Categories: uncategorized
Date: 30 November 2004 14:28:26
I just can't do it. They'll have to sack me, that's all, but I cannot, repeat cannot, go along with the latest effort in school. I refuse point blank to issue slime awards. I just wish I could think what the alternative is. Any suggestions?
This is the currrent situation - a considerable number of the pupils we teach think that they can talk to anyone and everyone exactly how they choose. They are inpolite, answer back incessantly, and refuse to listen - hurling indignant torrents of insolence if you so much as look at them. The words "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" are virtually a foreign language to them and, although they demand respect, they are totally unwilling to give it.
Now don't get me wrong, this isn't the majority. No, I teach some lovely kids - and to hear fourteen little bods say "Thank you, Miss" when you give them a stinkingly-hard maths test paper touches the heartstrings something rotten - this is just a very vocal minority, but a minority that is understandably growing.
So what is the school's response? Well, we've all been given little strips of green paper which say "I behaved respectfully today" and which each individual teacher has to sign. There was a special assembly to introduce this "Speaking and Acting Respectfully Week", and from today until this time next week, every time someone is respectful, we have to give them one of these strips of paper to thank them for not answering us back. They sign their name on the back of the piece of paper and put it into a lucky-dip box - and next Tuesday four names will be drawn at random out of the box and those children will be given a prize.
Herewith begins the insincere slime by those kids who normally couldn't give a monkey's and who, after the week has gone by, will undoubtedly revert back to their normal modus operandi. We are to respond to this sickly sweet fraudulence by rewarding them for doing what should come naturally, while the good little bods who are always polite get overlooked because they feel their manners are being undervalued. Indeed, I can see it now, getting a load of mouth off a child for not giving them a slip they feel entitled to!
There must be something better than this.