Not turning in homework? that's a paddlin'
Lying to the teacher? Oh you better believe that's a paddlin'
Posted on 05/28/2012 12:21:40 PM PDT by Malacoda
The dog ate it, the computer exploded, I spilt spaghetti bolognaise over it.
School children have been coming up with excuses for failing to hand in their homework since the concept was invented.
Now a frustrated 3rd grade teacher in Tucson, Arizona, has decided to recognise the art of homework dodging by giving out a Catastrophe Award to the student who wriggled out of handing in homework the most.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Another reason to homeschool!
But, the parent looks like just another unwed mother. *sigh* Will they never learn?
Perhaps, mom should have maintained some control in here household and with her daughter and made sure the kid did her homework.
An award for “Incompetent Parenting” should have been given to mom.
nope not mean spirited at all
the kid and the parent needs to toughen up
My 3rd grade teacher had a “hot water list”
I made the list.
Oh the Horror!
Coddling kids who demonstrate bad behavior doesn’t do them or society any favors.
Punishment of a third grader should be done in private.
The truth can be very painful.
Perhaps now she will be motivated to do her homework.
Disagree. We have gotten away from the concept of puiblic shaming at our peril.
And how do you know that this teacher had not had endless private chats with this student over this topic?
Not turning in homework? that's a paddlin'
Lying to the teacher? Oh you better believe that's a paddlin'
I know what you mean. I hate it when my puiblic gets shamed.
So you enjoy beating up on 3rd graders?
If parents would only raise their children to be more responsible, but I’m sure the parents have an excuse for that.
The teacher should also make it explicitly clear what is expected at the beginning of the year both verbally as well as in writing.
Here are a couple of other ideas.
Every time any students fail to do their homework just re-distribute a few points from the homework done by each of the other responsible students to the irresponsible ones. Make sure the irresponsible students get enough points to get As on their homework.
Or you could have all of the children do 25 push ups in class. If they refuse the students who did their homework get Fs and the one’s who didn’t get As!
The children will be so ticked off by either method they’ll put pressure on the slackers to get with the program.
Just use a bit of creativity can go a long way to academic success!
This is the same sort of parent who says of the child just arrested for murder and mayhem, “But he’s such a great kid!”
Probably had, doesn’t excuse doing this. Public schools teach kids that there are no repercussions. Fail a test? Take it again. Don’t turn your homework in on time, thats ok do it tomorrow.
Give the kid a zero if the homework isn’t done. Alert the parent and fail the kid if they don’t fix it.
I don’t think dfwgator is advocating putting students in public stocks and having other students throw vegetables at them.
For me, it comes down to school choice. Would you want your child to go to a school with teachers like this? Some would. Some wouldn't.
With tax-payer funded government schools, many people feel they have little say in the matter -- but they should. School choice would diminish the number of students who get exposed to teachers who "do it wrong" -- and would thereby help define what it means to "do it wrong".
The list of reasons keeps growing.
If she’s so embarrassed for her daughter, why did she go and spread it all over the news and allow her daughter to be identified and photographed? She’s looking for $.
“... this seems mean spirited”.
I am wondering if a student had done this (created a false award for something negative and handed it to her in front of the other kids)... what would have happened? I have the feeling that the student would have been counseled for bullying. There are better ways, IMHO, to motivate children other than public embarrassment. Perhaps the teacher tried but this shouldn’t have been done. Perhaps NOT getting an award (for best grades, best homework completion etc) could have been a motivator. IMHO.
fail the kid?
That would be humiliating!
Hear, hear! It's obvious the mother isn't helping or making sure her child do her homework and hasn't bothered to look at her report card or what I'm sure were numerous notes from the teacher. The mother shouldn't blame the teacher for her own failings.
Well Liberals demand everyone get an award for something so there ya go.
“She’s looking for $.”
Nailed it!!!
When I was in third grade I did something (I forget what now) that got me hauled up to the front of the class where Mrs. Smithson paddled me with a large, thick wooden paddle. She didn’t do it hard enough and when I sat down the kid next to me grinned and I snickered. Mrs. Smithson was a large German woman and she walked over to me and cracked me across the face 2-3 times. My jaw hurt for a week.
These days she would go to jail. Even then she was pushing it. But she did it out of concern for me and the learning environment in the classroom not out of ego - even in the 3rd grade I could tell the difference. I was a spoiled little monster hippie kid and it was an excellent life lesson.
When half the people on this forum, who call themselves conservative, start whining about some kind being shamed you know we have No Hope.
If the people who love us do not discipline us then life will. Or if life is artificially cushy like in the Western democracies then we will breed communists who demand that the people who are not perpetual screw ups and actually contribute to society give them more. And more.
Reading these responses is depressing. We are calling the four horsemen and will have no one to blame but ourselves.
When I was in third grade I did something (I forget what now) that got me hauled up to the front of the class where Mrs. Smithson paddled me with a large, thick wooden paddle. She didn’t do it hard enough and when I sat down the kid next to me grinned and I snickered. Mrs. Smithson was a large German woman and she walked over to me and cracked me across the face 2-3 times. My jaw hurt for a week.
These days she would go to jail. Even then she was pushing it. But she did it out of concern for me and the learning environment in the classroom not out of ego - even in the 3rd grade I could tell the difference. I was a spoiled little monster hippie kid and it was an excellent life lesson.
When half the people on this forum, who call themselves conservative, start whining about some kind being shamed you know we have No Hope.
If the people who love us do not discipline us then life will. Or if life is artificially cushy like in the Western democracies then we will breed communists who demand that the people who are not perpetual screw ups and actually contribute to society give them more. And more.
Reading these responses is depressing. We are calling the four horsemen and will have no one to blame but ourselves.
Absolutely. There is NO place for sarcasm, belittlement or public criticism for achievement by a teacher in a third grade classroom.
It is BULLYING done by an authority figure...and it is very Alinskyesque. It is exactly how NOT to handle matters of a child's performance. The matter is to be handled PROFESSIONALLY with the child and parents, NOT in a sleezy, ha-ha, pit child against child manner.
Sarcasm or humiliation by a teacher to a child that age is evil and undermining...and is something not fully understood by a small child.
My daughter had a third grade teacher who was this way. She was the exception to all the other teachers at her grade school. Very sarcastic and flippant and public "labeling" of the kids. They were all a basket of nerves, worried when they'd become the next to be on her receiving end.
That year I made it my business to be room mother...and not necessarily to protect or defend my own child. That classroom needed another adult there whenever allowed, to be a stop-gap of her poor treatment of children who were ALL victims of sarcasm and ridicule that she freely flung. I cannot TELL you how happy the whole *class* was to see me on the days that I was in the classroom helping out. It was pitiful. And it wasn't because of me...it was because I was ANY other adult present to keep that teacher from hurling little digs at them. Shame on her. Shame on this Tucson teacher.
This sort of immature and mean teacher behavior point to their lack of proper teaching techniques, and their understanding of fosterment, nourishment, and flourishment of a small child's mind and spirit.
This sort of teacher has NO business teaching GRADE SCHOOL. It's like seeing a parent publicly ridicule and belittle a small child in a public setting. The sight of it simultaniously makes you sick, and keenly aware of how kids can later in life go bad or possess little or no confidence.
Strange, but nowhere in the article did I see anyone denying the validity of the charge. The kid isn’t doing her homework and the teacher is just recognizing that accomplishment.
I teach a pre-core class at the local community college, so this should be a class that students take in their first or second semester of college. This year, I had a student contact me THREE TIMES requesting that his grade be brought up from the F he earned. He did not turn in at least 10 projects / quizzes / assignments over a 16-week semester and failed every test, but he still requested that his grade be raised so he could continue getting financial aid. Oh, and so his mom wouldn’t be mad at him.
Maybe if someone had taken him aside ten years ago when he was in third grade, perhaps he would understand the connection between grades and turning in an assignment.
Even last week, in one of my “professional level” classes, one of the students walked out of the lab without showing me his work. I stopped him before he left the building and he said, “Well, I’ve already taken it off my computer. Can’t you just give me a grade?”
Here in the metroplex, over half of my community college students fail the courses, primarily because they don’t do the homework.
It is a charter school that requires an application for entrance. If the parents don't like it, they can just transfer their kids.
The parent's guide is here -
http://desertspringsacademyblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/2012-13parenthandbook.doc
I was a lousy student until I joined the USN.
I needed discipline as well as direction.
I was a good kid but I was a smart ass.
I'm not quite clear on the value of publicly shaming a third grader -- this particular case may be evidence of a poor decision on the teacher's part. My gut feeling is that the teacher was right, but I'm not sure.
But overall, I agree that society is far too cushy. We're too nice, too soft. We have too much "stuff". Our values and our morality are all out the window because we do not insist on self-control, on discipline, on ethical behavior, personal integrity, and on productive, useful work.
We see a teacher not disciplining a class and we are horrified.
We see a teacher disciplining a class and we are horrified.
We are lost. As a society, we seem to have no answers to any of the important questions.
Flunk the kid or hold her back a year. Heck, it's a charter school - kick her butt out for underperformance. These things would just as effectively punish her and her mother. getting other kids in on the act teaches nothing. (Though I suppose it teaches the other kids in the class that it's better to be on the side the shaming mob.)
Flunk the kid or hold her back a year. Heck, it's a charter school - kick her butt out for underperformance. These things would just as effectively punish her and her mother. getting other kids in on the act teaches nothing. (Though I suppose it teaches the other kids in the class that it's better to be on the side the shaming mob.)
The teacher, Ms. Blowman, sucks.
Half of big government is government schools.
While you have a valid point, society works on the notion of conformity (the shaming mob).
There is room in our culture for conformity and Independence.
This kid is demonstrating bad behavior.
Bad for her and bad for society.
Ideally this teacher would find the kids spark and get her to want to do the work, to take pride in her work.
What the teacher did was hardly the end of the world.
Lord only knows what lengths she went to to get this kids attention. I feel for her on a managerial level, as 10% of the people take up 90% of your time.
That’s why I am not a manager. the 10% would drive me crazy.
I agree.
Giving the child a certificate in jest may have made the teacher feel clever - and we know how important it is for our government employees to feel good about themselves! - but it didn't do anything to teach the child either the subject matter or the habit of diligent work.
I agree this would be a perfect opportunity for you or wintertime to take this poor waif under your wings and demonstrate just how well homeschooling works.
And while your at it explain to me how a RESPONSIBLE parent allows a third grader to go to school that often without completed homework, especially at a charter school which required an application and apparently has a waiting list for some of it's grade levels
That’s exactly what I was going to post. I have a clear memory of a student being forced to do pushups in front of the class, just because he didn’t do his homework. And this was in the third grade. He did his homework after that.
Hardly the end of the world.
3rd grade is a tough grade.
You’ve been coddled for 3 years in school and now they have to prep you with the notion of work and study for your future schooling.
It’s a transitional period in a kids life.
*no children’s were whooped in this post*
She'll turn her homework in from then on. It is simple psychology: Pink underwear and green baloney sandwiches and you won't ever want to go back to jail. All this namby-pamby feel good b.s. will not serve anyone.
In life, no one hands out participation awards, except the Federal Government.
lol
wow you a so far off base it’s hillarious.
Teachers have been doing this sort of thing since school was invented.
Ever hear of a dunce cap?
I agree 100% with the teacher. The student needs to learn that actions have consequences. The mother is overly concerned with her child’s self-esteem, but doesn’t seem to understand that real self-esteem comes from accomplishments, not from unwarranted praise. It’s much better that the young girl learns this lesson now, instead of when she’s much older.
The child knew very well that she wasn't turning in her homework and obviously didn't care. Now, there's a consequence. She didn't get beat up -- she got a good-humored calling-out.
This girl is responsible for her own learning (I know, that's a concept we've largely abandoned but it's still true.) Her mother should be ashamed for whining about it.
Rewarding bad behavior and punishing success doesn’t seem to work towards improving things. I don’t see this as bullying but more as very mild punishment for bad behavior.
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