Re: Middle school parents

Posted by KarenK122

Posted by bookworm


I'm also curious about what it looks like to treat the "worst, meanest kid...with respect." I bristle some at the idea of rallying around individual kids and treating them with kid gloves while they hurt and bully other students. I can remember a 7th grader I once had who routinely called his classmates "stupid" and "moron," most often targeting special education students in my inclusion class, and there was this expectation that we lovingly get to the root of his behavior while he terrorized other emotionally impressionable children and I just felt

This is totally different. If a child is bullying or being disrespectful then there are protocols in the school to follow, which the teacher should and I have no problem with a teacher protecting those being bullied. What they shouldn't be doing is rolling eyes, speaking sarcastically or talking down to the child. That is not acceptable no matter what the child did.

Message edited 3/12/2017 8:18:10 PM.

Middle school parents

I have one in MS and one in HS currently, and I see a HUGE difference in the way the teachers act toward their students.

I've had a huge problem with the MS teachers and things like name calling, eye rolling, mumbling things under the breath about the students. It's terrible. I had one teacher tell the class that none of them were smart enough to work at McDonalds. One teacher refers to some kids as dirt bags, another rolls his eyes and mumbled "yeah, and its my fault you're failing".... It's terrible! Some of these teachers are out of control and should no longer be teaching. It's very discouraging to my son who is a quiet introvert and does struggle in some subjects. He is mostly afraid to approach his teachers for extra help because of their often snarky attitude.

My HS'er tells me the opposite, that her teachers treat her like an adult and are kind and caring (for the most part). It could be that she's taking all AP classes and all the students in those classes take them very seriously.

Middle school parents

I'm just taken back by the fact that we as parents aren't in school with our children for 6 hours per day, yet you all seem quite certain that allll middle school teachers have an attitude.
I am sure that it's a big change for children who are used to being cosseted at home and at school to provide a safe and nurturing environment. But they're adolescents who feel the world is against them, their friends hate them, their teachers hate them, their bodies hate them etc etc.... They are torn- am I a child? am I an adult? what is the appropriate way to act? I don't know...

Could it be that while we need to believe and trust our children, that we take into account that sometimes their view of the world is that of an adolescent, which is totally normal.
I don't this it's appropriate to vilify teachers when the real problem could be the one kid in class who feels like he needs to act out on purpose or just the simple fact that at this age, everything is "drama".

I'm also going to add that there are teachers who are tired of the exhausting pace of middle school adolescence. Physiologically and developmentally, children at the middle school age cannot sit still. It take a lot of patience to deal with this fact, in addition to all of the drama. There are some teachers that just simply run out of patience.
Some. Not all.
That's why I think the generalizations here are not really appropriate.
After one year of being a middle-school leave replacement, I decided that it wasn't for me. I'm much better suited for HS

Re: Middle school parents

Re: Middle school parents