Friday, September 6, 2013

Week Four: A Trip to the Principal's Office...


          My mentor teacher and I had started experiencing problems with one of our 12th grade honors English students. It started with him being defiant about his hat; my mentor teacher only has a few rules in her classroom and taking off your hat when you walk in is one of them. This student would refuse to take off his hat and when he did he would always end up putting it back on in the middle of class again; causing many problems because if one student gets to wear their hat then the other’s will voice their opinions about wanting to wear their hats.
          Later into the school year more problems began to arise. My mentor teacher allows all students to go to the bathroom, but we have a one at a time out process. One day when I was teaching a quick lesson on Old English to the seniors the students just raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom in the middle of my presentation. The rudeness was overwhelming to me, but I let him go. The student also stood up while I was teaching one day and just walked straight out the door to the bathroom…then when a line had built up of students waiting to go to the bathroom the student continued to throw a fit that he had to go to the bathroom and was verbally mouthing my mentor teacher and me. We would have let him go to the bathroom right away if he would have just stated that it was an emergency but instead he mouthed and copped an attitude and treated us with great disrespect.

          So my mentor teacher decided to deploy a preventative measure because he definitely wasn’t listening to us. We had the student called to the principal’s office and we all talked to him about how he needs to pay us with respect and we also learned about his body building competitions that cause him to drink gallons of water a day. The principal stressed that a smart young student like him needed to set an example and be respectful. Though it was an extreme measure taking him to the principal’s office it really worked and opened up communication between the student and us. We talked to the student’s mother as well and she said that she didn’t know him to be disrespectful and that it won’t happen again. We also learned that the body building can affect his mood a lot so now we are more understanding of his situation. All it takes is a little communication. 

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