[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

As I said before, the wife spent over 15 years in west side Chicago school classrooms. The teachers who had honed their classroom management skills typically didn't have to send a kid down to the principal's office more than once or twice a week. Why? Because the kids were scared shitless of the classroom teacher. Why? Because some of the teachers had the authorization to use corporal punishment from the parents...and every kid in the school knew it. Some used it, some didn't. But what the kids were most afraid of was looking like the fool in front of their classmates. The blonde could make a disruptive kid look the fool like nobody else. She was like a USMC drill instructor...using the rest of the platoon to enforce the guidelines, for instance...

Kid won't stop disrupting class...
Teacher, "Class...what do we call a student who wants to mess up class for everybody else?"
Class responds, loudly and in unison, "THEY'RE GARBAGE!!!!"
Teacher, "Class, where does garbage go?"
Class, even more loudly, "IN THE GARBAGE CAN!!!!!"

Kid stands in timeout (didn't call it timeout then though) in the garbage can in the corner by the door for the next 15 minutes, more often than not in tears. And then the kid gets razzed by the other kids for being "garbage" for the next 15 days or so. The latter being the most powerful part of the intervention. Nobody fucked with MS. "B".

Mean? You betcha, Margie. Effective? Absolutely. As a seasoned teacher who was retiring that year told the blonde during her first week as a green 20 year old teacher on the west side of Chicago, "Go after them starting the first day of the school year and do it ruthlessly because sweetie, it doesn't work trying to get tough a month down the road, but you can always ease up once they're in line."

Years after she left teaching, former students, some of whom were running their own classrooms by then, were still in contact with her. Most thanked her more than once for not putting up with a nanosecond of shit from any kids in her class who weren't there to learn.

And the half-dozen principals she worked for loved her, because it was so rare for her to dump a disruptive kid on them.

What I don't like is the evident pride and satisfaction in telling the 'war stories,' the charge folks get about telling of the success of mean tactics, and the continuing anger both at 'bad kids' and at anyone who dares to question cruel or corporal punishment. There should be a way to run schools that doesn't require cultivating a streak of authoritarian brutality.

"Johnny will be fine once we break his spirit." Can't source it, but it's a real quote.