Thread: Dealing with students?

That is a tough question. My personal philosphy is that I cant reach all of them. I know that. But I can reach some of them and make a difference with some. Hopefully, you will have an administrator who will help you with those kids of issues, but it is an intimidating thing to have a student in your class who is high on something. And really, theres not much you as a teacher can do about it, other than get them out of your classroom (if you can even do that) andor still try to be the best teacher and role model you can be. Sometimes you can break thru their walls and get to who they are, and hopefully help them, and sometimes you can't.

Thanks for the reply. I guess that's a good way to look at it. I tend to be really perfectionistic so I think my mind was just panicking that the classroom wouldn't be 'perfect' so to speak if I was not able to control one person.

But that's unrealistic as I'm sure over the years I will come across some students who are troublesome and maybe the key for me is looking for ways to not let this affect me so I can still do a good job at teaching the students who do want to learn and I can deal with.

Originally Posted by David Chin

Tatertot has the right of it. One of the hardest lessons I ever had to learn as a teacher was that sometimes despite your best efforts, you simply can't reach all of the kids.

I did my student teaching in an upper middle class school district. I myself am a product of international private schools. I was thoroughly unprepared for my first teaching assignment - the children of migrant workers in south Texas.

My kids were below grade level in all subject areas. Since they were the children of migrant workers, they were constantly being pulled from class to help pick crops.

Teaching these students was an exercise in frustration because every time these kids were pulled from class, they fell further and further behind in their studies. When they left to pick crops, they weren't gone for one or two days. They were gone for one or two weeks or sometimes one or two MONTHS.

It took me a long time to realize that I had no control over the home environment of these children. I had no control over students being pulled from my class. I had no control over how long the kids were gone. All I could do was to try my best ... but truly it felt as though I were taking one step forward and sliding two back with each kid I taught.

I wasn't even treading water as a teacher. I was backsliding and there wasn't much I could do about this.

My way of coping with this was to eventually opt out. I got my initial two years of experience and then moved on to graduate school and employment with another district.

Needless to say - turnover in this district was extremely high.

Wow, that is quite the experience. I could see how something of that nature would cause endless frustration. I think for me the key will be to not internalize it too much to the point where I feel like I'm not a good enough teacher because I cannot make every single student listen (knowing my personality type right now this could happen, so I suppose it's my job to psychologically prepare myself for this).

If one particular student is extremely hard to deal with or is really causing disruption for the rest of the class, do most schools have ways of dealing with this? (removing him/her, etc) ...sorry that could be an elementary question - at this point I'm only two classes into my degree so they haven't talked much about this yet.

He was later expelled for exhibiting similar behavior in other classes.

Expulsion pretty much only happens here when a student is a)threatening to kill others or b) is actually killing others. (If they have an IEP, that may not necessarily occur, another absurdity courtesy of IDEA.) You guys are really really lucky.

Originally Posted by David Chin

Being pulled from class also counts as an unexcused absence.

I'm curious about this. Do you mean being sent to the office on referral, or are you talking about if the counselor calls the student out, or they go to the nurse.

I personally hate it when a kid is called out of my class to talk with the counselor when I am quite sure that there is an elective somewhere in their day that would've been better for them to miss, but I think I'd feel quite bad if they lost credit for the course because the counselor wasn't paying attention to how many times they'd missed class.