Posted on 02/17/2018 11:35:35 AM PST by Albion Wilde
Here's how one schoolteacher takes time each week to look out for the lonely...
Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.
And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who can’t think of anyone to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children....
(Excerpt) Read more at rd.com ...
“Sadly, I’m not sure enough teachers care, think they have the time or are bright enough to figure it out. “
That’s because they “owe their allegiance” to their teacher’s union, not the children they are charged with teaching.
the nuns always told us that nursing and teaching were vocations, not just jobs...
teaching is a job for far too many...
Exceptional read!!!
Then you put down the SAME names every week! geesh......what’s with your tagline?
Good teacher ping.
Good teacher ping.
This deranged f-up Cruz wouldn’t have been remotely affected by this method.
In fact virtually everyone in and around the school (including the cops) knew he was deranged, and knew of his threats to kill.
Who was going to be his “exceptional citizen” friend?
It sounds like social engineering. What if the kid and the family just want to be left alone? Will they all be forced into “counseling” or worse...have their child taken away? While it is well-intended, it could easily be misused or perverted. Having the adults at school who care to do so be armed would be better.
Social engineering never works. It’s for the retarded that think it does.
I’m all for looking out for sad, lonely children but we need to be careful here as to how we deal with it. Some of our most brilliant innovations have come from “lonely” kids, i.e. kids who didn’t fit into the school template. Highly intelligent kids tend to be loners and often socially awkward, which is why they can think outside the box. And we should not stigmatize introverts. These educators who have thought to ban “best friends” or preference to work alone are perhaps doing more harm than good.
Sounds a good plan! We had a “dumb row” in 2nd grade. Any child who failed a test was forced to sit in it. How to make a future killer, right?!
Good idea but liberals will turn the schools into an East Berlin, East Germany scenario where credits and promotion will come to informant’s.
And anyone suspected will get “reeducated”, or doped up.
I knew a guy who was like that. I went to his house every week. He didn`t associate much with other students. He had one close friend in school, no girlfriends. His family said, “Oh he`s always quiet and shy.” He had perfect grades in school. He was always studying hard. When he went to college he found a girlfriend whom he married after graduation. They have 3 kids. He had perfect grades in college. Couple years later he was one of the founders of Nvidia. He`s a billionaire today and is still quiet and doesn`t associate much. BUT WHO CARES???? All he ever wanted to do to school was to study hard and do his very best. What is the IQ of the average teacher? It must be the same as that of FBI agents to think that they can force children into a mold they think is socially correct.
This certainly makes me uncomfortable. It falls in the area of “What could go wrong”?
It casts the teacher as social engineer. I am all for a teacher noticing and extending themselves to a child who is socially awkward or withdrawn and even facilitating pairing during group assignments. But they shouldn’t need to be this intrusive to do so.
Schools are for learning about reading writing, arithmetic, history, science, civics. They are failing at that because of the incorporation of social justice and other clap trap, not to mention quotas instead of discipline.
In the younger grades there is time spent on civilization ie sharing, considering other’s feelings, working as a team and so on. In those years teachers should be making an effort to identify children who need some help navigating the group and making friends. A good teacher doesn’t need a weekly questionnaire to do so. The method suggested may work for a particular teacher but as a general rule seems more like a recipe for meddling than beneficial.
G-R-E-A-T.
Schools churn out uneducated, illiterate indoctrinated idiots already. Let’s throw something else into the mix.
- Terminate the teacher’s unions, the DoEd and property taxes
- Parent(s)\Guardian(s) can write the check(s) for the education of their brood
- Vocational/arts...magnet schools a-plenty as KIDS will determine their life choices beyond the 8yr ‘baseline’.
Cuz’ if anyone thinks private biz is NOT going to have to show results/audit, handle the trouble-makers (likely expelled w/o refund) and hire the best they can find, to pull in said $$$, is daft.
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This is not brilliant. It’s obvious that this is nothing more than a popularity contest. The fact that the idiot teacher and readers digest can’t see it proves that they are stupid.
Look, I agree with this approach pre high school, but it will not stop school shootings, even though it will probably help some kids find more friends. But the purpose of school is not to teach social values, no matter how much some people preach this.
The schools need to concentrate on the outline of learning that a class is following. Maybe a class on ethics could teach values. Because that would be the subject of the class, but a class on algebra has no business finding out who is lonely in class.
Note that the teacher could ask the class about which lessons they understood and which should be taught over, that might prove illustrating to the teacher.
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