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D Word, The

NEA Today, Sep 2005 by Flannery, Mary Ellen

Discipline problems weigh on educators today more than ever. But don't despair-there's plenty you can do to knock your challenges down to size.

On her first day in Misti French's Kentucky classroom, little Sandra with the thick glasses and vacant look kicked, pinched, and punched her shocked classmates. Before lunch, she mutely refused to write a topic sentence. After lunch, she stalked away from the playground swings, past the fence, toward home.

French, a first-year teacher at Herndon's South Christian Elementary School who has taught her third-graders to play African drums, write poetry, and love school, resorted to holding the troubled child's hand all day. But who's going to hold French's hand? Even in her graduate-level education classes, French says, "Nobody told me how to deal with Sandra."

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It's not just new educators who struggle with classroom management and discipline issues. Day in and day out, even veterans wonder what to do with students who constantly disrespect, disrupt, and demean. Almost 80 percent of teachers told Public Agenda pollsters that less instruction is accomplished these days because of the disruptive environment in schools; one in three report having considered quitting because of it. And while many struggle with the occasional handful of unruly kids, some navigate entire schools that seem on the edge.

"It feels like the inmates are running the asylum," complained one frustrated high school teacher to her colleagues in NE A's Works4Me online community-a weekly forum for members' questions and answers available at www.nea.org/tips/library.html. "Profanity is tolerated, rampant and loud. Students (verbally) assault teachers regularly....They steal, cheat, lie, and vandalize, use cell phones in class and keep iPod earphones dangling from their ears..

There's the feeling among educators that things are worse now than they've ever been, and they aren't wrong, says Jim Garbarino, a Cornell University professor and author of Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment.

Garbarino points, in part, to an "erosion of adult authority" in today's society that makes it more and more difficult for teachers and other educators to do their job. Although research on the declining behavior of students is scarce, Garbarino says one survey found 82 percent of adults agree kids are less respectful.

"Teachers probably have to do more to establish their individual authority because they don't have a cultural foundation to build upon," Garbarino says.

Some blame parents-in fact, 82 percent of teachers in the Public Agenda poll say parents simply don't teach their kids discipline. Many kids come to school with little regard for rules. "They're used to getting their own way," says Sheila Cornelison, an algebra teacher in northern Alabama, who trains colleagues in Alabama Education Association-sponsored I Can Do It! Workshops-seminars offered by some state Associations to help teachers with classroom management.

Unfortunately, she and others say, gone are the "good old days," when teachers could rely on parents to catch their backs. Now, one out of two teachers report having been accused by parents themselves of unfair discipline.

But then, in the good old days, parents mostly lived together. Televisions didn't blare profanity. Popular music didn't boast of teenage mamas. Little girls didn't buy thong underwear at the mall. As society's ailments grow more complex, as more families live in homeless shelters and more college grads stand in unemployment lines, as more people shun religion and celebrate cell phones-and, say sociologists, as people care less for each other generally-children's problems have simply grown weightier.

Who can guess what's going on in the life of the Florida 5-year-old who, to the country's horror, ended up in handcuffs after throwing a tantrum in her classroom?

Experts say it all points to an unhappy zenith in American culture-and the implications, they note, are dramatic. "The climate that we create in our homes, and in our communities, and in our schools can help kids learn to share and create and be good human citizens"-or it can set the stage for bad things to come, says Barbara Coloroso, a former Colorado teacher who speaks nationally about discipline and environment.

So what's an educator to do to help keep the outlook bright-and happily survive classroom life, too? "A lot of people are searching for solutions," says Lincoln, Nebraska, third-grade teacher Randy Gordon. The good news: There are solutions-dozens of them-many tried and true, many dreamed up by your own colleagues. Just read on.

twenty-five tips

To start the year right, check out these tips from your colleagues.

THE RAMPANT EYE-ROLLING, LIP-TWITCHING, AND MORE OVERT, "YOU TALKING TO ME?"-ARE ALL SIGNS THAT THE KIDS ARE "DISSING" YOU. HOW DO YOU BRING AN AIR OF CIVILITY BACK INTO THE CLASSROOM?

1 MODEL BETTER BEHAVIOR. When Washington State middle-school teacher Julie Moore asks her students to "please turn around and stop talking, "inevitably they respond, "I'm just asking a question!" So she models the appropriate answer, "Sorry, Mrs. Moore, I'll get back to work." Eventually, it sinks in.

D Word, The

NEA Today, Sep 2005 by Flannery, Mary Ellen

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