As I mentioned above, a reprimand is a reasonable response. That’s not the same as punishment of any kind, and drawing on a child’s face is way off base even when punishment is deserved.
That was my reaction. Adults do this and no one complains. Why is it so bad that a kid does it?
Because little kids don’t usually get back into line after they’ve stepped out. It’s like herding cats. Thirty of them. Oh, and if one of them gets out of your sight and something bad happens, your career is over.
Fully agreed.
Gets back to “common sense.” An adult might do this, but they’ll also generally be aware that if they do it too long, it’ll slow down the line, so they’ll maintain awareness of the general path and speed of the line and moderate their behavior accordingly. Very few kids have that level of self-regulation.
suomy, given the follow up info (and thank you for that, dangling threads drive me crazy too!), I personally would contact every parent in the class that I could and tell them that if *any *shit goes down with their kid, they can get the teacher canned. This person is clearly an ignorant asshole and is likely to do something untoward again, and if I were a parent of a kid who’s staying, I would sure appreciate that ammunition. (Plus you get the revenge bonus of knowing you’ve set her up to crash and burn if she steps a toe - heh - out of line.)
suomy - I just wanted to say “Good for you!”. I certainly wouldn’t have let that pass if somebody did it to Celtling, and I hope I would have remained as calm and logical as you did. (Even bet there, I’m afraid.)
It sounds to me like the Principal did take your concerns seriously after all, and I would probably be satisfied with the outcome you describe. If it had been left with both of them saying there was nothing wrong with it - that would have been a visit to the next school board meeting for me.
But yes, it seems like they are making the right corrections. And Hooray for you! If she’s been doing this to kids for four years I’d like to know WTF those other parents were thinking!
Another update: We had our meeting at 10am this morning. The principal said she would send home a detailed report in our sons backpack in a sealed envelope. It detailed everything i stated above. except at the end it said “xxxx has been removed from the position of lead Kindergarten teacher effectively immediately.” Now this title comes with a 1200 dollar a year bonus, so she has now lost that.
We are completely satisfied with the outcome of everything and will not be pursuing any further actions.
Raise your hand if you (and the other 30 kids) managed to get from point A to point B in kindergarten without all this extraneous bullshit.
Yeah, thought so.
By “extraneous bullshit” do you mean “constant soulcrushing reminders of the rules”? If so, and if you’re raising your hand, I suspect 5 years old is a long ways away for you, shrouded in the mists of time.
We had a rope.
Seriously. A rope. One hand on the rope at all times. Other hand touching your leg.
Nowadays I see specialty child-wranglin’ ropes with handles every 2 feet when the local daycare takes their flock for a walk, but ours was just a rope. We were so deprived.
We heard tales about the rich kids with a rope. We dreamed of that rope you took for granted.
Okay, but I’d think a “Johnny, pay attention. The line’s moving,” is more appropriate – and more likely to get him to pay attention – than any kind of punishment, including making him face a wall.
It depends. Some kids have trouble prioritizing the line, and they forget, and after you’ve reminded them three times during the same walk they get sick of hearing your voice and start ignoring you because goddammit, they stopped for a reason, there’s something they want to look at.
If a kid has reached that point, your choices as a teacher become limited. Do you let Johnny stop the line, making you late for wherever you’re going? (If it’s the cafeteria, for example, you might delay the entire school getting lunch, as the cafeteria may have a five-minute delay between classes for service). Do you encourage other kids to go around Johnny, in which case when he finally notices what’s going on he’ll race to get back to his position, pushing his way into line and starting an argument if not a fight with other kids who don’t think he ought to get his old position back? Do you let him lag behind, in which case you might not be able to supervise both him and all your other charges? Or do you administer some sort of punishment (or “consequence” in modern parlance–don’t get me started)?
Some kids respond well to verbal redirects. But not all do; some of them need you to manipulate consequences such that the consequences of breaking rules become worse than the consequences of following them.
Edit: again, of course the punishments mentioned in the OP are awful.
Glad to hear that the principal handled the situation appropriately. That’s encouraging.
Any punishment for the children’s actions is absurd. Facing the wall because they wanted to see why the line had stopped? Utterly ridiculous, IMO, even without the added humiliation of coloring the children’s noses. Alas, this doesn’t surprise me in the least, given the current climate in US schools. The obsession with discipline to the detriment of learning, the rigid enforcement of petty and ludicrous rules (silent lunch, anyone?), the blatant lack of understanding of child development. . . . It all adds up to a sorry picture. And don’t get me started on the behavior modification charts that are much beloved in the early grades.
How much time have you spent in a public elementary school in an area with high poverty (say, 40% or more of students on free/reduced lunch)? I’m a passionate teacher, and your ideas strike me as the sort of woeful naivete that I had when I entered the profession and that helped make my first year so difficult, until I scoured the naivete from my system and approached the world as it was, not as I wish it were.
I don’t see anything wrong with your son being punished for breaking the rules. These rules may seem stupid to you, but they exist for a reason. Many students and parents think my rules are stupid, but when you teach science, teaching and enforcing good lab safety skills is important. The only thing the teacher did wrong was use a permanent marker instead of something that could easily wash off. My high school students would be highly amused about getting their nose painted as punishment, and I’d probably have kids requesting that I paint their nose.
The only thing the teacher did wrong was use a permanent marker? WTF are you talking about. So if she used a washable, i as the parent would never had known and it would have been OK? I have no problems with my son being punished as stated earlier but not written on. And your talking about highschool kids and im talking about a 5 year old.
I don’t even know what the kid did that was wrong. He didn’t do anything wrong!
And, of course it would happen in Texas.
Most Texas schools are sh*t.
Wow, you sound a little hostile over my opinion and really jumped to conclusions quickly. The main reason why it’s inappropriate to write on a someone with a permanent marker is because it may take awhile to come off, not because of the ease of keeping the writing secret from anyone else.
What you’re missing is that it’s seriously wrong to mark up the kid at all. The type of marker used is a secondary issue.