How Is School Supposed to Work When There's No Way to Make Students Listen?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder addresses the growing frustration among teachers who feel they have no tools left to get students to pay attention and follow directions.
Key Takeaways
- Teachers are out of tools - When all meaningful consequences have been removed, teachers have no leverage to maintain attention
- The system has failed teachers - This isn't a classroom management problem; it's a policy problem that has stripped teachers of their authority
- Schools need to restore consequences - Without a credible system of accountability, instruction breaks down
Transcript
If kids aren't going to listen, they can't be at school, right?
Like if a student is refusing to be where they're supposed to be, they've got to go home.
You cannot keep a kid at school if they're not going to listen to the adults and be where they're supposed to be, right?
If you have kids who are not going to class, like middle school and high school kids who are not going to class and just kind of cutting class whenever they feel like it, roaming the halls, hiding out wherever, or if you have elementary students who are eloping from class, running out of the classroom anytime they feel like it, and just kind of going wherever, maybe going outside, maybe running into traffic, maybe finding a spot to hang out in the school, or maybe leading a parade and making adults chase them around the school.
If we have kids who are not listening to the adults, Walk me through this.
How is it possible to have them at school safely if A, they're not listening, and B, nobody's allowed to touch them?
I really want to hear from someone who has made one of these laws, who has made one of these policies that you can't touch the students, you can't put your hands on them, and you have to keep them at school no matter what.
You can't send them home.
You can't suspend them.
We have all these restrictions on what is allowed to happen.
and all these requirements that the kid be kept at school no matter what.
In that circumstance, how is education supposed to happen?
How are you supposed to keep students safe if they do not listen to you?
As a parent, if your kids don't listen to you, you can lose your kids.
If your kids are running wild and getting themselves into danger, You can lose your kids.
And yet as educators, we're forced to be in this situation.
Like this makes no sense at all that we would put hundreds and hundreds of kids in a building, not have really any way to make them listen, and then trust that that's going to work out.
Like these state policies, and in some cases district policies, but I think a lot of these are state laws, that are tying the hands of educators, I don't think we realize the extent to which they are making school impossible, right?
Like if you can no longer send students home, you can no longer make anybody listen, are we supposed to just hope everybody feels like listening today?
Are we supposed to hope nobody feels like being violent today?
Are we supposed to hope everybody feels like going to class 100% of the time?
Walk me through this.
I'm really, really wondering how this is supposed to work.
Let me know what you think.