You’re totally right, of course. I’ll cop to the marker thing being the first fact that lights me up, though. Permanent marker? The hell? Of course, I was in school before anybody cared about bullying. Hell, our principals (grade school) still had paddles and occasionally used them.
I can’t say I’d have too much of a problem with it were it just rouge or something that washed off right away. Of course, I don’t have kids, but I have very vivid memories of being one.
Teachers are by and large crazy anyway. Some more than others.
Wow. I’ve seen teachers do all kinds of crazy shit (here in Korea, where it used to be legal to beat students) but I’ve never seen them mark up a kid’s face with a marker. That just strikes me as really childish and unnecessarily humiliating.
If you have sixty kids (2-3 classes) lined up against the wall, and every kid is allowed to move however he needs to in order to better see anything that catches his fancy, you won’t have a line at all: you’ll have sixty kids milling about. Five year olds don’t understand “It’s ok to step out of line to see, but only if there’s a real reason to wonder what’s going on, and only if you wait until no one else is ducking out of line, and only once every five minutes or so, and only for a second”.
We read it and think it’s bullshit. Apparently our memories of our own elementary school experiences are not to be trusted, and the teachers I volunteer with are miracle workers.
The punishment for getting out of line is that you go to the back of the line. You don’t even always have to enforce this–kids will handle this on their own once they become accustomed to it. It also has the advantage of being exactly what adults do. And the line doesn’t go slower*, since the kid behind the kid who got out of line will just move up.
Sure, there are some little rules that work better for kids but can be ignored for adults. But any of them that focus on the kid having to be perfectly still are ridiculous. Kids have a ton of energy and need to fidget. Trying to stop it unnecessarily will only guarantee that they will act out later, due to all the stored up energy. Save that for when you really need it.
*And since kids in the front of the line don’t generally want to leave, it’s not like the line really goes slower anyways if the kids keep their places. A delay in scooting up doesn’t actually delay anyone getting through the line.
No, but you run into what I’ve taken to calling the “horse rule.” If you don’t police lines any further than this, a line of 20 kids will pretty quickly stretch out to be a half-mile long, snaking through the entire building, with the back of the line lost to various mists, fogs, and grues.
Of my various efforts over the years to prevent this occurrence (which, joking aside, can be a bad thing, since the teacher is responsible for supervising all the students and is unable to do so if the line is too long), the best one is the one I’ve come up with this year. “Look at the person in front of you,” I tell them. “Could a horse walk through that space? If so, walk a little faster.” Now all I have to do is give a wide-eyed look of alarm to a student and squawk, “John, HORSE! FIVE HORSES!”, and they’ll grin and step it up.
I’m with you. I don’t have kids, but I remember being one, and I think it would have been hilarious. The permanent marker was the only bad part I see. Washable marker would have been best - wiping it off once the class got to where they were going and the regular teacher was back. But to get her kicked out of her lead teacher position for that? Seriously? If I was the parent of another kid in the class and had only heard of this incident I would have gone to the principal to say it was out of hand to punish her that much for such a minor offense. If my child came home in distress over having his/her nose coloured, I’d talk to the teacher and request a modified punishment in the future.
I think your memories of elementary school might be a little fuzzy. I know when I was in first grade we were absolutely not allowed to step out of line, not even a little bit.
I think the punishment was extreme overkill in light of “the crime” and in no way appropriate for a child that young. I wouldn’t really have a problem with the same thing being done to say, an unruly fifth grader. And possibly with washable ink.
I can remmber one teacher I had in fourth grade who would make the offender draw a big dot of chalk on the blackboard and then make him stand with his nose in the dot
Nobody in the OP stepped out of line. We were supposed to stay in line too and not talk. Sometimes we needed reminders. There was definitely none of this standing-against-the-wall nonsense. I did once have to stay behind from art class with a few others because we were chanting “kick him in the nuts” at two kids who were kicking each other in line. I felt particularly foolish because I didn’t even understand what the phrase meant and was only saying it because the other boys seemed to be having fun saying it.
Like other posters, we did have line leaders (who did nothing more than get to be first in line, because this is exciting for 5-year-olds), and people assigned to the 2nd and last spots. This changed daily. And this was just for kindergarten. Strangely, things actually got more strict as I got older and changed schools twice. The place I went to in 4th grade probably had rules to breathe, otherwise the kids would forget. They were kind of stupid there, students, parents, and teachers combined (central Illinois).
I read the posts that are supposedly there to “explain” what it is that the child did wrong.
I still do not believe the child did anything wrong. I think the teachers need to “man-up” a little bit and stop being so sensitive. They need to stop getting pissed at kids that aren’t doing anything wrong.
The child did NOTHING wrong. NOTHING! I don’t care what anyone else thinks. No one is going to convince me that the child did something wrong. No one!
Here’s the standard I go by. If I see a child doing something that may or may not be considered wrong, I compare it to the adult world. I compare it to see, “Alright, would this have been acceptable in adult public.” If not, that’s the time to warn them/activate disciplinary actions.
Now, I bet almost all of us have leaned out of line.
No. This cannot be taken seriously. This is just not moral or rational! The kid just wanted to see what happened, okay! That teacher needs to stop being so sensitive, man-up, and find some love!
