Disputes over discipline

Teaching is one of the key professions in this world. Instructors shape our minds from kindergarten to senior year, and even onto college. Once students get to high school, they have experienced 10 or more different discipline techniques ranging from laid back to strict.

The variety of strictness negatively impacts students. As they pass from instructor to instructor, they have to readjust the way they act. Once students reach high school, it is worse as they switch from a different instructor seven periods a day.

There are the obvious rules of a classroom, but instances with instructors who have very specific rules is a playground for chaos. Our job, as students, is to sit and listen for eight hours a day but with certain instructors, that is all we are entitled to do.

Understandably, students should know how to code-switch, which is knowing how to act differently between different instructor. If students are not able to code-switch and treat each instructor as an a respected adult, then instructors should be able to give consequences to the student so they do not act out again.

Instructors have their own set of rules at the same time. Over the years, the rules have drastically changed. Gone are the days where kids would get smacked on the hind end with a ruler for mouthing off to an instructor. Instead instructors just give punishments that do not stick with the student and will not prevent students from acting out again.

A common problem is also that teachers will often discipline students unfairly in their own classes. One student that often gets in trouble or causes problems may not recieve as harsh of a punishment as those that are first time offenders.

However, there should be a clear common ground between being too harsh or being too laid back. Instructors are authority figures, but that also means that they should not abuse their power and make their classroom anxiety producing. If a teacher makes the environment of the classroom too autoritatian, then it can drive students away from the class and possibly learning a subject that they may enjoy learning about.

However if they are too lenient, then it is just an “easy class” that students take to get a credit and leave without learning about anything. Instructors should be treated with respect and should not be treated as a friend or a buddy. Teachers’ jobs are to teach a subject, not to be a friend and hold their students’ hands through high school.

Five ways to be an effective instructor, as listed on Teach 4 the Heart, are to be both kind and firm, have high expectations, focus on being respected instead of being liked, view yourself as your students’ mentor, not their friend, and to be friendly, not familiar. Not every instructor needs to follow these guidelines and they provide room for the instructors to put their own twist on them.

The five regulations set a path for a healthy environment where students and instructors can work together toward getting the students out of school and into the world.

Without the stress of worrying how to run their classrooms and roadblocks of disciplining the wrong children, instructors can give their students the education they so desperately crave. Instructors can also focus on helping students in their classes that they are struggling in and need help with.