’t matter if they are “smart” or “stupid” — everyone can exercise his brain and get a benefit from it, but it must be applied consistently all-life-long: Use it or lose it….
It does not win over all the teens in the American schools I’ve taught at — but it moves many of my “bad” students into at least being “neutral” and giving me some production value during a semester.
I agree. Especially, Korean students are so competitive when they are doing group work. That’s one of the reasons why I rarely do group work.
I can agree with this on getting groups to compete against each other. With some activities and with some teacher’s teaching style, it can work and be fun, but it can also cause the problems others mentioned above.
But, there is much more to group work than competition. In fact, as I think about it, I can’t remember using group work as a competition. I am sure I have done it, but I can’t remember the last time I did – even though I use group work a whole lot in my classes in Korea and the US.
I do give small rewards to groups who are working well — staying on task and not just chit-chatting and are trying to use English — and especially if they are trying to push themselves to use words and phrases they are not totally comfortable with — but I don’t think I do group competition much in the US or in Korea…
I think debate is a good kind of improving our thinking skills. In the 21st century, the purpose of education is not in telling students what is right or wrong but in leading them how to think.
While students discussing and debating, they can learn to think differently.Even though something is correct one certain time, that does not last forever.
Let’s take an example of what kind of shape of the Earth is look like? Ancient people believed the Earth is square. But, it revealed round.
I think teachers always think about how they can stimulate students’ curiousity. There are too much knowledge they have to cover. Once they get interested in education, they will voluntarily participate school activities.
In that point, through debate or discussion, teachers encourage them to be differentiated or accept various opinions. In order to do that we, teachers, should learn how we can manage the debate in class to be interesting.
In the past, before the 20th Century, debate was a key part of education in Western societies, but its primary purpose was not “competition.”
In fact, the idea of a winner and loser is totally against what the purpose of debate (rhetoric) was in the past:
The original purpose was for people to have to create logical arguments for —– opinions they did not really believe in.
In traditional debate, 1 person or team would argue the positive on a given topic for X amount of time. Then, after X amount of time, they had to switch sides immediately and argue in the affirmative. — The point was not to try to “win” or “prove” that your opinion was best. The point was to give people practice in creating logical arguments —- no matter what the topic was or what their own personal opinions might be.
Lastly, of course, group debate is only one form of group work…