My wife is a teacher at an urban high school. Some of the policies in place are: - A student's grade cannot be affected by behavior issues. Cheating, however, is considered a behavior and thus cannot be reflected on the student's grade.
- A student being present in the classroom is irrelevant. There are very few penalties for being tardy with some students being tardy 14-15 times for one class in one semester. Also, a student can be absent 80% of the time and still get credit.
- There is no due date for any homework. If the student wants to turn in all their homework on the last day of school, that is fine by the school's administration. (Boy, I wish my boss was OK with that).
With these MAJOR issues, it is the teacher's that are blamed. They are told they need better classroom management. They are told they need to be more positive. They are told to just say 'Yes' to whatever the student wants. They are told to influence the student's behavior since the administration will not use its backbone with a parent or student.
Maybe the school administration should fix the MAJOR issues before tweaking how the teacher teaches. How can we expect students to learn if we say it is OK to cheat, skip work class, no deadlines, etc.? What are we teaching our students? Do we only have expectations of teachers and no one else?
Schools should do what is best for the students...and that is not always saying 'Yes'
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